Whats the relationship between DHEA and Vitamin E?
Apart from the well documented effects that vitamin E prevents cellular damage (associated with the aging process) supplementation with vitamin E has recently been discovered to protect/preserve critical DHEA levels in the brain.* However, DHEA levels within the brain are known determinants of “brain health” and “brain aging”. Recently, Japanese researchers performed an elegant study on the effects of vitamin E on brain DHEA levels in rodents and published the results in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry (1998;9:339-343). The results suggested that a vitamin E deficient diet significantly reduced brain (adrenal) DHEA levels.* That in fact, not enough vitamin E in the diet does affect the amount of this vital prohormone in the brain. Also, more importantly, this study found that supplementation with vitamin E promoted healthy DHEA levels.* However, using more vitamin E did not increase adrenal DHEA levels beyond normal values, so mega dosing vitamin E in this instance is no good.
