Medical doctors Wilfrid and Evan Shute of London, Ontario successfully treated well over 30,000 cardiovascular disease patients
with up to 3200 IU of vitamin E daily. For that achievement, they were ostracized from their medical society. Here are the
principles of the therapy:
1) Vitamin E has an oxygen-sparing effect on the heart, enabling the heart to do more work on less oxygen. The benefit for
recovering heart attack patients is considerable. 1200 to 2000 IU daily relieves angina very well.
2) Vitamin E moderately prolongs prothrombin clotting time, and has a limited Coumadin/warfarin effect. This is the reason
behind the Shutes’ using vitamin E for thrombophlebitis and related conditions. Their dose? About 1000 to 2000 IU daily.
3) Vitamin E dilates and promotes collateral circulation and benefits diabetes patients or anyone threatened with gangrene. Dose:
Tailored to patient; about 800 IU or more.
4) Vitamin E strengthens and regulates heartbeat like digitalis (foxglove) and its derivatives at a dose adjusted between 800 to
3000 IU daily.
5) Vitamin E reduces scarring when frequently applied topically to burns or sites of lacerations or surgical incisions along with a
daily oral dose of 800 IU.
6) Vitamin E helps gradually break down clots at a maintained dose of between 800 IU and 3,000 IU.
7) Vitamin E is vastly safer than drugs, as doses of up to 56,000 IU per day fail to harm adult humans. Gradual dosage increase is
advised, and patients with congestive heart failure, rheumatic hearts or high blood pressure need careful medical supervision.
So why hasn’t vitamin E been more highly regarded in medicine? Ambiguous results from a rather small number of highly
publicized, poorly controlled studies, that’s why. The most common reason for irreproducibility of successful vitamin E cures is
either a failure to use enough or a failure to use the natural (D-alpha) form, or both. Such studies must be weighed against the
Shute’s 30,000 cured patients and their four books: Complete Updated Vitamin E Book (Keats), Health Preserver (Rodale, 1977),
Vitamin E for Ailing and Healthy Hearts (Pyramid, 1975) and Your Child and Vitamin E (Keats, 1979).
And vitamin E is safe and remarkably non-toxic. In fact, “toxicity symptoms have not been reported even at intakes of 800 IU per
kilogram of body weight daily for 5 months”, according to the Food and Nutrition Board. This demonstrated safe level would
work out to be around 56,000 IU daily for an average adult, some 5000 times the RDA!
Here is an example. Overexposure to oxygen has been a major cause of blindness in premature infants. Oxygen-tent retina damage
is now prevented by giving preemies vitamin E, a natural antioxidant. Williams, Nutrition and Diet Therapy, 6th ed, indicates the
dosage as 100 mg E per kilogram body weight. That dose (around 200 IU for a preemie) is equivalent to an adult dose of about
7,000 IU for an average-weight adult. “There have been no detrimental side effects,” said the New England Journal of Medicine,
Dec. 3, 1981. Nevertheless, the nutrition textbook advised that “healthy persons stand the chance of developing signs of toxicity
with the megadoses that are recommended in these studies.” That statement is entirely untrue.
In less than healthy persons, there are some valid cautions in giving large doses of vitamin E. Among hypertensive patients,
sudden large amounts of vitamin E can cause temporary increases in blood pressure. The solution is to increase the vitamin
gradually, with proper monitoring (which hypertensive patients should have anyway). To avoid any possible risks of an
asymmetric heart contraction, patients with rheumatic hearts or congestive heart failure need small doses (around 75 IU) and
increases under medical supervision. It is best to inquire about all of these conditions when taking or submitting a patient history.
For additional information, it is most worthwhile to contact the Shute Institute, London, Ontario, Canada or read any books by
Wilfrid or Evan Shute, M.D. If their books are hard to find, try Interlibrary Loan (ILL) at any public library.
Why supplement with vitamin E? Our need for vitamin E increases with increased age, exposure to toxins (smoking, air pollution,
chemical oxidants), pregnancy and lactation. Even an increased consumption of polyunsaturated fats requires more vitamin E to
protect the unsaturated fatty acids from free radical attack. For most healthy adults, an optimum daily amount of vitamin E would
probably be about 600 IU. It must certainly be higher than the US RDA of only about 10 or 15 IU.
It is true that many foods contain vitamin E, such as milk products, eggs, meats, fish, whole-grain cereals and whole-grain breads,
wheat germ and leafy vegetables. However, the vitamin is present in these foods only in very small quantities. Americans do not
get enough vitamin E in their diet, and it is impossible to get even 100 IU per day from even the finest of diets. This is at least
partly due to the widespread milling of flour since the start of the twentieth century. Coincidentally, heart disease has also been on
the steep increase since 1900. Very likely there is a connection here.
The New England Journal of Medicine published two papers in the May 20, 1993 issue (Vol. 328, pp 1444-1456) which both
supported vitamin E megadoses, reporting an approximate 40% reduction in cardiovascular disease. Nearly 40,000 men and
87,000 women took part in the study. The more vitamin E they took, and the longer they took it, the less cardiovascular disease
they experienced.
“In the 1950s the Schute brothers said vitamin E worked against heart disease and cerebrovascular disease. They were greeted with
laughter. A couple of years ago, the Harvard School of Public Health showed that just 100 units of vitamin E per day decreased the
death rate by 40 percent. How many Americans would have been saved in the intervening 35 years had Harvard taken a
responsible position and said, “We are skeptical of these claims but let’s look at them”? But they wouldn’t do that–it didn’t fit their
paradigm. So vitamin E was totally destroyed by the establishment. Think of the cost of those decisions.” – Linus Pauling
Interview by Peter Chowka 1996
And the Shute brothers, those quacks, pointed it out first… sixty years ago. They said: “We didn’t make vitamin E this versatile.
God did. Ignore it at your peril.”
And ignore it we have. Even in the very issue carrying the two very favorable, major vitamin E studies mentioned above, was an
editorial article advising doctors not to use it.
Copyright C 2009, 1999 and prior years Andrew W. Saul.
