Vitamin E: New Studies Show Range of Benefits Helping Sleeplessness, Bandages and Salmon Storage
Source:	Foods for the Future
Date:	May 26, 1999
WASHINGTON, May 26 /PRNewswire/ New research shows Vitamin E provides benefits ranging from helping human sleeplessness, extending the shelf life of salmon and other fish, to painless removal of bandages. Tufts University's current Health and Nutrition Letter notes that a need for more Vitamin E "could be responsible for restless leg syndrome, which is an urge to move the legs that disrupts the sleep of as many as five in every 100 people." Dr. Kenneth Sassower, clinician at Massachusetts General Hospital's Sleep Disorders Unit, has found that advising patients to take supplements of Vitamin E has helped ease the problem, according to the university publication. Studies have suggested that Vitamin E "quells a lot of nocturnal, lower leg movements," Dr. Sassower said. He recommended 400 international units (IU) of Vitamin E in the morning and another 400 IU at night. Meanwhile, Dr. Remi Baker writes in the publication Feed Tech that Vitamin E helps fish, too. Noting that Vitamin E "is important to the tissue's defense against lipid-oxidizing free radicals," he said increased levels of Vitamin E in animal diets can improve flesh quality and health ... "improving the quality and storage stability of meat and fish products." "Supplementing Vitamin E ... prolongs the time that meat products such as beef, veal, pork, lamb, poultry and fish can be stored," Dr. Baker said. He noted that commercial aquaculture diets for salmon are supplemented with Vitamin E, but said that Atlantic salmon diets may require higher levels of the vitamin supplement in their feed. And the University of California, Berkeley's Wellness Letter recommends buying bandages with an adhesive strip impregnated with Vitamin E. "These are designed for painless removal," the newsletter said. "This could conceivably be useful if adhesives make you itch, or if you or your child particularly dread pulling off the bandage." (Foods for the Future provides factual information to the media concerning food products, health and nutrition. It is a project of the T. Dean Reed Company and is supported by U.S. agribusiness.) SOURCE Foods for the Future © PR Newswire. All rights reserved.