Vitamin E for longevity

This interview with Dr. Barrie Tan was recorded on October 13, 2022 and transcribed using Sonix AI. Please check against audio recording for absolute accuracy.

Peter Bowes: Dr. Tan, welcome to the Live Long and Master Aging podcast.

Barrie Tan: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Looking forward to this.

Peter Bowes: Great pleasure to talk to you. Let’s go straight to the heart of the matter. What is the vitamin E?

Barrie Tan: The vitamin E was discovered exactly 100 years ago, 1922, by two medical doctors at UC Berkeley. And they discovered this alpha-tocopherol at the time because it’s able to help the fetus to full term. Most people don’t really know that, but it helps the fetus to go to full term. But most people know after its discovery of the fetal to full term, it is a powerful antioxidant. So today most people know them, know it as an antioxidant. My role in vitamin E is not in a discovery. I simply is not old enough for 100 years in it. But 40 years after the discovery of Tocopherol, a very similar compound to the original vitamin E, not tocopherol is called tocotrienol. It was discovered by two groups separately, one at the USDA in the Midwest, and the other one in University of Liverpool. They extracted this from rubber and then they found out this compound very similar to Tocopherol and called tocotrienol. That probably was in the mid sixties and I started my career 20 years after that in the mid eighties. And then I started to study this tocotrienol, and have stayed ever since in the 40 years.

Peter Bowes: Just tell me a little bit about your career that you refer to there. You studied chemistry and biochemistry in New Zealand.

Barrie Tan: Yes, yes. I went to my original home is Malaysia and New Zealand and Australia aren’t too far away. So I went to school in University of Otago in Dunedin on the Southern Island, was there for the entire eight and one half nine years to get my bachelors and PhD degree in chemistry and biochemistry. Then then a short trip over to Auburn University, Alabama, where I did postdoc, did cancer study, and then soon after that I started my career as an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mass. And I’ve never left the area, even though after ten, 11, 12 years, I left the university. So in the last 30 years, I’ve been focusing on discovery, almost like a medicine man and not and yet not to look for compounds in nature. If I discover it, then I must figure out a way how to extract them to study further and if it further yields fruitful result and how to materialize the usefulness of this natural extract for the human soul.

Peter Bowes: So we’re going to do a dive into Vitamin E. I mentioned American River Nutrition in my introduction. Just tell me a little bit more about it. You started with your wife.

Barrie Tan: Yes, we my wife, Elizabeth and I started this. When we started the company, I was very fascinated to focus on lipid soluble vitamin, the lipid soluble vitamins, vitamin A, D, K and E, and these kind of compound B and C are exceptions, they’re water soluble, and they are found quite abundantly in nature if you know how to get it. And it was an accidental find for me, Peter, where I was in South America probably about 25 years ago, looking for something else. It was. And then I saw this plant, beautiful annatto plant discovered about 500 years ago during the Spanish inquest into South America and then about 100 years, hundred and 50 years later, the British also stumble into it and they call it the lipstick plant. So if you go to a botanical garden to look for annatto plant sometime referred to as the lipstick plant or the Spanish call it achiote, and the Portuguese word is urucum. So either one of those would will take you to it. In the West, however, the popular use of it is to color cheese, the yellowish orange hue. Doritos chips, macaroni and cheese. Those kinds of things are from annatto color. So my role in this is the color mask, the beauty of the nutrient inside. So I was fascinated with this plant because somehow the colors stay good for a long time. So I surmise that something potent is protecting the color. So I removed the color mixed in which is used in every facet in the West. Then I notice that there’s a powerful antioxidant. At the time I was expecting this to be a polyphenol. Many people talked, talked about that, but then I found out ‘Oh, it is not a polyphenol’ then more surprisingly it is a vitamin E, and most surprisingly it is a vitamin E that is devoid of tocopherol, which is a common one. Instead, it is the rarer one, tocotrienol.  Now the chance finding out this. I already have been studying tocotrienol now for 20 years before that, so I immediately embark on study on all chronic conditions of tocotrienol and the reason I went with this with gusto was. At the time I already knew the common Tocopherol Vitamin E doesn’t do any good. Only as an antioxidant. And most of the function is on tocotrienol, but in nature is very hard to find tocotrienol. And when I did my whole life, career, was arrested, and in the last 25 years I just about did nothing else but to study this and then study many, many animals study and having about nearly two dozen clinical trials on anything on chronic conditions, prediabetes, diabetes, fatty, liver disease, obesity, osteopenia and cancer. I know there’s a lot. The reason I saw it out there, time may not permit you to ask, but if you can pick and choose anyone then now describe that particular one for you.

Peter Bowes: Well, let’s go back to maybe some basics and look at vitamin E, And this is a podcast focused on human longevity. It is focused on aging. So in terms of the essential components of vitamin E, as we grow older, what are the benefits?

Barrie Tan: The main benefit, if you say somebody is not ill or sick like that would be if you think of the human body, we have 38 trillion cells and think of the cell like a bean shape. And this is as basic as you can get it. And on longevity and in the cell, there’s a cell wall. You got to have a cell wall to contain all the constituent of the cell, like the nucleus that that that make you look like you and me look like me or like the mitochondria that produce energy, that’s all inside the cell. So in a sense, this is a gated community. Only the nutrient goes in and the waste goes out. But if the cell wall is compromised, then aging properly as we know it will be compromised in the most rudimentary sense. 38 trillion is a big number. It approximate to about 5000 times the population of the earth. So if you think of a human body containing 120 to 180, it had this 38 trillion cell and the cell walls need to be protected. Now, this is, this is where the rub is. More than half of the cell wall is fat and the fat is the lowest line food to get to go bad. Think of a think of a you’re driving past a road kill on a summer day or you put a stick of butter out of anything and you return to to smell it 2 hours later. That off smell is fat going off. Yes, protein can go off. Yes. Carbohydrate. Even your DNA, nucleic acid can go up. None go off as fast as fat. So therefore, in my judgment, since more than half of the fat is in the parts of our body, we cannot see if you hold your love handle, that’s only part of the fat you can see. And therefore and in those parts, the vitamin E is the most common substance that protect the fat from going back. And they reside. They are situated their domicile right in the cell wall. Most people don’t bother to tell you that, Peter. Once we once we understood that, that is the rudimentary understanding of longevity. As I understand it.

Peter Bowes: My understanding of vitamin E has always been that it was one of those vitamins that, yes, we get from our diet and probably one of the lesser likely ones that we need to supplement with if we are eating a balanced diet that we probably don’t need to worry about it. Is that fair enough? As an observation.

Barrie Tan: That is fair enough as an observation as to our understanding of to the RDA, the recommended daily allowance that the US Government provide, and they say that 100% RDA would be about 10 to 15 milligrams. If you say by that rule then 10 to 15 milligrams. True. You can get it from mostly vegetable oil and fat. That’s where the plant makes them, They put them in the fat tissues and for obvious reasons, plant never makes anything for human being. It’s only in our head that we think that they make it for us. They make it to protect itself. And is isn’t it interesting when the plant makes vitamin E, they put it in the fat to protect the fat from oxidation. That’s so. Therefore, if you eat a lot of vegetable oil and fat and we try to reduce that for management of our health, then you get in the Vitamin E. We have found that in the modern day stress at a huge component to our life and with that stress and huge component to our life and we are handling overweight, obesity, fatty liver and all these chronic conditions, the amount of vitamin E that we need, it had to be increased unless one would be a squeaky clean person with no ill know anything, then perhaps the minimum amount of 15 milligrams would suffice. So I kind of answer your question and kind of still questioning that in the modern day life that isn’t going to be true. You and I, neither you and I are born in this country. We live in this country significantly long enough, and the US government is repeatedly telling us that about 30% of Americans are overweight and another 25% are obese. But then that is already off the kilter of normal.

Peter Bowes: It’s interesting your observation about stress. I’m curious in terms of what is happening within our bodies when we’re experiencing that stress and how it affects our nutritional needs and especially as it applies to vitamin E, because as you correctly observe, it is a modern day epidemic, almost,the stress that people feel, and especially now we’ve gone through a pandemic. The world is suffering all sorts of grave issues that are putting a lot of stress on people. A lot of people are just simply suffering from hunger around the world. And we’re talking about the Western world, that these problems are really stressing people out. And from what you say, that’s creating issues that people are not aware of, how it affects our intake and our needs from food and people wouldn’t necessarily make the connection, would they, between vitamin E and the stress that they are feeling?

Barrie Tan: Yes. Let me answer this in the way that I know how to answer, Peter. And in fact, I’m just reading a piece of work that was just sent to us using tocotrienol and they study people who are pre-diabetic and we already have study done on metabolic syndrome, which means that people their metabolites in the body is all out of kilter, sugar, triglyceride, cholesterol, all we need all this to live, but they’re out of kilter and we also studied people with fatty liver. And what came back is this we always try to measure oxidized fat. And when we did in the blood, we found that for those who are not taking any vitamin E, they oxidized fat, not fat, oxidized fat is high. And then when we gave them the vitamin E, the oxidized fat is typically reduced 20 to 25%. So that’s tell tales. It is a marker. It doesn’t tell the precise disease. The marker tells us that the oxidized fat is in control or reduced. So that’s one sign. Another sign that we try to measure is inflammation. It’s another way to measure stress. And there is a marker in the body. It’s called C-reactive protein. You can ask your doctor to measure them. And the C-reactive protein under stress and duress, the liver spew out this protein and you can measure them in the blood. And when we gave them vitamin E tocotrienol , the C-reactive protein also dropped approximately 20 to 30%, depending on the condition to be studied. So those two markers tells me that the oxidative stress is reduced because we see that the fat getting oxidized is reduced and the inflammation is also reduced. And then this last one, we did not count for this in the design of the study when we were measuring people with fatty liver disease. Clearly fatty liver disease is. And in other words, we are consuming foods that are too much carbohydrate and too much fat such that our liver look like somebody who have gone to alcohol abuse cirrhosis. Now, that statement is just massive. It was only discovered by Mayo Clinic in 1980s and is simply long arcade with non alcohol, fatty liver disease. And it’s so named because the liver looked like somebody with liver cirrhosis. So we decided to take it on to study it and it massively reduce steatosis, which is fat in the liver and fibrosis. If the fat is not controlled, they will have scarring tissue fibrosis. And we saw that reverse. All this is to say, because I know you you are asking the question, if I don’t have all this concern, how do I reduce the stress in my life? And I would say the measurement of oxidized fat and the measurement of inflammation. We saw a clear distinction it would reduce, but this amount needed above that of the 100% RDA that the government sets.

Peter Bowes: This is the Live Long and Master Live Long and Master Aging podcast. Our guest is Dr. Barrie Tan, a long time and respected researcher into Vitamin E. So we’ve talked about the relationship between vitamin E and perhaps the everyday stresses that people might be feeling. I think the question that most people will have is, well, how do I know? How do I know that I need to perhaps pursue some vitamin E supplementation to add to what I’m getting through my diet? What is the test? What should people do?

Barrie Tan: The best test would be to learn it from a bloodwork that the doctor would provide. Measuring inflammation, measuring the metabolites like sugar, triglyceride and cholesterol. They call it a lipid panel. If one does not want to do blood work, it’s a little bit of a crapshoot. But you can still do if you look into your skin only because the skin is the only organ outside our body. And if it looks scratchy, patchy and not very vascular, that would be a telltale sign of what’s inside is not going to be good. That that would be the only measurement that I know of. The way we learn this also indirectly. I’ll give you two examples in two of our clinical study. One were in breast cancer patients. They were taking tocotrienol vitamin E for breast cancer. Now the context and when they start taking it clearly a work to mitigate chronic condition like breast a very severe. But they were reporting that with radiation and their skin, they noticed that their skin got better. So that is a telltale. Even though there was not the intent. The other one was people with severe inflammation, meaning lupus. They cannot move their hand or rheumatoid arthritis. People who have this will know immediately know what I meant. When they start taking these vitamin E, they notice that the severe inflammation is reduced on conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. All that to say that if you do not need to do bloodwork to measure C-reactive protein, you will find no if you have severe condition, this would help. So I knew, in fact I was guided by some of these comments that people tell me to know how to conduct clinical trials. So it’s not like magically I do everything scientific. Not always. Sometimes I do, but sometimes people tell me things and I say, Oh, let me figure out a way how to design a study. And then I go back to scientific based on things people tell me. So those would be the two indication, if you will, not to do a blood work.

Peter Bowes: And from what you’ve said already. Vitamin E supplements don’t all come equal. If you were to go to a store, there’s often a vast array that you can choose from. Where do people start in determining what is best for them?

Barrie Tan: Okay, that is an excellent question. If you go to a store to buy vitamin E, unlike some other vitamins, 90% of the vitamin would be TOCOPHEROL, which means that you don’t want it. You have enough tocopherol from your food. So you want to look for the word tocotrienol and 10%, which means one in every ten bottle of vitamin E would be that. And then further, you want to distinguish it. There’s only three sources of tocotrienol. In all three I have discovered over my 30 years career like that. What, from Rice, from Palm and from Annatto? From Rice and from Palm about 25 to 50% of the vitamin E is TOCOPHEROL. So they’re good, but they’re not good enough. And then in Annatto is the only source in my entire life of studying these that it is free of tocopherol. It contains vitamin E only tocotrienol. Hence, in the last 25 years we have committed to do 20 over clinical trials on tocotrienol so I don’t have to waste time on including tocopherol when tocopherol does not work. So therefore when you go to the store to look for or go on the internet to buy vitamin E by Annatto tocotrienol, Annatto Vitamin E and Annatto is a ANNATTO. It’s just a name of the plant. And if you see that word, that means that would be the kind of vitamin E you would need. Or if you simply go on the internet to Google Annatto tocotrienol and what research you will quickly figure out the vitamin E that work from the clinical study that have been produced.

Peter Bowes: And I would always advise people, look, if you’re considering changing an aspect of your nutrition, the first person you should speak to is your professional health advisor, speak to your doctor, and you’ve referred to getting blood tests through your doctor. I’m sure you would echo that kind of advice.

Barrie Tan: Yes, and I would too. And and if your doctor is not familiar about this annatto vitamin E, and then you can reach out to me, I will be glad to send you. If you come to a website. We write shorthand white papers and position papers. But if people want to be more granular on it, you say, Well, Dr. Tan, can you send me papers that you suggest would do this? We’ll be glad to do that. But we usually summarize them and then we gave the paper where we found so not all the studies we do ourselves, some of them, we funded this like we do ourselves. So probably about 60, 70% are not controlled by me, which are actually welcome because then it won’t be construed as somehow I would influence the direction of this study. You know, the study usually have an outcome that I have no say in is done by Professor A, B, and C in university, X, Y, and Z. You know, so so we funded this study. Otherwise we have no say in the study, which is really what I want, because if it doesn’t work, then then really you turn out to be a snake oil so there wouldn’t be any use to anybody.

Peter Bowes: It’s interesting you should use that phrase because it is the thing that I think a lot of people fear when they consider supplementation – that the snake oil, the advice that they can’t necessarily trust. It might be all over the Internet. And on this podcast, we’ve talked many times about the fact that it is one of the most confusing areas of of health care. Supplementation. What is best for me, what do I need to take and whose advice can I trust?

Barrie Tan: I, about 30 years ago, because I was committed to this area, which is why, you know, I’m able to bring food on the table. All of us need to do something to bring material food on the table. We did. And and over all these years, I have not failed to put in financial resources. We are a small company. We are the only company discovering this. So it’s a it’s a long haul in the same direction. And we have 20 over clinical study, which I’m really proud to say that, you know, large company would merely have two or three studies and they have huge resources and we have 20 over clinical study. And I didn’t say this at the beginning, this Annatto plant, the seed, if you touch it, it stains you. And that’s why it’s nickname as a lipstick plant. Carotene in life is normally protected in this. For example, if you cut carrot, the beta carotene, you can’t reach it unless you put it on a pan and then you raise the temperature. You can you see the oil becoming yellowish orange color. Or if you slice tomato and you make Italian sauce, you cannot easily access the lycopene because they’re inside the cytoplasm, the cell of the plant. That is how this unstable carotenes is protected. And then if you eat lobster or crustacean, if you ever come to New England, the yucky green blue color, the moment you cook them, they deproteinate the protein detach from them, and then they have the wonderful red color. I use this as an explanation every time without fail. However, with the Annatto plant, if you touch it, it actually stains your hand. So all this to say that it is not protected or bound to something. That was when I theorize there’s got to be a physical, super powerful antioxidant that protect the plant. I was just lucky to ask the right question most of the time when I ask this kind of question, Peter, they are like they enter a cul de sac is a dead end. I can’t get anything out of it. But this turned out to be not a dead end. And I remember it so clearly. The year was 1998, 99, like that. So when I did they are 50. I’m trying to touch on something spiritual. There are 50 million chemical on Earth and most of the people who went to Amazonia to look for this that another thing like a medicine man, they are probably beaten to death by a snake or killed by a pathogen born mosquito like that. I’m not even a medicine man. I can’t speak a word of Spanish and a lot of things being my Chinese background to go to China and Southeast Asia. There was not where I went. I went to South America looking for something else, not this stumble on this. And then I theorize that they got to be a very powerful antioxidant and it’s known for 500 years. And why do I have to privilege to find this thing out and discover this vitamin E? Because of that intuitive find and spiritual find, I’ve committed my life to study. If this is something God gives to me, then I need to figure out how this can be useful. So now to shorten it all, in the 25 years I’ve done this, we probably work with a dozen universities, many endless number of animal study then culminate it to 20 to 25 clinical study. I am now very confident and and even some of them I cannot even afford. Do you know we have 7 to 8 clinical study done in the Kingdom of Denmark. They are fantastically well off. They decided to go after four cancers and the four cancers that they study are ovarian, breast, lung and colon cancer. We have to provide the medicine. They have to do the clinical study out of the account. It probably costs about $15 Million like that. So for this kind of study, take a long time. So far the breast cancer did not prove come out positive. So they’re going to repeat the breast cancer study, but the ovarian cancer came out positive and is able to extend the life of people with ovarian cancer. So I will return back to the audience listening. What is there not to like? You know, when the study like that, when only medicine can barely do this. These are stage four cancer patient. They do not have any options left and are able to extend their life. So for me and my wife doing this, this. This is this is a gift, you know, and there are 50 million. I happen to stumble a one or two out of fifty. That’s a crapshoot for sure. It’s a lottery. So so that’s why we’re very committed to the extent for the X number of years I still in a career doing this, I will continue to bring to get the maximum number of clinical study so that the audience would be able to see what this may or may not be useful to them.

Peter Bowes: So you’ve personalized your research in a beautiful way. You’ve talked about the spiritual connection to what you do, which I think leads me to this question, and I often ask this of people as you look at your own life and you think about your own human longevity, the years ahead for yourself, do you have aspirations? Do you have a goal? And is there anything that you do in your life that is particularly focused on your longevity and the years ahead?

Barrie Tan: On the non material side, I would say this to be calm and collected and it’s easy for me to say, and oftentimes I may not be calm, but to be calm and collected, then I will be able to think about my future better.

Peter Bowes: To keep the stress levels low.

Barrie Tan: You keep the stress level low, probably. That’s a very simplistic way. Yes, that’s correct. And on the material side, because I’m a chemist, I’m always fascinated to know what are the things that can help our body to be in a better state, assuming that as we grow older, our balance is off and I need to bring it back to balance. And this vitamin E is

Peter Bowes: In terms of your longevity, do you have specific aspirations? I talk to a lot of people who say and believe very seriously that they can live to 100 or 110 or 120, which is about, I think, the maximum age that people believe that we can live to considering the current state of science.

Barrie Tan: I think for at least for me, I need to believe in something or someone bigger than me because I’m finite and I cannot live forever. So to believe in something larger than me and and this is not a telling people what to be. When I was in New Zealand as a student, I was always raised in a family that is animistic, maybe a Buddhist and Taoist. But when I was in New Zealand, I learned that there is a place, that there is a God. And then I believe that personally. And over the last 45 years there have been a stay, a very stable rudder in my life. So that would be the you know, I know this is not that a place for me, but since you asked that would be in my life for that. I think on the material side, because to make our body good and to make our body stay the same, and it’s hard for us to keep the balance. When I was in my twenties, when I was in my fifties and now I’m I will be 70 next year like that. And for me to have the good mind and to continue to exercise I that I’m doing and then I’m trying to keep a balance so that my life would not be consuming as much carbohydrate and fat as I did when I was younger. So that would be more in the material world to do this. The supplement we mentioned that is vitamin E and GG, that’s a little different. Those are not normally things that you can find from your normal food. They are more supplemental to your normal food. I do that. I’m also not adverse to medication. If I’m sick, I need to go and see a doctor. I would, but I usually lead on allopathic medicine. What are the side effects? How it might interfere in my life so that in understanding that, then I can also take steps to block those interferences while I’m taking the medicine. So it’s an indirect way to answer your question, Peter.

Peter Bowes: And just one final thought and really coming back to where we started, and that is the importance of vitamins. What do you think of multi-vitamin supplements? I think that is when people talk about supplementing their diet, a lot of people will opt for the multi multi-vitamin option because. They believe they’re getting essentially a little bit of everything. And it kind of takes the thinking away from figuring out precisely what you need. Well, if I’m taking one of these multi vitamins, I’m probably going to be okay. Is that fair?

Barrie Tan: That is fair. It’s kind of like a catch all. The list is usually about 15 to 20 like that. I have taken multi for a long time. I stopped because of the for vitamin E, They always put TOCOPHEROL and it’s not the vitamin E that I need, but everything else would be okay. Then I finally was able to convince one. So my record is not so good. I was only able to convince one company if they can remove the vitamin E tocopherol and put tocotrienol I would start to take them. And that company did. Fortunately, it’s a health professional company. I’m not even pushing anything. They are called designs for health. And you can go on Amazon you can buy them. They’re probably one of the best known, if not the best known health professional company. They decided to change and I’m taking the multivitamin and when they did my blood work on the balance of minerals and on all the other B vitamin mine is right on balance. So I’m very happy to say because I take a multivitamin that have the vitamin E as tocotrienol, then there is a balance. So thank goodness that’s one company. So I’m resuming my taking a multi now.

Peter Bowes: That’s a fascinating insight. I really appreciate your time. This has been really interesting conversation. And as you have implied, there is much more to learn. And you’ve mentioned your website. I will put some more details of that website into the show notes for this episode, and you can find those at the LLAMA podcast website that’s LLAMApodcast.com And it is worth taking the time, I think, isn’t it, to dive deep and just try to figure out the fact that issues are quite as simple as we sometimes think they might be or even hope they might be, that when you referring to one single vitamin, it is worth diving a little deeper to figure out what is best, what you need, and what the way forward is.

Barrie Tan: Thank you so much for inviting me. I’ve done hundreds of podcasts. I said something good about your podcast, Peter, and you didn’t ask me to do it. I think there is a sense in your podcast, Peter, you you have an ownership of sincerity. I think that your listener will stay with you for a long time, and as I’m doing the same, I want it to bear out information to people that to my best of my knowledge, that they are germane and are true. And if anything is not sure, I simply withhold and not comment or I say I don’t know. So blessings to all your listener. That listen to you. Hopefully you’ll find some nugget of truth in something that I say in other things that you don’t get to hear. Just come to a website of mine and then you can download whatever white papers that we have. Thank you again.

Peter Bowes: You’re very kind and I am very grateful to you for your time. Dr. Barrie Tan, thank you very much indeed.

Barrie Tan: Thank you.

Peter Bowes: This has been a HealthSpan Media production. You can contact me by direct message @PeterBowes or email peter@LLAMApodcast. It’s always good to hear your feedback on the interviews that we do. Thank you so much for listening.