Why Your Vitamin E Supplement Could Be Harming You (& The "One Plant Wonder" Alternative That Could Be The Single Most Powerful Molecule If You're Stranded On A Desert Island).

I immediately confided with my friend who was a famous professor, the father of modern day tocotrienol research. Hey, I found this thing, man. And you know what the first thing he said to me said, Barry, if tocotrienol would ever mitigate human disease and misery, this tocotrienol fermanado better do. Because if it doesn't, all our experimentation, our cause for tocotrienoid is lost.

I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet, from sealfit, Kokoro, Spartan Agoji, and the world's toughest mudder, to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver deliver you this podcast, everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride. Hey. So in this podcast episode, I interview a Malaysian researcher named Dr. Barry Tan. I gotta warn you, it probably takes us about like 10, 15 minutes to get warmed up, just based on the fact that he's a super duper smart researcher and I'm an exercise physiology luddite trying to keep up with him, and I kind of had to rein him back a few times and eventually got him steered in the direction that I think you're really going to enjoy. So today's show is very, very heady. Put on your thinking cap. We're talking about one single molecule, vitamin E, but we take a pretty deep dive into it. The forms of vitamin E that we talked about, I'll include in show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tan like his last name. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tan but anyways, get through the first 10, 15 minutes and if you can make it past that, you can make it past anything. Smoke coming out your ears. So I was at the recent A4M conference in Vegas, the American Academy of Anti Aging Medicine, where there's all sorts of interesting cats running around. And one of the people that I ran into told me that I really needed to get this guy named Dr. Barry Tan on the show. And Barry is a scientist with a PhD in chemistry and biochemistry who has a particular fondness for vitamin E, which kind of sounds like a boring, non sexy Vitamin that we all know about as just a basic fat soluble vitamin that should be included in our diet. But he actually is credited with discovering a molecule called tocotrienol from three major natural sources. Palm, which is from his native Malaysia, which is where Barry hails from, and then also rice, which he found at the invitation of the Prince of Thailand, and something called annatto, which he found in Ecuador. And he has a very interesting story in terms of how he discovered the vitamin E in these particular compounds and the research that spanned the past 20 years on some very interesting uses of vitamin E and also a lot of myths about vitamin E and kind of the wrong way to use vitamin E, which is actually what most people are currently doing. He studied cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, non alcoholic fatty liver disease, osteopenia, osteoporosis, inflammation, and found ways to kind of work vitamin, vitamin E into many of these equations to better results and to enhance health. The guy who I actually met at A4M, whose name is Jonathan Lizotti, he designed or he's the founder of a company called Designs for Health. He told me word for word, he said if he were stranded on a desert island, the one single supplement that he would take with him is tocotrienol, specifically derived from annatto. And I raised an eyebrow and he told me that for me to know more, I just really had to get on a long conversation with Barry. So Jonathan sent me two giant textbooks that brought me back to my days in university. These big chemistry and biochemistry textbooks on vitamin E and annatto. I went through them and mind blown. There is so much about vitamin E I didn't know that I discovered in those books. Don't worry, you don't have to go read these giant textbooks, books. We're going to lay it all out for you on this show. But the bottom line is that a couple different forms of vitamin E that Barry's going to tell us about today are certainly something that you need to be aware of and look into. And this goes beyond just health. They've found some very interesting things in terms of boosts in testosterone and progesterone, pain alleviation, muscle building and a lot of other parameters. So, Barry, welcome to the show, man.

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Nice of your introduction.

Yeah. And man, there's a lot of places that we could jump in and start here. But I think it's very interesting, the story of your discovery of annatto and your overall career in vitamin E. We have plenty of time, so can you kind of walk me through how you discovered annatto and kind of got interested in vitamin E in the first place. And also feel free to, as you introduce that clear up terms for us because I think, you know, a lot of people might not know the difference between tocotrienol and tocopherol and some of these other words that are used to define different forms of vitamin E. Thank you, Ben.

It all started with my first career as an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts right here in Amherst, which I'm still living in the Pioneer Valley area on the western side of Massachusetts. And I went back to my original home to see how they would extract palm oil. And the palm oil was very reddish color. That was my. It's not the vitamin E, but that's the color. The color leads me to vitamin E. So that's the palm oil is very orangey color, like carrot color. So and then they say that, oh, when you process the palm oil, the color is bleached out so that the palm oil look like corn oil color. And most Americans know palm oil as saturated fat and not going that direction necessarily, although there's a comeback because of the coconut oil thing on the saturated fat, although the sea carbon length is different, but on the color is unique of palm oil. On the color. So he asked me that, why don't you ask the Malaysian government for a grant to study this? I did. So when I got the grant and this is how I got into the vitamin E. First I have to remove all the fats and oil, which vegetable oil are. When I did that, then I remove all the colors, which is the carotene colors. And then that is what I got the grant for to study the color. Then there's something about 0.1 or half a percent. Almost nothing somehow didn't go away. It's not the fat and it's not the color. So I was curious, what is this? You know, so when I tried to tinker with it, I noticed that it has very high antioxidant property. So I reported back to the Malaysian government, oh, this is just vitamin E. Then I said, well, not just vitamin E. Okay? So I looked. So I took a look and I noticed that there was vitamin E referring to alpha tocopherol, the most commonly known one. However, there are three other peaks with it. Then I said, no, there's something else. I don't know what it is, you know, but I did account for 25% of it as normal vitamin A. It's the remaining 75% to keep bugging me. Actually, at the time this Was a nuisance because I wanted to go back to study the keratin, the colors of life, not this. But I had to deal with this because I didn't know what it was. And when I finally figured it out, it was probably 1986 and it was tocotrienol. I will explain the difference in a short moment. And so that started my career on the tocotrienol. They're very similar to tocopherol, but different enough that they can be separated, identified and chemically not same as tocopherol. So that was it. So then I stayed at the university for about another 10 years or so. We did animal studies on cancer, work on lymphoma, and eventually I even got a grant to study lung cancer. Different shades of lung cancer. But by that time I stopped. I'm still regretting that I did that. I stopped because if this tocotrienol were to be useful, then you got to find a way to get it out so that people can use it for their benefit. Otherwise they have to eat copious amount of palm oil. That's not sustainable or not possible. So that was it. That was how I first started it. And then, and then from there I stopped the project. And then I went on to do something else. And then I. Fate has it, I came across the Prince of Thailand. Almost magical moment. And he asked me that would you do anything that is not blood related? Chlorophyll related is fine, very broad, you know. Then I said sure, isn't Thailand? So I can think of rice, I can think of teak.

You mean you met this Prince of Thailand and he hired you to research for him?

Yeah, it was a magical four years. It was 1993. Four something. Then I think at the time the King went to Harvard with agriculture degree. And he's very, the King himself very interested. He recently passed away interested in agriculture and wanted Thailand to go that direction. And because the Buddhists don't like things that are hemoglobin related. So it's fine. And I like to focus on plant anyways because many phytonutrients are from plant.

I'm going to interrupt you real quick. What do you mean the Buddhists don't like anything mitochondrial related?

When you come to figure out something that you extract, blood related things are not what they are gung ho about plant related things. They are gung ho about as a nation. They are not all vegetarian, but many Buddhist monk.

Okay, so. So he, he wanted something that was plant derived, not animal derived is what you mean.

Yes. Okay. Got it. That's. That was correct. And. And when I mentioned, you know, what about teak and what about rice, it's oh, those sounds good. Then I said, send me anything that are refuse that are by product. Work with it to see what I had. Remember, it was a shot in the dark because it was a blank check. It was very, it was very broad. So I didn't know how to focus. It's not, you know, but he's the prince. No, he had deep pocket. Then I said, well, still I need to have a project. I don't want to waste your money. So. And he did. And I found phytonutrients in teak leaves. Interesting, but not as attention grabbing as what I found from the rice bran and from the bran oil. And would you believe it? And in the oil it was tocotrienol. I really didn't expect that, Ben. But when I did, I reported back to him. I said, look, you have vitamin E. Tocotrienol. Some years earlier I found from palm. So what would you want me to do with it like that. And then we did some tests and it worked. We did on carotid arteriosclerosis and it worked through ultrasound how that would not narrow the artery and would prevent stroke. But it was 1997, the Asian tiger fell economically and he wants to back off from doing this kind of study. And you know, life have those paths. I said, you know, it is your call. You know, I'm trying to be the best scientist I could for you. So. And then the project, I said, can you help me to navigate the project? The project was given to Eastman Kodak and Eastman Kodak sold rice tocotrienol for a while. And then after that it was 1998. By this time I had been on tocotrienol and tocof for probably for nearly 20 years. So I needed a break, Ben. It was real life. As my wife and I, we just wanted a break to do something else. And in the break, it was Johanna Sedon. And she was an ophthalmologist at the time at Harvard Medical School. And she said, it's common news now. She said that, you know, on the back of the retina, if you want to prevent macular degeneration, then there's these two carotenoid, lutein and zeaxanthin. Everybody knows that now, but not then. It's 1994. Then I said, wait a minute. My first love is the color of life. Carotenoid. I like this. So I said, and then somebody told me that if you go to South America, it really is like that, man. If you go to South America, you have this giant marigold plant like the size of a Chinese bow. You know, the big bow like that. If you do it, then you're gonna find this marigold. And from the petal, you can extract the lutein and zea scent. And we said, great, I'm gonna go. So I took a flight there and I found this. Someday I'm gonna show you the picture of the giant marigold like that.

Okay, so you've left Asia and now you're in South America. And I want to back up just a second before you get on to what you discovered in South America, because I think we should clear the air right now just. Just so people aren't too confused about vitamin E, because from what I understand, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, vitamin E is actually made up of eight different compounds. Four of them are these compounds called tocopherols, and four of them are compounds called tocotrienols. And those all have different chemical structures. And what you find these days most often are if you buy vitamin E or you buy a multivitamin or you buy a conventional supplement, they're very rich in tocopherols, especially alpha tocopherol. But those are different than these tocotrienols that you were kind of on the brink of being able to find. Am I on the right track here?

You are on the right track. Thank you for backtracking. And some explanation here would be good, because if the consumer or myself go read in the news in the last 10, 15 years, everything of vitamin E is a blah at best, and at worst it may do some harm, that is invariably referring to alpha tocopherol.

And would that include. Sorry to interrupt. Would that include. Because I'm sure you're aware of this and we have a very healthy fit listener base. I'm sure you're aware of the studies on vitamin E and vitamin C in terms of them impairing the favorable adaptations to exercise. Do you know if those were the tocopherols or the tocotrienols used in a study like that?

And those were entirely tocopherols, like that, and almost exclusively alpha tocopherol. If I can even back up one step, just for the audience to know, like that the advent of vitamin e discovery is 1922 by two medical doctors at UC Berkeley, and they came up with something they extracted from spinach. And interestingly enough, because there's barely any oil in spinach, and somehow when extract this gooey oily material is needed to bring the fetus to full term. When they found that, they found a component called X and they just went to the alphabetical order and the next discovery of the vitamin was E and X become E and that compound was alpha tocopherol. So alpha tocopherol became vitamin because it was able to bring a fetus to full term. That's it. That that was the exact. And then now in the years that follow, we in the as a nation we got into soybean extraction. And when we did that, there's a lot of scum and site material around. And then when they did that, they're able to extract the vitamin E from the distillate, they call it. And when they did watch how the progression is. Most of the soybean oil distillate, they contain gamma and delta tocopherol. I may submit that that's even better. But at the time, the currency I'm using this figuratively the currency of vitamin E is entirely alpha tocopherol. So therefore the industry converts all of the soya bean tocopherol, which is mostly delta and gamma, they convert it entirely to alpha tocopherol. Therefore, even if you take natural alpha tocopherol, it's semisynthetic. Now this should come to you as a shock. I knew this for a long time. There are very few alpha tocopherol that is truly natural to begin with. And even if it were to be, it is still questionable in what it can do. But nevertheless it that came about because of the soy industry in the 1950s. So everybody had banged in on alpha tocopherol and then come to 1980s and a lot of large clinical trials on this. Almost all of them fail. And at best and at worst it may cause things. And you can read in the news, breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer like.

This, that would all be from the alpha tocopherol. And the largely tocopherol based forms of.

Vitamin E. That is, that is not largely, entirely. The tocotrienol thing comes like this. In the 1960s, some scientists, it wasn't me, some scientists in USDA and in university of Bristol, they were extracting things from rubber plant. Rubber plant is also very polyunsaturated, like that, but not fat, but polyunsaturated material. So the plant makes vitamin E to protect itself from oxidation. And notice how the plant does it. It's never alpha tocopherol. They always make mixed tocopherol, delta and gamma tocopherol or in a rarer case, tocotrienol. But because rubber is so oxidatively challenged, they only make tocotrienol.

So what we're getting from like a supplement with vitamin E in it isn't even what we're finding in nature. In plants, we aren't where we're basically consuming one single or just a few different molecules of tocopherol without the full spectrum of tocopherols and tocotrienols.

That is correct. And the reason, Ben, they're doing that is because this is during a time where the currency of vitamin E is International Unit IU. Only this year, would you believe it, after almost 100 years, the FDA finally said at the beginning of 2019, no vitamin E should be ascribed IU. It simply be just milligram. So that's still not the full answer, but it's better than IU. So why is the IU currency favors alpha tocopherol? Okay, if you have 10 milligrams of alpha tocopherol, that's approximating to 10iu. If you have 10 milligrams of gamma tocopherol, it's 1iu. If you have 10 milliggrams of tocotrienol, 0iu. So you can see the industry is pushing because of this IU currency. But anyway. And also, why is that ridiculous? It's ridiculous because the international units for vitamin E was entirely for the reason to bring a fetus to full term. See, the whole thing has lost its meaning long time ago. You know, if it is, then no man should be taking because we, we don't have fetuses. So the whole thing is a joke. But mostly the IU have been put there because we're pushing the idea that the more the IU is, the more antioxidant protection you get. See, there's already loss in translation. But finally the FDA say no. And that's the reason why the industry converts all the vitamin E into alpha tocopherol. Because they can use lesser amount and make more gain in selling the product. But pushing for alpha tocopherol. However, when they did the large trial funded by the nih, they failed. Had they succeed, okay, there's something to be said, but they fail. But the thing that bugs me was in some of them, people have increased cancer and other problems and other problems. While I'm at it, I might say this because we may not revisit this again. I really have problem with alpha tocopherol. I'm telling you and Ben and Your listeners out there there, I will gladly send you all the published papers. I spent my whole life as a scientist. I'm really honest about this. Alpha tocopherol oxidizes LDL in large doses. Large doses means 400iu. And mostly we think of alpha tocopherol as protecting the ldl, but this has been published by the American Heart Association. Furthermore, large amount of alpha tocopha, increased cholesterol synthesis, increased high blood pressure in adolescents and possibly increase mortality and cancers, especially breast, prostate and lung and also can thin people's bone osteoporosis as we grow older and blocks and lowers the chemo effectiveness of cancer. Who are taking chemo drugs, if you have this long list and they are growing long list, then there's a problem with alpha tocopra.

But before now, if I could interject real quick, and maybe this is a premature question, but already if people are starting to look at the label of their multi as they're listening to this, they're probably going to see alpha tocopherol or a form of it as the main ingredient in that multivitamin. Can you undo some of the damage by when you take a multivitamin that has that alpha tocopherol in it, taking a tocotrienol simultaneously?

Yes, you could. But the first thing to undo alpha tocopherol is to stop taking alpha tocopherol supplement. I don't have problem with people who take nuts, vegetable and meat or vegetable oil. And then to have the daily 100% RDA of vitamin E, which is referring to Alpha Tocopherol, about 15 milligrams, that's fine. That's not going to do. And there would be normal oxidative protection.

15 milligrams of supplementation in addition to what you're already getting from food. Are you saying get those 15 milligrams from food?

I get those 15 milligrams from food. No supplementation of alpha tocopherol is necessary. Just from food will be fine. And even a bowl of cereal that you take every day, you see it is already going to contain 20, 30% RDA. And there really is sufficient with very few exceptions. I wanted to answer your earlier question on the difference between tocopherol and tocotrienol. Structurally, chemically, as a chemist, the word trienol just means 3 en is double bond and like that. So a tocopherol, it looks like a sperm, it has a head and the head has an OH group and hence an alcohol and then have a tail A tocopherol tail is entirely saturated. A tocotrienol tail has three double bonds, so it is not saturated. So if you look at it and you want to describe it and put your hands around the head of a tocopherol is bigger, the head of a tocotrienol is smaller. And furthermore the tail, because the double bond in the tocotrienol, the tail tends to be shorter. And so okay, that's structurally. Otherwise they both look similar. They're antioxidant. Now if you ask me functionally how this is, this one will be of interest. It took me a while to figure out a way to encapsulate this to explain to people. So if you allow me, I will do this. Talking about cells, cell wall and the human body. Each person has about 38 trillion cells in the human body. I know this is a huge number. This 38 trillion cells per person to 5,000 times the population of the world, which is staggering. It's about so 5,000 times the population of the world is the amount of cells in every person. And then all cells must have cell walls, you know, otherwise the constituent is not going to be kept. This is harken back to why Jonathan Lazard keeps saying that this is a desert island, it is super basic and people forgot about this, you know. And okay, about 30 years ago there was a university of Austrian professor, he went to study. He really want to go to the bottom of it. If the cell wall is phospholipid biomembrane, he wanted to know what exactly are the antioxidant in the cell wall. And I'm really happy he did that because today everybody mouth the word antioxidant. So it's become trite. But in my judgment the antioxidant that we should mostly care about is lipid antioxidant. And why? Because lipids are the lowest lying fruit for our body to be oxidized. Now you have heard, and I probably know that you have people in your radio show talk about astaxanthin, super powerful antioxidant, CoQ10 lutein and a number of other things. But ask further. If you ask them about astaxanthin. Astaxanthin is a powerful singlet antioxidant. So what does that mean? That means that they are very powerful antioxidant in an environment that is oxygen deficient, which means that it's right in the nucleus. But if by the time my nucleus is challenged to be oxidized, I am indeed trouble. So I want mostly my phospholipid that surround my cell wall. They're doing the propagating property so that the right nutrient goes in and toxin would not go in like that. So usually they are the fat, you know, and the fat lines up all the phospholipid. That's it. So when this University of Austrian professor came back, he said that among the antioxidant Greater than 90% of all the antioxidant in the phospholipid in a cell or in lipoproteins are vitamin E molecule. Now that should grip everybody's attention. There just is. It's nothing else. And the remaining 10% or less. Watch this. They are hydrocarbon carotenoid. That means they're not oxygenated hydrocarbon carotenoid. And what are the two most famous hydrocarbon carotenoid? Simply hydrocarbo the same hydrogen and carbon. You put the gas in your tank. That's it. I know this shocking for the listener. And they are ancient molecules. They are beta carotene and lycopene. Beta carotene and lycopene contain nothing else but hydrogen and carbon. That's why chicken fat look yellowish orangey color because of this. But that's what you can see. But that's less than 10%. More than 90% is vitamin E molecule. So just let that sit for a while on the entire 38 trillion cells. Now I'm taking a break. I move to another concept, right. In 1995, Professor Lester Packer, he's retired now from UC Berkeley, he knew that tocotrienol and tocopherol are very similar. And he knew that somehow the tocotrienol is better. But he got to have a rationale to do this. So this is what he did. He used electron resonance spectroscopy. They're very difficult to study. Basically, he put in the vitamin E. Now he already know that vitamin E is among the best molecule to be on the phospholipid. He put alpha tocopherol because that was the best known and that was also where vitamin E was discovered, in the same university just 50 years earlier. He put it in. And this electron spin spectroscopy can figure out how fast the tocopherol spin around the cell. Think of a cell like a bean, like a lima bean. It spins around. And then he's taking the tocotrienol. The tocotrienol from the spin is spinning 50 times faster. So he made the conclusion that both tocopherol and tocotrienol capture free radical to protect the lipid from oxidation. A Because the cell need a gated community to protect the content inside. But a tocotrienol spins 50 times faster. It is for this reason alone that tocotrienol is able to protect the fat 50 times faster. So a simplistic thing that I described to people would be tocopherol would be like a local policeman, they do not cross boundary. Then a tocotrienol would be like a state trooper. It traversed the entire state to capture the bad guys. That's it. That is, if it's not that, I have no other rationale how that is. And except structurally, because the tail of a tocotrinoid is shorter, it's not anchored deeply, therefore it is more mobile and spinning. But a tocopherol anchors deeply, so it anchors in, so it moves around still, but less so. Hopefully I gave you the basic understanding of this. Now, if we advance this to all the animal studies that we had us and other people publishing in the last 30 years, we systematically saw that tocotrienol, if it is a cancer study, it recruits to the cancer cell, which means on the cell wall of the cancer 10 times more than a tocopherone. Because this is now whole organ study. So it's not same as cell study 10 times. And this has been shown by Professor Malafa in University of Southern Florida. He went after pancreatic cancer, the deadliest of all cancer. And when he was excising the tumors from the patient, he found that the delta tocotrienol was deposited into the pancreatic tissues 10 times more than in the blood and in other tissues. And other scientists further, further nail it down to the tocotrienoid is in the tumor of the diseased animal 10 times or even higher than other tissues with alpha tocopherol. Meanwhile, the people who are doing vitamin E research who hung their head on alpha tocopherol, keep insisting that you see in the blood you only find alpha tocopherol, you cannot find tocotrienol. So their conclusion is that because alpha tocopherol is in the blood, tocotrienol is not. So all cost for tocotrienol is wasted then tocopherol Ace, and you know how my answer to that I'd like to explain, and your audience deserves to know this. There is a protein called alpha tocopherol transport protein. It simply means that it's a protein that chaperones a particular molecule to the site of action. Like retinol bound protein, it brings it to the retina. Vitamin has a protein, Vitamin D has a protein. It brings the vitamin D to the bone of the cell like that. So otherwise it's naive to say that if you take something it automatically goes to the site of action, which is for a long time people thought that of calcium, if you take calcium it automatically goes to the bone. Well, now we found that if you take a lot of calcium, it may literate on the artery and then have plaque forming because one third of plaque is calcium, you know. But if you have vitamin D with it, then the vitamin D, which is a hormone, will chaperone the calcium into the bone. For vitamin E, all the molecules, only alpha tocopherol has a transport protein, you know, the other tocopherol do not. So it goes in. This, I believe, is the reason why supplementing alpha tocopherol is bad news. Bad news because the alpha tocopherol transport protein ensure the conservation of alpha tocopherol. So we take a copious amount of alpha tocopherol, it has nowhere to go except that to conserve it, which I believe is the reason why. And this Professor Bell Frey had published in American Heart Journal association that when you take alpha tocopherol you supplement it. It went and landed it on the ldl. Ordinarily that's a good thing for antioxidant protection, but it landed so much and it become a pro oxidant and therefore. So that's a no no, because oxidized LDL is atherogenic. So. So I know, I got carried away.

No, that makes sense. I think the big picture here that you're getting after, and my big takeaway from those textbooks I read that Jonathan from Designs for Health sent to me was that pretty much the scope of vitamin E's primary biological activity can be understood in the light of protecting fatty acids and the membrane qualities like the fluidity and the separation and kind of the antioxidant activity upon those lipids. And considering that lipid oxidation is probably the number one issue when it comes to chronic disease, that the use of a proper form of vitamin E that does not have that pro oxidant effect that you just alluded to could in fact make it. Especially if you're consuming fats or fatty acids or fish oil or DHA or anything else, one of the most important things to have in your body, and furthermore, it's difficult to actually get a high amount of these tocotrienols from food based sources and most supplements have just alpha tocopherol in them. So we're kind of stuck with this issue of how do we get adequate antioxidant activity for our lipids, for our cell membranes, for our nervous system. And furthermore, how do we tap into potentially some of these effects on, for example, tumor expression, prostaglandin expression, et cetera. And so I think this kind of brings us full circle to you going down to South America and starting to poke around down there.

Yes. And back to that story. I did find my giant marigold. Remember, I went there to look for lutein and zeaxanthin, vermicular degeneration. And I owe my discovery of tocotrienol to plant. From my interest in carotenoid in the palm oil. It was a beta carotene. And then now I went to South America to look for lutein and zeaxanthin and other colors of life. And then I found this. 30ft away from me, this annatto. First I saw the annatto. It looked like the Asian. It looked on the outside like the Asian food rambutan. You can buy them in whole food like that. It's just the outside. But as soon as you crack open the pod, it does not have a flesh, it just have a stalk with about 20 to 30 seeds and they're intensely red color. And the British have nicknamed this the lipstick plant, which probably the original convention why women lipstick were red color like that. You know, the. The South American call this plant achoite, a C H U I T E. And you can buy it from many South American store, Hispanic store, you say achoita. They use it for coloring many foods like that. So when, when I saw the fruit, I was enamored by it. So I touch it on my hand and it intensely stained my hand maroon color. Instantly I know it was yet another carotenoid. See, I was. Remember, I did not go down there to look for this plant in the Amazonia by staying my hand. And I said, wow. You know, it doesn't have a miso cup, which is the fleshy part of a fruit, all kinds of fruit. It just. This fleshy part would be air in this annatto plant. So the thought came to me that wow. And then this carotene is not bound to anything. That means that it must be protected by an antioxidant. Why did I say bound? I'll give you a little interest in this. If you cook tomato sauce, lycopene, and if you cook carrot, the lycopene and beta carotene don't decompose readily. Why? Because they were inside the cytoplasm of the plant. You cook it long time, then they'll Come out another one. I live in New England. Many of you come here to eat lobster. When you eat lobster, it's yucky green. Almost as soon as it gets hit hot water, it turns brilliantly orange color. Why? Because the astaxanthin in lobster deprotonate and then the color comes out. So in other words, carotene in nature are protected by something because they're very unstable. The fall foliage. My goodness. You come to New England, two weeks of splendor because the chlorophyll comes off hormonally, they disappear and the color comes up. And two weeks later everything turns brown. You see, keratins are inherently unstable. However, when I saw on this annatto, hey, it is stable. The color sticks around for a long time. So intuitively, I thought there must be a powerful antioxidant that protect it. I least expected it to be tocotrienol. I fully expected it to be one of nature. Literally thousands and thousands of polyphenol. They are powerful antioxidant, but shocking to me. When we analyze for it, it contained first it was shocking to me that it's not polyphenol. More shocking to me that it contained tocotrienol. And most shocking to me that it contained no tocopherol and just the tocotrienol. And it then the ultimate of shock would be it contained almost entirely delta tocotrienol. Why do I gradate in this? By the time I discovered this, it's already published much in the literature that delta tocotrienol is the most potent of all the vitamin E in cancer, all chronic conditions. So far we have tested chronic conditions on lipid metabolic syndrome, nafld, fatty liver. I hope you're going to ask me question NAFLD because that is a tsunami coming. And then we also check on chronic condition osteopenia on postmenopausal women. And we also check on inflammation and also oxidative stress. So we check all of them and systematically Delta tocotrienol shore up the best. Now, I found this plant. I found this plant. If you run a chart and HPLC on it, usually you expect all the eight peaks, like the way you say four tocopheroltrienol. When I run it, every time it's tocopherol site, it's nada. Nothing shows up. And then on the tocotrienol, about 10% will be gamma tocotrienol of the peak and 90% of the peak will be delta tocotrienol. I immediately confided with my friend this was in 1999, who was a famous professor, the father of modern day tocotrienol research. I asked Dr. Qureshi. He said, hey, I found this thing, man. And you know what the first thing he said to me said, Barry, if tocotrienol would ever mitigate human disease and misery, this tocotrienolpha manato better do. Because if it doesn't, all our experimentation are caused for tocotrienoid loss. That was 20 years ago. And I've committed the last 20 years to do many clinical trials from lipids, metabolic syndrome, osteopenia, nafld, and of course, most recently on cancer. So I would be absolutely delighted to share with you the findings of any of all of this.

Okay, so when you were in South America, you found this plant. Now, is the plant actually called the annatto plant?

Yes, it is. Two N's and two T's. A, N, N, a T, T, O. And if your listener say New York City, I'll tell you how to look for them. You go to Bronx Botanical Garden. It's inside. Usually they grow in tropic, but this is inside the hot house. If you're in the southern part, like in Florida or in Southern California, if you visit and ask the botanist where you find this plant, you should be able to see them. If you're in Hawaii, they seem to go all over. And Filipino use it in their food. And if you were to go to any part of South America, you just say achoita or you Google, you find. It is not a weird. Very hard to find. It is used systemically for a long time, mostly as food colors.

And does that plant have the full spectrum of all the tocopherols and the tocotrienoles, or is it just just concentrated in these tocotrienols? Like when you extract the vitamin E from that plant, is it naturally just high in tocotrienols or do you need to remove the alpha tocopherols after you extract the tocotrienols?

Thank you for the question. No, the plant comes naturally with just these two tocotrienol, completely tocopherol free. And I argue that the reason this plant does it this way is because it doesn't have any flesh. So that when the pot open and it kind of like it's a little bit phototrophic, it followed the sun not so dramatically as the French sunflower like that, but when it follow the sun, then the carotenoid will be oxidized faster. But so they have to produce the most potent antioxidant to protect the color from degradation. So it is natural. And when we extract them, we're doing this right in United States of America. I'm really proud. It took me a long time to do this. Ben, if you have visitors coming, I'll be glad to show them our facility. We never use chemical and we never use solvent and we never remove any other vitamin E. The plant simply makes it like this. I just feel honored to have to stumble onto this. My goal is that this should be broadly used for people from antioxidative protection all the way to chronic improvement in health, particularly as we age.

Okay, got it. So in terms of this annatto plant, you figured out that it contains these tocotrienols and they can even be used in supplemental form. And by the way, if you're listening in, I'm keeping track of all this, including the books I read, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com that's Barry's last name, BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tan and I'll link to all the research and everything that we're talking about right now. But one thing in particular, because I do want to make sure we have time to discuss a few of the other interesting things you found in this plant. You talked about non alcoholic fatty liver disease, which is of course probably one of the fastest growing issues right now, even concerningly amongst our youth.

Youth.

What's the effect? You talked a little bit about the effect of this on non alcoholic fatty liver disease. But can you expound on that?

Yes, thank you. Thank you for asking that. Right now something is messed up in our society. When I say this, I don't say this strictly. 20% of our youth are obese and 40% of our adult are obese. Something is messed up up only 10, 15 years ago. We're talking about overweight. The word overweight kind of like pushed aside and obesity. This is just off the chart. If you go to nih, they say that three of five risk elevated triglycerides, reduce HDL and increase waist circumference. There are two more, blood pressure and glucose. But the top three, the triglyceride shots up and then the HDL drops and the waist circumference grow. And then of this, in one sense, I think of metabolic syndrome, which is pre diabetes, that fatty liver is a new name for metabolic syndrome and that's even putting it kind. It's worse than that, but it's good enough for now. But for people who have fatty liver, they almost always have high triglycerides and they're almost Always obese. So I got that one. And so when a gastroenterologist, which means people who study liver type disease, medical doctors, they say that about 80 to 100 million American have fatty liver disease. And it's a silent disease. You don't really feel it. Maybe some liver enzymes elevate a bit. I don't know if your audience getting this. This needs a little bit of sinking in. 80 to 100 million American, not 8 to 10 million. So I just got stalled by this when I heard the numbers. And the liver which it affects is the single largest solid organ in our body. Now it performed greater than 500 task and function. So it's hard to put the hand around. But when I got into the I thought, wow, the liver is very intolerant to fat. And the liver is very muscular, it is very dark color. It does not contain more than 5% fat. It's very intolerant. So when you get more than 5% fat, it's simple fatty liver and then it becomes fatty liver. And if it's uncontrolled, then it will be non alcohol steatohepatitis. The non alcohol phrase in front of the fatty liver is because 20, 30 years ago this kind of condition in the liver is symptomatic of people who are alcoholic. But today this have so surpassed its dietary thing from people who have alcohol. Now I still, I'm leading to it. On the study thing. This is what we did. We gave people 600 milligrams. They take 300 milligrams twice a day. And you take this with a meal and design for health. Jonathan is going after this. So he's the only company currently they have 300 milligrams to address this. And people with cancer under 300, they take twice a day on this like that. So they have 70 over patients and then they're double blind placebo control. So the best you can imagine study like that to be done. So they did it at beginning, three months after and six months after. Okay, so now then I fractionate further. I do it in this manner how the patient themselves figure it out. So the patient themselves are stakeholders. At three months they lost weight 10 pounds. At six months they lost weight 17 pounds. Now I'm not pushing tocotrienol as weight loss, but for people who are obese this is very important to have weight loss. So they figured out themselves. And the BMI. The BMI lose 2 point. That is really big. If you measure your BMI it lost 2 point and the waist circumference dropped about 3 centimeter. So that's an extreme exceedingly good sign. Now then the. Okay, so that would be the stakeholder, the patient themselves, the stakeholder as a health professional, because they're taking care of the patient, they will take blood work, the two or three blood work that they always measure, that measure the stress to the liver, ALT and ast. If you look at all the NAFLD patient, they always want to control these two. If they keep going up, it's not good. The liver is going in the opposite direction. So when they gave them tocotrienol at three months they drop about 16%. And then at six months they drop further to about 20%. A fantastically good direction. I'm actually, I'm just wildly happy with the result. I had nothing to do with it. I'm just putting the data together when it's published. And then they also measure a marker, ggt, aglutarol transaminase enzyme, another marker for cardiac problem, liver problem and other problem that also dropped about 8 to 10%. So, okay, that's that one. The third one, which is a stakeholder of the health professional. Also this is a slightly different direction. It had to go with the inflammation and oxidation. And so this one also from the blood test, they can find this out real easy. The C reactive process, which is clearly a measurement of inflammation, by the way, not as many people notice. The C reactive protein is a protein made in the liver. It just show up in the blood and people measure the blood. So in one sense it's a measurement of the inflammation of the liver, this organ. So that dropped about 18% under three months and at six months it dropped 24%. A great direction. And then MDA, which is a measurement for oxidized fat, which you mentioned that your listeners, many of them are exercise people, when they have serious oxidate, serious respiration that have oxidation. But these are not that good. This one they do study oxidized fat because they have serious inflammation. So the oxidation also dropped 14 and 22%. And then they measure interleukin 6 tumor necrosis factor. These are clearly molecularly bad stuff. They also drop about 20 to 25%. So that's how. So let me get you the last two stakeholders. Now we're not health professional anymore. So this one here on nafld, why the cardiologist came and why the endocrinologist care. The cardiologists look for the triglyceride. They want the triglyceride to drop and it dropped 15%. And HDL, also the HDL increased, which is very interesting. You want the HDL not to drop. Very hard to increase. HDL to increase a little bit. And then finally the endocrinology. These are the people who really care about the liver. So they look for the homa ir, which means it's a scale to study how their sugar are doing and the insulin are doing. So the insulin and glucose response improve 18%. And then the endocrinologist said that how is the liver score in the liver doing? It's very specific. So this in the three months it dropped 11% and in the six months it dropped 16%. I know, I'm giving you number, so it's not passionate here. So Ben, I just want to communicate right now, there are no drug to address this horrible thing and hopefully your audience is not confused. If you go buy supplement out there, they say liver support. Those are not the same thing like they use milk thistle. Those are referring to toxin you got in your body. This of course high fat is toxin, but this is beyond toxin. The entire fatty liver is choking the liver to death. So you got to fix the fatty liver. So that's what I meant by this.

It's very interesting. You know, as I went through this textbook, there are, there are some other things that I that I thought were quite interesting. The effects of tocotrienols on osteoporosis, especially in postmenopausal women. The very significant effect on skin health and even its use as an effective adjuvant for antibiotic treatment against MRSA when used, I believe this was topically. And then there were a few very interesting studies on cardiovascular health. Of course, the anti inflammation that you already talked about. But what I think is kind of cool is that we discovered vitamin E as a component of things like lettuce and wheat germ back in the early 1900s. But then we have these ancient civilizations in South America like the Mayans and the Incans and the Aztecs who use this annatto plant not just for the coloring purposes, which is kind of how you initially noticed it, but also for, you know, in folk medicine as a skin protectant and as a cardiotonic and as an anti inflammatory and as an antibiotic. And so it's kind of cool that we're now tapping into a little bit more of ananient form of vitamin E that seems to be far more efficacious and even less harmful than this alpha tocopherol that we're now using in a lot of our supplements. And furthermore, the other thing that I really wanted to make sure that I picked up your brain about on this interview is the fact that you found something else aside from tocotrienol in this annatto plant. I believe it was called gerano geraniol. And Jonathan, when I was talking with him, briefly filled me in on that. But can you talk to me about this other compound in addition to the tocotrienol, this GG that you found in the annatto plant.

Thank you. Yes, this gyranolger, because it's a mouthful of a word. If you just say geranol alone. You can find them in many perfumery things that people add into but two molecules of geranol together, this molecule is endogenous. Unlike vitamin E, tocopheron, tocotrienol you take from the outside in the body does not make it. But gerana GG our body makes so therefore it is endogenous nutrient. It's meant to be there to perform certain tasks or make certain things like that. So I would say there are many directions in this, I would say in the human, the Japanese are studying these because they have the longest population that are aging. So they are studying GG because it's able to help to promote the synthesis of testosterone so that it helps the elderly with a thrive in life. They care less about the sexual drive part of testosterone. They care more about as they grow old, they still have a thrive in life like this. So they are doing a lot of work on this GG help to increase that. Now in the plant kingdom, which we are not plants at all, but still as a matter of note that all the carotenoids that you see from beta carotene, lutein, lycomine, szczen, if there were no gg, there will be no colors in life. So GG is required for the synthesis of carotenoids. So this is really the great, great grandfather of many, many compound both in the animal, like in human as well as in the plant, but in the US why is this compound important? I'll tell you. This compound is important and I bring this and hopefully another time when this is ready, we will be the first company in the world putting this thing out. And I'm thr to see where he's going to go with it. But in the US it's this many, many American take statin drug for no other reasons other than to lower cholesterol. And I'm not questioning about the statin drug thing. Another time, another I can talk about that. But when you take statin drug, I call statin drug an Indiscriminate cholesterol reducer. That means to say if you hit, hit the synthesis of an enzyme in exit 5 like Highway 95 in the eastern United States somewhere, cholesterol reduction is exit 150 almost in Florida. That means that everything from exit 5 to 135 also get inhibited. And that's, I call it indiscriminate cholesterol reducer, even though it reduce cholesterol way down the stream. And most people know, our audience know that if you take statin, CoQ10 drop. Good point. But CoQ10 drop is not the reason why you have myopathy that people take statin. It's GG. Coq 10 is probably at exit 50. This is relative. And GG synthesis is at exit about 20 before in fact the GG molecule is inside CoQ2. So therefore GG is a prerequisite requirement for the synthesis of CoQ10. And we saw this, we did it in cell line study. And we have a human trial that if you take GG, it endogenously increase CoQ10 endogenously bent, not taking CoQ10. So we know that this is something very basic to the human body like, but because people take so much statin and have myopathy. So this is what I'm saying, that if people need to manage a lipid, first is exercise and diet. If it couldn't, then they should take tocotrienol. And if they still couldn't, probably they will take statin because the doctor asked them to do that. If they take statin, then the next action would be to take GG with statins because GG at least would be able to mitigate the global myopathy.

This gg, this geronal, this is not something that's currently on the market. This is something that's in development.

This is currently in development. And I think that the latter part of this year Design for Health is planning to launch this and to launch GG the latter part of this year. They are still trying to figure out this is for myopathy, for increased testosterone and also pain management. So another time I can explain why this is also important for pain management. Most of this pain management study is done in Brazil. Interestingly enough, the mechanism of action on the pain management is complementary, but not similar to that of cbd.

Interesting. Wow, that's pretty cool. I'm sure Jonathan from Designs for Health will email, email me when this thing becomes available so I can, I can let my audience know. But in the meantime, I'm going to keep my eye on the research behind gg. I find this fascinating. And regarding the tocotrienol, I know you guys do have the tocotrienol from the Annatto plant now available on your website. And I will link to that as well in the show notes along with, you know, if anybody wants to really take a deep dive into tocotrienols. The name of the the book that I read is called Tocotrienol's Vitamin E Beyond Tocopherols. It's kind of a big textbook, but I'll link to that. I actually have both the first and second editions that I went through prior to this interview because I wanted to make sure before I had you on the show this stuff was legit and the textbooks are really good. So I'll link to those in the show notes as well. You also it was either you or Jonathan that sent me over a couple of helpful PDFs, just two to three page articles on this if any of you want to read it and take a closer look at tocotrienols and also at some of the things that they're harvesting from this Amazonian plant, this Annatto. And I'll link to all of that in the show notes as well over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tan BenGreenfieldFitness.com Tan Barry, was there anything else that you wanted to share with us while I have you on the call?

Yes, I think the last bit we will be amiss not to touch this. On all the published study in animals, more than half of them were on cancer. So about 10 years ago I decided that my company is small and I'm working on a desert island supplement and it works to kill cancer. I got to do something on cancer. So now in Denmark we have six clinical trials, six clinical trials all on cancer. And the kinds of cancers we are checking are ovarian, breast, colon and lung cancer. All clinical trials. Only my colleagues is doing pancreatic cancer in Florida. So those are the outstanding one of all of these, one of them is published, is on ovarian cancer. And we expect two more to be completed by the end of this year. Exciting things. But what about the ovarian cancer that had been published? This one here? I think that sometime when I talk about this, you know, you do the best you can and then you get choked up. You know, it actually works. Let me describe to you very simplistically the trial. These are recurrent ovarian cancer, which means that they've taken chemo and radiation, whatever. Nothing is working. So in other words, it is a waiting time before the obvious thing that are going to happen to the patient. So usually the last ditch effort is to give them Avastin, which is a $7.5 billion drug that Hoffman na Roche makes. It is an anti angiogenesis drug which means that it prevent the blood vessel from the tumor to go to suck more food into the tumor to fuel its growth. And then when they chop them off, they cut off the feed line to the tumor so the tumor die. At least that's the mechanism. So they give them Avastin. So now they have a design of a study, the standard of care. Remember the curve that they're looking for is called Kaplan's Myers curve Survival Y axis and the X axis is number of months. Not a pretty curve, but that is the curve that they're looking for. So they have one group that take a vast they inject into the body and then the other group they give Avastin plus Tocotrienol. The Tocotrienol is given 900 milligram 300 milligram pill for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 900, that's it. So I described the study to you. So on the one that were, and then, and then when it's finished, they measure two things, progression free survival and overall survival. Progression free survival simply means that if they're given treatment, they wanted to see how long they can live with the treatment. On those that are on Avastin, 6 months. On those that are on Avastin and Tocotrienol, 10.6 months. So it's nearly double for overall survival. The first one was overall survival. The second one is progression free survival is three months compared to seven months. So therefore the survival has been increased double. So now when I say this I know it's just only numbers like that. I don't know of any nutritional supplement ever been subject to such kind of scrutiny. And if this tocotrienol were to be address, it will be all over the news. It just published quietly away. We put a couple of press release. But my goal has always been the same. If it help people's life and overall survival, this deserves to be told. And Ben, thank you for allowing me to do this. The authors themselves said an overall decrease overall disease control of 70% is high and 25% of the patients are still alive after 24 months. The other one just on Avastin, Remember is a $7.5 billion drug. After 12 months they all pass away. And those that added tocotrienol, 25% still survive. So they are very positive with this. So they say a prolonged lifespan can be reached without negative influence on the quality of life. So I'm just thrilled to do this. So this is the first. The next one will be breast cancer. They expect that to be completed towards the end of this year.

Very interesting. If you have access to those studies too, I can completely add those to the show notes if people want to take a deeper dive into those. Unfortunately, that happens quite a bit with a lot of these natural alternatives because they're non monetizable and frankly difficult to get FDA approval based on the need for a lot of good, robust clinical research on them. And I know it's a whole political debate we don't have time to get into, but my ears always perk up whenever I find something because I've interviewed a lot of people on cancer and have kind of a database of cancer podcasts and past shows that I've done that I would definitely access heavily if I ever had cancer. Everything from ketogenic diets to a lot of different supplemental approaches and deuterium depleted water and kind of a multimodal approach, NK killer cell injections. There's a lot out there, but this would be an interesting one to add into the equation. So I'm going to note that. And if you have those research studies, send them over and I'll add those to the show notes as well. And also folks, I know this was a little bit of of a deep dive into the chemistry of vitamin E, but if you have questions or thoughts or feedback for Barry Tan or myself, you can go to BenGreenfeldFitness.com tan and leave your comments over there and one of us will jump in and reply. But in the meantime, if you do want to begin supplementing with tocotrienols, it's something I'm probably going to add into the mix myself. Admittedly, the multivitamin that I take has about 13 milligrams of tocopherols in it, so I'll need to separate that from my tocopherol consumption because it will, from what I understand, be competed for in terms of absorption by the tocopherols. And hopefully I'll find a good solution at some point for something that uses a tocotrienol rather than a tocopherol and will be I'll probably pass this information on to the company that makes the multivitamin that I use to see if they might want to make a switch from tocopherols to tocotrienols based on what you filled me in on. But in the meantime, a lot of stuff to think about here and my mind was sufficiently blown by those textbooks and I really wanted to get you on to talk to folks about this. So thanks for coming on the show, Barry, and sharing all this stuff with us and for the research that you do.

Thank you so much, Ben, and thank you for your patient listeners out there listening on. Appreciate this.

Yes. Yes. All right, folks, show notes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.comTAN until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield and Dr. Barry Tan signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@Ben greenfieldfitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it.