vitamin e allergy?

[ontarioguy]

I bought some 400iu capsules and I was taking 800iu a day and I felt very weak and tired from it, it also made my vision dimmer and sort of blurry. so I dropped down to 400iu same thing. So i stopped taking it after a couple days I was back to normal, took 400iu again this morning same thing weak and tired. Anyone else had this from vitamin e? it's not cheap stuff either I bought the clear base vitamin e acetate

people would be surprised to find out how many people have allergic reactions to vitamins. Ex. most or at least much of the vitamin C you buy in a health food store is made from corn. people with corn allergies can have a reaction. I only know of one company that makes their vit C from beets. I have known of people so reactive to corn that using polygrip to hold a dental bridge in place caused reactions (polygrip is sweetened with corn syrup, and who had a reaction once to eating off a paper plate (apparently some paper plate companies use corn starch sprinkled on the plates to keep them from sticking together). I also knew of one woman who began a whole course of vitamins to make herself healthier and she kept feeling worse and worse. After vrey complex allergy testing (SAGE testing) she found she was very allergic to soy, along several allergic pathways - and as it so happens ALL of her vitamins were from a brand that used soy in the vitamins. From what I understand most CoQ10 is made from spinach and people with spinach allergies can have reactions.

If you are allergic to the food source that your vitamin E is derived from you can most certainly have an allergic reaction.

[archive_Mr. Nobody]

strange, never heard of an actual allergy to E. But what GW says makes sense (GW as in Gotwood, not George W...the latter makes no sense to me at all, ever)

Disclaimer:
Mr. Nobody is presenting fictitious opinions and does in no way, shape or form encourage, use nor condone the use of any illegal substances or the use of legal substances in an illegal manner.
The information discussed is strictly for entertainment purposes only and shall not take the place of qualified medical advice.

[DaMan]

I have a very generous health insurance who cover basically anything (gear, accupuncture, chiropractic care) etc., so I'm guessing they'll cover this type of allergy testing too..

Could you tell us who to see / what to ask for / details? I'd be very interested... Thanks!

SAGE testing is done by the SAGE company in Florida. Their consulting MD is Dr.Dan Dantini. Great guy. Theirs is the best. There are 7 allergic pathways for allergens (last time I had a class in the subject-they learn new things everyday).

Type 1 (IgE) mediated allergies are genetic and inherited and also immediate onset. meaning if you are exposed to the allergen you will have symptoms within 20 minutes or so, and once you are removed from the allergen you start to feel better.

The others are various forms of delayed reactions - which may take up to 72 hours to manifest symptoms.

Skin scratch testing only tests for type 1 allergies. the test is sometimes innacurate - as they are essentially poking you with little needles to put some of the substance under the skin and looking for a red reaction. just being poked can cause a red reaction, and if they use the press on pad it too can irritate the skin and cause a welt even without any allergen being added. Most people instinctively know their type 1 allergies, and naturally avoid those foods. they eat a tomatoe as a kid and feel bad and never like or eat tomatoes again.

The others are not so easy since if you are allergic to strawberries, and eat them on a monday you might not get a reaction until thursday - and blame it on what you had to eat that day. SAGE testing tests for the other 6 known pathways which have various times of delay, and they figure you already know to avoid type 1 allergies that are genetically determined and that you were born with.

They have a 50 and 100 food panel. You get something like 5 little tubes of blood drawn in special vials and sent to the lab. They then check the other pathways and grade them according to severity. If you are highly allergic to corn along several pathways, then avoiding corn is probably a real real good idea. But you cannot always just assume that....

Say the test shows you are allergic to 3 things. Corn=mild, wheat = mild, milk= strong reaction. These are occuring with your blood cells in a lab, not in your body. Other factors influence how your tissues will respond. More specifically 3 things : 1)target tissues (BB gun or bazooka) 2) amount (pennies and dollars) 3)cross sensitivies (vinegar and baking soda).

1) certain tissues become target tissues. They are more susceptible. 2 people may be allergic to corn but for one person their sinuses are a target and for the second its their intestines. one gets the sniffles and the other gets allergic diahrrea. Depending on how bad those symptoms are for a person, will determine how 'bad" their allergic reaction is. If I was allergic to corn and it causes a skin inflammation which had concommitant wbc accumulation (white heads) I would say that is a "mild" allergic reaction because I could care less - but to my wife that is a more serious reaction and whe would classify it as a 'serious" reaction. So which is worse a bb gun or a bazooka? It depends on what tissue its aimed at - a bazooka aimed so the shell just glances your toenail may not cause as much damage as a BB gun aimed at your eyeball. A food that causes mild reactions to a more important tissue will cause more problems that a food that causes strong reaction to a less important tissue. You can have an allergy to broccoli that targets your sinuses and an allergy to cauliflower that targets your skin. Which is worse for you?

2) if you have a mild allergy to corn but eat a shitload of corn, the accumulative effect will result in severe tissue inflammation. like dollars and pennies - 1 dollar is not as much as 200 pennies. eating 1 piece of a food you are strongly allergic to (dollar) is not as bad as eating 200 pieces of a food you're mildly allergic to (pennies)

3) SOmetimes food only cause reactions when they interact. if you eat soy you may have a mild reaction and if you eat garlic you may have a mild reaction, but if you eat them together you may have a strong reaction. like venigar and baking soda. By themselves they do little, but combine them together and they foam like crazy. one time I filled the fingers of a surgical latex glove with baking soda and twisted them shut. Then filled the hand with vinegar. Then I threw it out in the yard among my daughers cats. The fingers came undone and the products mixed and bubbled and foamed and just as the cats were sniffing the glove it exploded and scared the crap out of them - this has nothing to do with allergies but was funny as heck.

so what to do with the test if you have it done...

[This message was edited by Got wood? on 12-08-2002 at 11:03 AM.]

So you get your test back and find you are allergic to 10 things. Do you avoid them all? Hardly. I mean lets say you are allergic to eggs and they are effecting the target tissues you care about - do you know how hard it is to avoid eggs? Damn hard. Think of everything from mayonaisse to bread that has eggs in it. And if you have sensitive target tissues you will have to avoid it 100% as even a few pennies can add up.

First you are to eliminate the things from your diet completely for 6 weeks so your body gets a chance to stabilize. Then you add them in one at a time to see what they really do to you. You have to eat the food with every meal for 3 days, watch the reactions all week, and take it back out of your diet again until you have tested all the other foods. You are allergic to eggs - you eat them for 3 days solid with no other allergen, take it back out of the diet on day 4 and watch the reactions all week. Then the next week you take another food you are allergic to and do it again until you have tested all the foods on your body. 10 foods takes about 11 weeks.

Then you can have the fun of mixing and matching them to see if you get any baking soda and vinegar reactions. Sounds fun eh?

If you have serious allergies or serious symptoms, or a serious immune disease (like AIDS or cancer) and you want to have your white blood cells as healthy as possible then I think the SAGE testing is a good idea. But if you are having mild symptoms I would not recommend it.

just try switching brands or find out what the vitamin e you are taking is made from (usually the companies have an address or phone number on the bottle) and call them. Also many companies are not careful. Several studies have shown that when tested most vitamin brands do not deliver as much of the ingredient as promised - that is why I use very few companies for my own supplements - usually only the ones that use an independant lab (not their own lab run by the vitamin companies president's brother-in-law) test every batch of their products (not just test one batch a year). Also many labs may use the same machine to make each batch of different products without cleaning it well - process a half ton of CoQ10 and then go straight into making vitamin C in the same machine.

If you really want the sage companies number I can give it to you or you can probably find it online.

99% of all doctors have absolutely no idea how to do thorough allergy testing. They draw a little blood and tell you to avoid whatever you are allergic too, or do the skin scratch -tell you what you are allergic to - and give you no specific instructions or give you allergy injections (which do actually work for some people)

[This message was edited by Got wood? on 12-07-2002 at 05:49 PM.]

By the way there are other blood tests for allergies but I do not consider them very accurate. These include ELISA testing and RAST testing.

[ontarioguy]

do you think a dry vitamin e like vitamin e succinate would be better to take?

I am not sure if you are asking me specifically....

I do know the natural vitamin E's are better. Natural = ol synthetic = yl

Tocopherol = natural
tocopheryl=synthetic

I don't know about the dry forms. I have heard the argument, mostly about the oil forms becoming rancid as oils are wont to do. But it seems if it was used within the "use by" date it would not be any more rancid than any other oil - especially since vit.E is added to other oils to keep them from becoming rancid. But could be, I really don't know and have not seen any solid evidence one way or the other