Conversations on Healing

Introduction (00:02): Welcome to the Conversations on Healing podcast, where host Shay Beider speaks with renowned healthcare leaders, practitioners, and thought leaders to explore the world of wellness, the incredible powers of self-care, and what it truly means to heal today. Join us on this journey to become more whole, healed, and connected.

Shay Beider (00:32): Welcome back. Thank you for joining us on The Conversations on Healing podcast. I wanna send a shout out to our international listeners. We now have people tuning in around the globe in more than 100 countries. So fabulous. I’m Shay Beider, and today we have a wonderful episode. Our guest is Dr. Barrie Tan, the world’s foremost expert on vitamin E. A scientist. First and foremost, Dr. Tan earned his PhD in chemistry and biochemistry and spent several years as a professor at UMass. His research expertise involves the impact of lipid soluble nutrients on chronic conditions. Dr. Tan was the first to introduce the benefits of tocotrienols to the nutrition industry. tocotrienols are powerful antioxidants that combat inflammation in the body, and Dr. Tan developed the first ever tocopherol free tocotrienol product derived from the Annatto plant after he came upon this plant during a trip to Peru.

(01:40): And if you don’t know all these terms yet, tocopherol and tocotrienol, don’t worry, you’ll learn more in the podcast. Dr. Tan is known for his warmth and enthusiasm and is a celebrated speaker. He’s currently the president of American River Nutrition, a company he started with his wife in 1998 that focuses on the scientific advancement of the health benefits of the Annatto plant, described as a scientific pioneer. His mission is simple to improve the everyday health of people’s lives. In today’s wonderful conversation on healing, Dr. Tan and I discussed some of the very specific benefits of tocotrienol derived from annatto and the preliminary research for cancer treatment and chronic illness. We also look at some of the effects on metabolic syndrome and fatty liver disease, as well as the role that tocotrienol plays in inhibiting cholesterol synthesis. If you would like a better understanding of how tocotrienol can reduce inflammation in your body and improve health outcomes, I think you’ll definitely enjoy learning more about vitamin E from a world expert. So I hope you enjoy this delightful conversation.

(03:08): Well, I wanna welcome you Dr. Tan to the Conversations on Healing podcast. Thank you for being my guest today.

Barrie Tan (03:15): Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I hope this will be a productive time in two ways.

Shay (03:21): . I’m sure it will. So I wanna let our listeners know a little bit what they’re in for today in a good way. You are one of the preeminent experts on vitamin E and you’ve studied vitamin E for more than 40 years. And so you have a lot of, uh, knowledge about some of the health benefits, particularly for one type of vitamin E that we’ll be discussing today. Um, and so I thought maybe we would just start with a brief overview of the four different groups of vitamin E just so our listeners understand some of the basics.

Barrie (03:57): Well, thank you. Um, vitamin E was first discovered exactly a hundred years ago, and that group of vitamin E is called tocopherol. You’ll find it in a cereal box. And then, like you said, they’re four of them. The four Greek letters, alpha, beta, delta, gamma, and probably the most well known one is Alpha tocopherol. And then there’s another group called tocotrienol, that’s a hyper vitamin E that you mentioned, like that It was discovered probably about 50 years after the first group of tocopherols. And so it’s kind of like a runt in a sense that, uh, it almost got missed, but it was not. And that was up in the 1960s. And then I started my career in the 1980s. I was interested in this group of compounds, study them, and have stayed with them since the early 1980s to today.

Shay (04:55): Beautiful. And I know that vitamin E has been shown to be beneficial for the treatment of certain chronic conditions, including metabolic syndrome, pre-diabetes and diabetes, fatty liver conditions, and cancer. And so I’m curious about some of the theories on why vitamin E is beneficial for these chronic conditions.

Barrie (05:19): Yes, it, initially, these conditions were set to work from El tocopherol, the the first groups that were discovered. And then in the 1980s, seventies and eighties, a lot of studies on this, just as tocotrienol was being discovered. And if the audience or your all of us would look in the internet and try to look for vitamin E or tocopherol, you’ll find that in the, uh, late 1990s into, uh, uh, the first 10 years of this century, you find that vitamin E didn’t work at at, at best and at worse it may even do some harm. That’s referring to tocopherol. The groups, uh, the groups of tocopherol, uh, vitamin E is called tocotrienol. You know, people begin to do the kind of studies that you mentioned. And it worked be, uh, in my judgment because if you think of a vitamin E like that, uh, of a, a tadpole has a head and a tail, essentially a toco triol have a shorter tail, same head, and then the tail of a tora longer. If you think of a cell and, and the vitamin E is stuck, is situated right inside the cell wall. And a tocotrienol shorter with the shorter tail is anchor less deeply and is able to spin around the cell 50 times faster. And for that reason, the tocotrienol acid class is more efficient in protecting the cell wall than a tocopherol.

Shay (07:02): And there’s a very interesting part of your story where you had been studying vitamin E already and then you were traveling, I believe you were in Peru and you came across a plant, um, a plan called annatto, which is found in the Amazon and some other parts of the world. It is considered kind of an ancient superfood.

Barrie (07:26): . Yes.

Shay (07:27): It’s fascinating because vitamin E can be extracted from it. And in particular, this, uh, specific form of vitamin E the tocotrienol that you’re mentioning, um, is abundant in this particular plant. And so I wanted for you to share a little bit about that discovery and then how you have utilized that discovery in your current research.

Barrie (07:52): Yes, this plan, uh, what I discovered this plant uh, about 25 years ago. It’s known I went to Peru to look for Marygold and a younger me with hair like that. And I did find the Marygold. Um, then about 30 feet away from me, I saw the Annatto plant is beautiful. I’ll show you a picture of that.

Shay (08:15): For anyone watching on YouTube. You can actually see the images of Dr. Tan, but if you’re listening, it’s a beautiful plant with what looks like, how would you describe the center there? It’s these very red round, um, they look like berries, but, maybe you could describe

Barrie (08:31): It better. They do, it’s used for coloring foods in the US or in western country. It gives color to that orangey, yellowish hue of cheese and some other meats as well. And you did mention that this was an ancient plant. Yes. You can see this would be an example, uh, how the Inca have used it for a long time. It is truly an Amazonian plant. So there, there you have it. I went to South America looking, uh, for the Margold plant. Then fate has it 30 feet away from me, is this Annatto plant also have kerotine. And I surmised that something is protecting the kerotine from destruction of the color. It was tocotrienol, something I was already familiar with in plant kingdom, most of the vitamin e tovcopherol, you know, and, and then so, but this is, there’s no tocopherol in here. So that’s one surprising thing. And it’s only tocotrienol.

Shay (09:39): And it’s fascinating too, cuz I’ve heard you mention this, that there are both synergistic and antagonistic effects, you know, and reactions, um, that happen in nature and specifically between tocopherols and tocotrienols. There’s an antagonistic effect if they’re both contained within the same plant. But because annatto only has the tocotrienols, that antagonistic effect isn’t occurring. Would you like to explain a little bit more about that?

Barrie (10:11): Yes, thank you so much for bringing that up. If we make human make one chemical to treat a disease, then in, in nature they make a mixture of chemical, it would be synergistic. This is one example where, uh, we use, we did not think that it would be antagonistic, but when we did study in earlier years, we found that half the time it worked and half the time it didn’t work. So if half the time it didn’t work, then it is no good. That was then we discovered that when we add back the tocopherol as the same amount of toco and add back, that’s when we systematically saw that the same amount of tocotrienols, you know, would not work simply by adding back the tocopherol. Somebody updates looking down on me and let me figure this thing out from the annatto and found out that it’s free of tocopherol. So probably if you read my enthusiasm is because I’m finding a new lease of something coming back,

Shay (11:14): . Right, exactly. And so the benefit is that this annatto plant only has the tocotrienol, as you were mentioning, so it doesn’t have those antagonistic effects that can occur. Another piece of your story that I think is really interesting is then you decided, okay, you wanted to learn to extract the tocotrienol from the annatto plant, but apparently your wife was very clear with you that you had to do it in a good way, um, that you couldn’t use solvents or chemicals and that, you know, you had to respect the plant itself. And so I’m interested to hear kind of how you’ve chosen do the extraction process and what you’ve learned from that.

Barrie (11:57): Yeah, and because the context of this discovery was more spiritual and personal. So when a discovery happened, my wife said that you are not going to use chemical and solvent, which is easy to do, to extract and purify things like many drugs are. But can you think of something, uh, that would, uh, pay attention to the natural nurse update? So that request from my wife, uh, took me at least no less than five to seven years to figure it out. So it was not an easy process. So essentially I use a physical process by evaporation. So in other words, I dis pull a high vacuum, which is physical, and then I just, if you pull high enough vacuum, it will just evaporate like that. And the process is slower. Uh, uh, it’s not as, uh, as clear cut as you would use chemical and solvent. But at the end we were able, uh, to make this vitamin E very pure and is able to, uh, do all the clinical studies we had pursue following it. So thank you for asking.

Shay (13:13): And I wanna talk a little bit about the research and what you think might be some of the mechanisms of action. It appears that with the tocotrienals there is a reduction in inflammation in the body, and you’re seeing certain conditions such as cystic fibrosis, muscular sclerosis, lupus, that seem to be benefiting from taking this kind of purified form of vitamin E. So I would be interested to hear what you think is actually happening in the body and why you think it’s having this anti-inflammatory effect.

Barrie (13:45): When we first discovered this compound, I knew it was the mechanism was it was able to lower cholesterol. It was totally different, but lowering cholesterol was a big deal because people take statin, drug and cholesterol get higher as we get older like that. So I was pursuing to study that and it did, and then I noticed that it also lower other lipids like triglyceride, which is very important in the metabolic syndrome. And then that was also great. Now, somewhere in the studying of lowering triglycerides, I thought, hey, you know, uh, uh, some of these people look like, uh, uh, that when we study them and, and they lost a little bit of weight and then, uh, uh, the lipids are good or all this good, then I wonder if they’re in inflammation might be reduced. So it was really a secondary find. So we decided to measure inflammatory markers and it was then I, uh, uh, people who start taking it, like you say, with people with cystic fibrosis, people with lupus, they say that they were not able to hold their hand and they’re able to hold their steering wheel and drive. That was when I said, okay, in the future when I do more clinical study on this, I should definitely study the biomarker of inflammation.

Shay (15:09): Great. I’m glad that you explained that a bit. I also know that there’s been some research done on patients with cancer, I think, uh, breast cancer in particular. And similarly, I would be curious what you think is happening in that particular case.

Barrie (15:26): Okay, in the mechanisms in the cancer thing tocotrienal work, at least in two, three ways that I know clearly. In cancer cells, you see cancer cells are originally our own cells. And then they just, the DNA just kind of like messed up. And then when they get messed up, they typically would grow a hundred times or a thousand times faster than your cell. It is not good news, but they, this is how they work. So if they, uh, grow a hundred to a thousand times faster, think of them as a wired, uh, a kind of like a cell phone or something. They’re completely rewired. So they have different signal because the normal cells simply don’t grow that fast. So they have new and different tocotrienal work to follow up this signal so that it is not able to multiply hundred to a thousand times faster. This have been repeatedly shown for breast cancer and for other cancers that people study in this kind of, so that’s first mechanism.

Shay (16:38): So the disruption of that signal that would allow that cancer cell to grow disproportionately fast is disrupted.

Barrie (16:46): Yes, there’s disrupt. So that’s the, and then another one would be, if you think of a cell, like, like a bean shape, like that it has cell wall. And most scientists would tell you that, that the cell wall is where the cholesterol is to help the cell to multiply. And if a cell is multiplying a hundred times faster, say, then you would see actually it would have 10,000 time more cell wall if, because it’s two dimension. So if you have a hundred time, if 10,000 time, if it 10,000 time more cell wall is gonna have oodles and oodles of cholesterol to support the cell wall and tocotrienal is known to inhibit cholesterol synthesis. And then the third mechanism is if a cell had gotten past the size of a quarter inch, like two or three centimeter a quarter inch, then we call that a tumor now. It will grow blood vessel to the nearest artery and then kind of like a plumbing jar to nearby artery and then have nutrient coming to them. That process is called angiogenesis, and a drug called Amgen drug called Avastin does exactly that and tocotrienol does that too. Basically it will go to the artery and it just cut the artery off and essentially starving the tumor to death. So those are the three mechanism, uh, the reducing reduction of the cholesterol shutting down the signal, the make the cell grow. And if you bypass those two and become a tumor, you cut off the feeding tube that feed the tumor to grow. We decided to do six different clinical trials in Denmark, and my colleague is separately doing his own in Florida. So I’m exceedingly please and holding my breath to see what the study results come out on those six clinical trials.

Shay (18:50): And of those current, uh, six clinical trials that you’re doing, what are the areas of focus?

Barrie (18:56): Okay, I currently, uh, uh, uh, I, I will size it down like a funnel. In animal study we have done 200-300, uh, cancer study. But in clinical trials we are limited because they’re very expensive and they’re time consuming. And we are not even a pharmaceutical company. So we have, we are now testing five of, of several hundred five, so it’s miserable five better five than zero. The five clinical studies that we’re doing on clinical trials are, uh, pancreatic cancer, probably the, uh, the deadliest of all cancer. And then two, uh, uh, women cancer, they are, uh, ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and then men and women, colon and lung cancer. So those are the five. Of those five, we have two that with results coming out, uh, uh, that are very positive in my judgment, that would be my colleague who are doing pancreatic cancer. We can see that even in the lowest dose we saw that the tocotrienol Delta tocotrienol kill the cancer, and the other one is ovarian cancer. We saw that in stage four ovarian cancer patient, uh, they’re taking, uh, 900 milligram delta tocotrienol. We saw, uh, uh, that they have increased survival, and in then the other three there were anxiously waiting for the, the results are not yet, uh, uh, forthcoming.

Shay (20:36): Very good. And I also know you have a, a book that, uh, can be freely downloaded called the “Truth about Vitamin E”, that if our listeners wanted to understand a little bit more. Do you wanna speak to that, to share that resource?

Barrie (20:52): Yeah, it, it, the, the book was like this, it was a labor of love about, uh, 70, 80 pages long. So it’s not very easy reading. I put in a lot of references and if the audience want, want to download, you can type this Barrie (b a r r i e) Tan (t a n) my name .com/book. So it’s very simple. If you wanted to look for more information, because this kind of information, people keep publishing them as they go along, um, you can come to our website, company name is simply called American River Nutrition, or if you type my name, it’ll probably lead you there. And then you can download all the studies that we have done, uh, on, on the various conditions that we did, uh, that include the cancer trials, uh, include the ones that you mentioned and, and other ones that are largely chronic conditions.

(21:50): You mentioned inflammation earlier on, and a significant number of American are carrying and, and people in the world are carrying a large amount of weight. We consider that that kind of a weight carrying, uh, is caused by in or causing inflammation. And this study is currently ongoing, uh, in Texas at the university where the professor is doing it. And when we do this study, we usually do it, uh, a double blind and placebo control. So for the audience, this simply mean that double blind meaning neither the, neither the patient nor the professors or the, uh, uh, doctors know, know that if they’re taking a dummy pill or the real or the real, uh, substance of interest, and then there’s also a dummy pill group, then we can see, uh, if the, the one that took the real substance is any improvement from those who are taking a dummy pill. And also the bias is removed from both the patient and from the doctors.

Shay (23:02): And it sounds like, you know, you’ve obviously been in this field of studying vitamin for many, many years now and have kind of been guided by some fortune and you could say, uh, the unusual opportunity to sort of stumble upon this an annatto plant and then discover that it had this particular form of vitamin E within it in isolation. Um, but when you look back and kind of review all of these years of your career, the research that you’ve done, what you’ve, the work that you’ve then accomplished utilizing this plant and the clinical trials that you’ve done specifically with tocotrienol, what do you find are the key takeaways? Like when you think about the legacy that you’re leaving behind with your work and your research for our listeners that would be hearing what you think are, are the most important pieces that you’re leaving behind, what would those be in your mind?

Barrie (24:00): Wow, that’s a deep question. At the personal level, because I’m a scientist and I’m not limited to being a scientist, but to the extent that I’m a scientist, it must be validated. It can show what is supposed to show when it’s not a personal level, but to the benefit of others. It brings me incredible joy, and I would like it to be my legacy to find something or to discover something people would then apply and find this to be useful, circumstantial and important to them. This discovery of tocotrienol able to help to control chronic conditions that can be of used to other people is very special to me.

Shay (24:56): Absolutely. And I know there was a study that was done a ways back, um, I believe with children who had familial dysautonomia, um, which essentially the autonomic nervous system wasn’t functioning, uh, properly because of a genetic inherited trait. And you saw that there was some research around vitamin E that was conducted with those children, um, that showed some benefit. And I’m also curious about the relationship between that autonomic functioning of the nervous system and vitamin E and what you think is the relationship between those two.

Barrie (25:38): The discovery of this autonomic function, or automatic functions of the nerve was the, uh, uh, discovered by my colleague, professor Burish Rubin, but he did it on cell line study. He had already applied it to FD uh, uh, affectionately called FD children, familial dysautonomia, uh, uh, dysfunction of the autonomic nerve that is genetic like that. So he said that he’ll be very cautious and he’ll try it in it. So I sent him sample, he probably did it for some three to five years, and he was convinced that it would be safe and it would be useful. And then therefore he explained the utility, uh, to those that follow him. I actually have no, I, I was just trying to do this a as a, as a something that is so rare, you know, a and, and, and, and is so destructive, uh, to a young life.

(26:33): I was just trying to help. And then I was able to, and that bring me enormous joy if the tocotrianl have some implication on this corrective system of the nerve, then I ask further the question, how might tocotrienol be useful to other nerve condition? Is that, that I follow now that, uh, I, I did not follow the autonomic nerve because Professor Rubin already did that. So, and this is when I, I did, I I now I’m more and more convinced that it, it has something to do to help people, uh, uh, in alleviating dementia, which all of us are concerned about as we grow older. And then we do not want the word Alzheimer’s disease or, or loss of, of our memory system. So we now know this when people take tocotrienol or, or we did animal study, I should say, uh, uh, when, you know, the neuron here have a synap, so they’re communicating to the other side.

(27:42): And usually people talk about in depression, it’s gaba, serotonin and those good things. And then the tocotrienol is able to help the synaptic nerve in the communication. That’s a very important piece. And that was just published by Georgia State University a month or two a month ago. So I was very pleased about that. And then the other study was done at University of Texas. This is a more pragmatic, they use a psychology thing. It’s called a “Maurice Swimming Maid”. Just think of it like one yard. They, they put the water flowing here, and then the rat will be swimming. They, they swim against the current, and then they put a flexi glasss, which is same color as water. So the animal cannot see it like an inch below the water. And then the, the animal does not want to swim to exhaustion. They wanna find a flexi glasss.

(28:36): And then above the water, you put a green label on this swimming pool, let’s say it’s white color, a green label, uh, a a sticky. And then in a normal rat, they will swim, uh, about once uh, a day. And after five weeks or so, they’re able to follow, okay, if there is a green sticky up there, that’s where the flexi glass is. So they’ll come unable to rest on it. When the animal is treated with tocotrienal, they’re able to figure it out at half the time, like two or two and a half weeks. So they actually took the rat off for a month. So now if they do it again, the rat would’ve totally forgotten about this. So they have to train the rat again and again, they’re able to repeat that after two weeks or two and a half weeks. Those given, uh, just a, dietary toco tri, you know, is able to find the plexiglass in two, two and a half weeks. And those who didn’t takes five weeks long. So that tells me that even if the rats are older, they can be trained and they’re able to keep and retain their memory and find that flexi glasss.

Shay (29:49): And do you think that the, again, I’m interested in what you theorize is the mechanism that’s happening there. Is there an increase in cognitive processing? Is it changing the response between the neurons? What do you think might actually be occurring that’s allowing for the increase in memory and that retention?

Barrie (30:12): Uh, increase? You said the first one increase in responses, uh, uh, to the synapses was the Georgia, Georgia State University. They, they, they found it and it’s very significant, the one that is done in University of Texas, they didn’t give a theory, uh, uh, of how they may respond. They just show that the animal have increased response. So that’s more, uh, physiological response or a phenomenon. They actually saw the response. And so that response is in search of a mechanism. They don’t have one. I see. And the first one, the first one show a mechanism, uh, but the study was not in holistic animal. It was, uh, they study specifically, uh, the neuron and increase of synapsis. I think that this, this study is still, uh, in the formative stage Shea. So I think that in the next, uh, two to three years more would come. I suspect that many Japanese scientists are very favorably disposed to this study because the Japanese elderly population in the world is well known. And, uh, uh, uh, our average lifespan is 78. The Japanese life span is at least two to three years longer, like 80 or 82 years. So, so they came much about this. So as their population got older, uh, that loss of their mind was not one that would be there that would highly compromise the quality of life.

Shay (31:46): When you think about all of this in the context of healing, right? There’s sort of health and healing, how we maintain health, preventative kinds of things that we could do the application of this very specific form of vitamin E to decrease inflammation in the body to perhaps prevent or decrease certain cancers developing in the body. You know, there’s some really interesting possibilities here and the research is still playing itself out. So I wanna be clear about that with our listeners too. But seeing some sort of exciting and interesting results that are starting to come in, how do you place all of this in the broader context of what it means to heal? How would you define or describe what healing is in the context of your research and work?

Barrie (32:35): I like to talk about healing in the sense of at the simplest level of a cell, not not chemistry, not biochemistry of the cell. And then, and then the other one would be healing in the sense of longevity. So I know it is a very broad question and healing you, you allow me great degree of freedom to explain this in the cell manner. In each of our human body cell look like a bean shape. We have about 38 trillion cells. It’s a very big number, 38 trillion cells that hold our body weight. It’s about 5,000 times a population of the earth in each of this cell. And it is surrounded by a cell wall. And a cell wall of fat is about 80% fat. And of the three fruit groups that we, we take that USDA tells that we should take, uh, fat protein and carbohydrate of these three, fat is the easiest to go bad oxidize like that.

(33:41): And, but then 80% of the cell wall are fat, so therefore they are antioxidant that protects it, uh, that that help the cell wall not to go bad. And 90% of those antioxidant that actually can stay in the cell wall, a vitamin E molecule, this is long forgotten. I’m trying to come back to this and they are the actual antioxidant for the fat. The reason I’m bringing this up, because I suspect the audience is hearing the word antioxidant one too many, and, and it’s just confusing. There’s so many antioxidant, but I wanted to appeal to the audience. This, the antioxidant that I care about most are the antioxidant that protects fat because fat is the easiest to go bad every moment we take a breath, we need oxygen. So we cannot live without oxygen, but oxygen can go bad in our body because about 30% of our body weight is fat or 25 to 30% and they need protection and the kind of antioxidant they can protect them, their vitamin E molecule like tocopherol and tocotrienol, you know, so I’m thinking of the healing processes to keep the cell wall functioning good.

(35:01): So the nutrients go in and the waste that generated from the cell goes out and we have 38 trillion of them. That is at the simplest level of healing I can see possible without saying the word treatment at all. So that piece, the other one on healing is this. All of us know if we are not doing well, if we are sick or have any, thing that infirm us, well, a short way to say that would be life will be shorter. Like so, because we, we have to struggle to find where else a person who is healthy, their heart is doing well, they breathe properly, they can walk, they can balance themself, then things will be better like that. But all of us are not necessarily on this squeaky clean system. So I had asked that question many time on the healing, how do I do study like this?

(36:02): I, I don’t know how to think of study like this. So, so we thought of a simplistic way to do it and other people have done so. I’m not the only one doing it. We, we study worms and other people study zebra fish. If you Google you’ll find it. They study worm and zebra fish because the entire genome, the genetic system of these two is known hundred percent. So they can characterize it. So they gave tocotrienol, you know, to worm. And worm has heart this tiny worms like that. And normally in their normal, if you do not stress them, do not do anything. Just give them normal food. They live to 30 days, they procreate and then they die. So, so therefore a normal lifespan of worm would be about 30 days. And then when they give them tocotrienol and even if they stress them and give them tocotrienol, they typically live 30% longer.

(36:59): So if you translate it to human being, how this would mean would be that if normally people live to 75 years or as an American, then 30 years longer would bring them to 105 and hundred and 10. That is not a bad news. And they consider that that is because it reduces stress on the animal. They also look at the DNA and the DNA is not messed up the DNA or they, they study a DNA called a a telma so that the telma is not shortened and stay the same length. If you wanted to study a lifespan and life extension, I don’t know how to study it otherwise like that. That’s why. So in clinical study and animal study, we study a disease and a treatment state like that. But so the two healing, keep the cell healthy and figure out a way to see if you can extend the lifespan of, uh, an animal and translate that to human. So for me, this is a blessing of a discovery like that. So there you have it.

Shay (38:07): Are, are there any known side effects to taking tocotrienol? Are you seeing any side effects?

Barrie (38:14): In all our clinical trials, I ask, uh, the physician, can you document any side effects? They were not able to. And when people left the study, they left the study for various sundry reason. None of them were because of toxic effects. They just didn’t wanna do it anymore. They did not feel a benefit or they have some other personal concern. They left the study. So they weren’t at another kind of thinking that people have shown. They said, well, vitamin E, they may have problem with clotting sometime you hear people say that. So that, and so in that study in the pancreatic cancer study, they, when they found out that their pancreatic cancer, they have to go to surgery to remove the cancer in 30 days. Why is that? Because pancreatic cancer cannot wait. So the, the, the physician give them tocotrienol, the physician only have 14 days, two weeks, and then they have to do the 14 days is a very short time, but that’s all they got.

(39:18): It’s 14 days or no or no study. So that’s all they got. They give them 14 days, they’re under the scalpel of the surgeon to remove it. So the question being asked is, would the wound after you suture it heal because they have to do with clotting and then they compare with those who are not given tocotrienal. So in short, those were given tocotrienol at different doses at 200 all the way to three grams, many four higher to the one that were in control, not given any at all. The healing process of the suture were not significant in all the groups, meaning to say whether they take tocotrienol or not, they would heal similarly amount of time.

Shay (40:08): And as you know, Dr. Tan, my work through Integrative Touch as a social profit organization, we work with a lot of families who have a child who’s seriously ill and struggling. And those caregivers, those parents, sometimes grandparents, aunts, uncles, can be very stressed from taking care of a family member with serious illness. And I wonder if you think that there is benefit to taking tocotrienol for the stress of, for example, caregiving?

Barrie (40:40): Wow, thank you for asking this question Shay. When we had done all our studies, they were clearly for treatment and then, then I answer your question very specifically, after the contact is known, we study people with dyslipidemia, high lipids, we study people with pre-diabetes, diabetes, fatty liver condition, lots of studies on that. Uh, we study, uh, postmenopausal women with osteopenia not yet osteoporotic. And then we also study men and women, uh, who are obese with BMI graded than 30. Clearly these are stress on the, on the, on the person’s life. But you are talking about a stress of caregiver. So hopefully not in this condition if they were to be in this condition, absolutely to be useful to them. So, so we did early on about 15 years ago, we studied people who are 60 to 65 years old, otherwise none of these conditions I just mentioned, we purposely wanted to do that.

(41:49): So just by aging process. So when we did that, we found this, Shay, we found that there are lipids that tend to be a little bit high drop, a little bit not as significant, not as much as those that have this lipidemia, but they did drop. We notice we also study their liver enzymes. You’re oftentimes the liver tells a lot and the liver enzymes drop a bit and then the oxidized fat in their blood also drop, which is a marker of stress. And then we also measure an inflammation marker called C reactive protein and the C reactive protein drop. So for me there was good enough if a person does not have any chronic condition, known family history of X, Y, and Z, other than the living at the here and now because they have to take care as your group of a family member or a young person, that brings a lot of stress.

(42:57): And I know this personally in my own family, when there was a young child, uh, fortunately things worked out well, but it was difficult and both my wife and I are entering that for the first time. We have no books to follow. We just gave all of our life to do this. And during that time I remembered my wife and I talking to each other. We have to take care of ourself because if we don’t, the person we tried to take care of cannot get the maximum benefit. So, and that study we did of the 60, 65 years old, they had no other known condition and we saw that in taking this supplement, it just helped to reduce the oxidative stress just a tiny bit and their inflammation reduced a little bit more than a tiny bit. So yes, the answer is yes, it does help them.

Shay (43:50): Very good. Well I think Dr. Tan, you’ve done a wonderful job of giving our listeners some new insight into some of the specific benefits of vitamin E in particular form of vitamin E. Um, if there’s anything else that you feel would be important to convey, I just wanna give you an opportunity to do that before we close.

Barrie (44:12): Yeah, thank you. When the audience go look on the internet on vitamin E, 90% of the time it’ll be tocopherol. I do not recommend you to take that. And after less than 10% of the time, it’ll be tocotrienol and you can find three kinds from Rice, from Palm, and then from Annatto. If you look at any on the back of cheese, you’ll find that the coloring of cheese is from Annotto. So if you want annatoo tocotrienol, you know, and if you want it to be very specific that it come from us, we make it here, right here in beautiful, uh, Massachusetts, if is the only Toco Trino make in this country, in United States, make sure that the word Delta goal, it’s just our trade name is from another Delta because of Delta tocotrienol, you know, Delta goal. And that means it is, it comes from, uh, we don’t make finished product, we only do clinical studies.

(45:11): We only, uh, document all the study we and other people have done and so that people can follow what is new is coming. Otherwise there are list of other companies if go on the website, we list them all and you can buy them from Amazon and from other people. So that, that’s the only comment that I want to make. Thank you so much Shay, for allowing me to do this and thank you to the audience. I hope there are other good things in our life that we see as important. This will add onto the to the dosier of different things that can make our life better to ourself and to help those that in our cares.

Shay (45:50): Absolutely. Well, I really appreciate your knowledge in this area, Dr. Tan and I thank you for sharing it with our listeners.

Barrie (45:57): Thank you.

Conclusion (46:01): We hope you enjoyed this episode of The Conversations on Healing podcast. If you haven’t yet, please go to Apple Podcast, Spotify or your preferred podcast platform and subscribe, rate, and review. This podcast, it helps so you won’t miss an episode. See you next time.