We all know that it is important to take vitamins, but we don’t always know why. How do vitamins actually contribute to our overall health, and what can they do for our bodies?

Vitamin E has been in the news because it is an antioxidant. Antioxidants help us to stay healthy as we age by getting rid of extra oxygen that can cause damage to our bodies.

Simply calling vitamin E an antioxidant doesn’t explain much about what it does. In 1997, researchers reported that vitamin E can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s, but in 2005 another study showed this to be untrue. While the 2005 studies showed vitamin E to be ineffective at slowing mental decline, a new study has shown that vitamin E levels may combat physical decline. Let’s see what this new study actually says.

Yale researcher Benedetta Bartali, RD, PhD, and her colleagues published a study in the January 23, 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association indicating that older people who had low amounts of vitamin E in their blood lost more of their physical abilities as they got older. The researchers examined 1,155 patients in November 1998 and again in May 2000 to determine any changes in physical ability and of certain vitamins in their system. The patients then received follow-up exams once a year between November 2001 and March 2003 to see how both their abilities and vitamin levels changed.

Physical ability was measured three different ways, using a test developed by the National Institutes of Health. It measures the time it takes to walk 13 feet, how long it takes to get out of a chair and sit back down several times, and how well someone can balance in increasingly difficult positions. A patient gets a score of 0-4 on each part, which results in a total score of 0-12. For this study, a patient was described as losing physical ability if they lost at least 1 point on this test between check-ups. However, patients who started out with a score of 3 or less were not included in the rest of the study, and if patients did not have complete data they were also excluded from the study. As a result, of the 1,155 people initially enrolled, only 698 people were analyzed.

The researchers measured each person’s levels of vitamins B6, B12, D, E, and folate. After the data was analyzed, only vitamin E was significantly associated with a loss in physical ability. Patients who had lower than normal vitamin E levels lost an average of 1.6 points on the physical test, which was a significantly steeper decline than for people who were lower on other vitamins. Patients who were over 81 years old had a large decline in physical ability because of age, but younger patients (between 70 and 80) only had a large decline in physical ability if they had low vitamin E levels. This shows that lack of vitamin E could potentially result in poor physical functioning, but doesn’t prove it.

None of the other vitamins had a statistically significant impact on physical ability, but the next highest loss of ability recorded was 1.1, for people with low iron levels. However, that modest apparent decrease could have occurred by chance.

Do these study results mean we should all take Vitamin E? The researchers do not recommend that. More research is needed to see if the lack of vitamin E caused the decrease in physical abilities and whether increasing the amount of vitamin E can help prevent that loss.

The recommended daily amount of vitamin E is between 15 and 30 mg, which you can get through common foods such as green leafy vegetables, nuts, vegetable oils, and sunflower seeds. Be careful: taking too much vitamin E can be dangerous because it can prevent blood from clotting, and therefore cause excessive bleeding. However, this study suggests that making sure you get the recommended daily amount of vitamin E may be a good idea.