Vitamin E is your new best friend if you’ve just quit smoking

It’s that time of the year when we try to give up our bad habits and start healthier new ones.

And if you recently quit smoking, congratulations. It’s one of the hardest but most important changes you can make. (I’m an ex-smoker myself so I know both of those to be true first-hand)

And now there’s something you can do to make yourself healthier even faster.

In a new study, longtime smokers kicked their habits while taking gamma-tocopherol or a placebo. Gamma is one of the four tocopherol forms of vitamin E. Subjects took 500 mg daily.

The benefits were huge.

In the E group, researchers found significant improvement in flow-mediated dilation. This is a measure of blood vessel function.

That, in turn, reduced heart disease risk by about 20 percent more than the placebo group.

Also, two markers for inflammation declined further in the E group than the placebo group.

The takeaway here is that there’s a simple, safe way to erase a lot of the damage smoking has done over the years. So even people who thought “It’s too late to matter,” have a new reason to quit.

Sources:
“Gamma-tocopherol supplementation boosts smoking cessation benefits” Life Extension Foundation newsletter, 5/3/13, lef.org