Vitamin E: Not an Elixer

More than 20 million people in the United States take vitamin E pills, and most of them do so with the hope that it will keep some part of them young, in some way.  Undocumented reports suggest that the vitamin could help ward off aging, along with cancer, dementia, and wrinkles. Now, according to this report in the Washington Post, it looks like none of that is true.  In fact, as the Post reports, an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association asserts that high doses of vitamin E and other antioxidants could increase the risk of heart failure in people with diabetes or clogged arteries. Patients 55 and older who took about 400 milligrams of vitamin E every day for seven years were 13 percent more likely to develop heart failure than those who took a placebo.