Reishi Protects Against Cancer & Contains Anti-Androgen; Adrenalin Rejuvenates Brown Fat; Mild Stress Normalizes Cortisol / DHEA Ratio in Elderly; DHEA, Aromatase Inhibitors & BPA vs. Joint & Brain Health; Vitamin E Battles Lymphoma

I am not happy with how the short news on Facebook simply disappear into oblivion.

The SuppVersity figure of the week is "920"! "920" as in "920 published posts" here at the SuppVersity. The reason that's the figure of the week is that I have been thinking about ways to reorganize the archive, but am a bit lost on how to structure things in a better way using blogger. This beast simply isn't made for anything that goes beyond a weekly classic blogpost a la "last week I did this and that, read about..." *yawn*

What's yet even more enervating is that despite having the huge advantage of being easily posted and directly accessible for all of you, the tons of short news items I post on a daily basis on the SuppVersity Facebook Wall simply disappear into the 'Facebook nirvana'. I currently cannot spend any time on those technical / organizational matters, but in the course of 2013 things are going to change.

In the mean time, follow the SuppVersity on Facebook and read the news, right when I post them + use google to find articles you are looking for. You will be laughing, but that's the way I dig through those 920 posts, as well ;-) Simply type whatever you look for and add a "+site:suppversity.blogspot.com" to it.

Chinese fungi are laden with cancer-protective molecules and 5a-reductase (DHT) inhibitors

In view of a recent paper from the Universitat de Valencia (Rios. 2013) it appears that it would actually be hard not to decrease your risk of developing cancer if you include extracts from Ganoderma lucidum and other related fungi, such as Poria cocos, Laetiporus sulphureus, Inonotus obliquus, Antrodia camphorata, Daedalea dickinsii, and Elfvingia applanata in your supplement regimen. With a total of 81 compounds from Ganoderma lucidum and other species from this genus, as well as 96 compounds isolated from other fungi, principally Poria cocos. It appears that these creatures (fungi are no plants, neither are they animals, but still sort of living beings) could hold the key to hundreds o natural anti-cancer agents.

Ganoderma lucidum better known as Rheishi mushroom may have cancer protective effects, but does not taste so bitter that no sane human being would eat it for a reason (photo by Eric Steinert)

I guess, I don't have to tell you that Chinese Medicine, of course, knew about the powerful anti-inflammatory and anti-proliferative effects of the lanostanes in these fungi, all along. Intuitively and probably by trial and error, the Chinese have found the tetracyclic triterpenoids that are derived from lanosterols in these fungi to be effective in the treatment of various diseases including different types of cancer. As of late the mostly anecdotal effects are backed by more and more research. A preliminary study by Sliva et al. (Sliva. 2002), for example, found that a hot water extract of both spores and the dried fruiting body of G. lucidum inhibited the progression of cancerous growth by reducing the expression of constitutively active growth and inflammation promoting transcription factors AP-1 and NF-κB: 

"The extracts also inhibited the secretion of uPA, thereby suppressing the migration of breast cancer MDA-MB-231 and prostate PC-3 cells. [...] High levels of both uPA and uPAR are associated with advanced tumors and decreased survival time in different malignant human cancers." (Rios. 2013)

These benefits do however come with a downside. At least in vitro, some of the fungi, particularly G. lucidum, obviously exert their effects via anti-androgenic pathways (Liu. 2007). A compound in Reishi that goes by the name ganoderol B, for example, does not just have inhibitory activity against 5α-reductase, but can also bind to the androgen receptor directly (if you will you could say it acts like an anti-anabolic SARM). Now, this was good news in a study that has been conducted by Liu et al., because it inhibited androgen-induced cell growth in an LNCaP cell line while suppressing testosterone-induced regrowth of the ventral prostate in rats. If those effects are however non-selective, you are about to run into problems once the molecules bind to receptors outside the prostate -- epression for example, if they block the androgen effects in the brain, etc.

That reminds me: What did Carl say on Thursday's installment of the SuppVersity Science Round Up? "The good thing about supplements is that they work, the bad thing about them is that they work!" I guess you can basically say the same about Reishi. Good that you as a SuppVersity reader always know about both, the good and the bad sides of supplements!

More short news

With me posting stuff on the fly on facebook, I am actally 'wasting' many of the very short news items, but nevertheless, here are a couple of relatively short news to round things up.

• 

  If you missed Monday's new on the quasi non-existent thermogenic effects of ephedrine, this would be a good time to read that post.

  Stress-induced browning of the fat? Chronic overexpression of noradrenaline (re-)generates wasted brown fat! In a way this is a follow up on the ephedrine post "Fat Burners Don't Work" as well as an addendum to a news on the role of GABA and brown fat in obesity, I just posted on facebook. According to an allegedly old study in the International Jornal of Obesity (Lee. 1986),  the chronic overexpression of noradrenaline as it is observed in humans with a certain form of adrenal tumor known as phaeochromocytoma can actually reactivate the intra-abdominal fat of human adults, including the omental fat, which is brown adipose tissue in infancy.
  
  Lee et al. see this as one of the main contributing factors to the weight loss which is typically seen with phaeochromocytoma. Sounds, logical, since the same stimulus that rejuvenates the Brown fat will also have it burn energy continuously - the overexpression of noradrenaline.
  
  
  Symptoms of overtly high noradrenaline levels include abdominal pain, chest pain, irritability, nervousness, pallor, palpitations, rapid heart rate, severe headache, sweating, hand tremor, high blood pressure, sleeping difficulties, and also weight loss.
  Even patients with Cushing's syndrome (hypercortisolemia) there is an increase in brown fat compared to healthy individuals. That the latter is not as profound is probably due to the ameliorative effect of cortisol on nor-adrenaline. After all, cortisol comes into play, when the stress becomes chronic and the acute nor-adrenaline response to stress, when it was prlonged any further would actually pose a direct threat to your health (just as phaeochromocytoma does, by the way; see red box on the right)
• Repeated moderate stress exposure increases DHEA production and normalizes corticosteriod levels in old apes (Goncharova. 2013). Yep, you are reading right we are not just talking about no rodent studies (although macacs are not exactly very human either ;-), but also about the role of repeated moderate stress in the normalization of aged induced abnormalities in the expression of adrenal hormones.
  

  

  Figure 2: Cortisol/DHEA ratio before and after 2h/day of immobilization stress.

  "In old monkeys the basal DHEAS levels were lower, while the [cortisol]/DHEAS ratio was higher than in young animals. Repeated immobilizations inhibited [cortisol] elevation on day 3, caused no changes in DHEAS reaction, led to increase of basal DHEAS levels and to a reduction of [cortisol]/DHEAS ratio on days 2, 3, 4, 10, 11." (Goncharova. 2013)

  In figure 2 you can see how profound the differences between acute, subchronic (3-day) and chronic responses actually are and that after 10 days of daily stress exposure in the form of daily 2-h immobilization stress actually are. Since I assume you don't want to be bound or enchained (well, maybe you want?), I suppose a viable alternative could be a shorter not too intense workout, although the acute responses to the latter vary with age as well (cf. Lennartsson. 2007).
• Monitor your DHEA levels closely, if you are concerned about joint degeneration According to a study that's about to be published in the next issue of the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, DHEA, or the estradiol your body generates from it via local aromatization, exerts major protective effects against osteoarthritis (Li. 2013).
  
  
  An additional note of caution with respect to the abuse of aromatase inhibitors, natural or not. Since they have the potential to reduce the expression of estrogen at the neuronal level in the brain they can precipitate  Alzheimer's dementia. While estrogen appears to decrease the MMP-3 & 13 expression in the cartilage reasearch by Merlo et al. suggests that it will increase others, namely namely MMP-2 and MMP-9  in the brain and thus facilitate the clearance of the ameloid beta plague that's rendering the brains of AD patients more and more dysfunctional (Merlo. 2013). You see, it's no chance that pre-menopausal women are protected from Alzheimer's yet more susceptible to multiple sclerosis (MS). After all, high MMPs 7 & 9 have only been observed in kids with MS, as well (Unsal. 2013).
  In their experiments on a rabbit model of osteoarthritis the scientists from the Zheejiang University in China tried to nail down the beneficial effects of DHEA on chrondocites and cartilage to estrogen by co-administering DHEA with the aromatase inhibitor letrozole, and/or the estrogen receptor inhibitor fulvestrant and observed that the
  

  "[e]xpression of MMP-3 and MMP-13 increased in both DHEA-treated chondrocytes and cartilage in the presence of letrozole and/or fulvestrant, while the expression of TIMP-1 and collagen type II (Col-II) decreased." (Li. 2013)

  With the former metalloproteinases (MMPs) being proteolytic enzymes, which break down cartilage and the latter, i.e. the tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinases (TIMPs), acting as their antagonists, it appears clear why both patients on testosterone replacement therapy who use too high of a dose of aromatase inhibitors and athletes who abuse respective products on cycle or during PCT often suffer from severe cartilage degeneration - I mean, combine the endogenous cartilage destruction due to high MMPs and low TIMP levels with the wear and tear of weight lifting... what good could come out of that?
  
  Note: A very similar effect has been reported for bisphenol A by Wang et al. in 2010, already (Wang. 2010). No wonder, after all BPA decreases the local expression of aromatization in joints and cartilage so that less estrogen will be floating around to keep the MMP levels in check and TIMP up (Watanabe. 2013).
• Alpha tocopherol to prevent lymphoma Regular vitamin E, i.e. the alpha-version of the tocopherols is no longer the star at the supplement sky it has once been hailed to be. A recent study by Renu Sharma Manjula Vinaya that's been published ahead of print in the journal Molecular Biology Reports shows however that this does not mean that it's outdated and useless (ask Ray Peat about it ;-).
  
  

  

  Figure 3: Lifespan (top) and ascite volume (=water accumulation in the abdominal area) of lymphoma carrying mice treated with what would be in human terms ~325, 650 and 975 IU/day of an alpha tocopherol only supplement  (Sharma. 2013)

  In order to test the hypothesis that the ROS scavenging abilities of vitamin E should help with cancer prevention (as a student of the SuppVersity you know that respective data from epidemiological studies are equivocal, some suggesting the exact opposite; read more), the researchers initially induced the growth of lymphomas in 10-15 week old male mice and subsequently treated them with either 1.5 mg (50 mg/kg bw), 3 mg (100 mg/kg bw) or 4.5 mg (150 mg/kg bw) of alpha-tocopherol for 14 days.
  
  As the data in figure 1 goes to show you, the treatment increased the lifespan of the rodents by 25% and reduced the ascite fluid volme (see image in figure 1) by ~46%. This was accompanied by reductions in protein carbonylation and increases in the "master anti-oxidant" GSH, as well as several other markers showing that vitamin E exerted profound anti-inflammatory effects in this rodent model of lymphoma.
  
  At least in my humble opinion that does not change the fact that your best sources of vitamin E are natural and that's smart to stay away from alpha-tocopherol only supplements and prefer a whole spectrum tocopherol + tocotrienol supplement. Remember: More is not better, when the one thing that counts are the ratios (read more about vitamin E)!
  

That's it for this week's installment of On Short Notice. As mentioned in the introduction, there are more and even shorter news on the SuppVersity Facebook Wall, which usually gets updated 3+ times per day with I would guess 9-12 items total - depending on whether it's a slow news day or not and the time I have to skim studies and popular science mags and repost summaries and links of and to the latter. Let's see what did we have today, already? Ah, yeah: "Review concludes: Just being patented makes Kinesio® no better than conventional taping" (more), "Interesting stupid science finds that GABA directly mediates energy expenditure." (more), or maybe you are interested in "If rapamycin blocks seizures in model of epilepsy. Is mTOR to blame for both?" (more)?

References:

• Goncharova ND, Vengerin AA, Chigarova OA. Repeated Moderate Stress Stimulates the Production of Dehydroepiandrosterone Sulfate (DHEAS) and Reduces Corticosteroid Imbalance in Old Macaca Mulatta.  Bulletin of Experimental Biology and Medicine Volume 153, Number 5 (2013), 750-753. 
• Lean ME, James WP, Jennings G, Trayhurn P. Brown adipose tissue in patients with phaeochromocytoma. Int J Obes. 1986;10(3):219-27. 
• Lennartsson AK, Kushnir MM, Bergquist J, Jonsdottir IH. DHEA and DHEA-S response to acute psychosocial stress in healthy men and women. Biol Psychol. 2013 May;90(2):143-9.  
• Li WJ, Tang LP, Xiong Y, Zhou XD, Wu LD. The chondroprotective effects of dehydroepiandrosterone probably exerted by its conversion to estradiol. J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2013 Oct 18. 
• Liu J, Shimizu K, Konishi F, Kumamoto S, Kondo R. The anti-androgen effect of ganoderol B isolated from the fruiting body of Ganoderma lucidum. Bioorg Med Chem. 2007 Jul 15;15(14):4966-72. 
• Merlo S, Sortino MA. Estrogen activates matrix metalloproteinases-2 and -9 to increase beta amyloid degradation. Mol Cell Neurosci. 2013 Apr;49(4):423-9.
• Ríos JL, Andújar I, Recio MC, Giner RM. Lanostanoids from Fungi: A Group of Potential Anticancer Compounds. J Nat Prod. 2013 Oct 23.
• Sharma R, Vinayak M. α-Tocopherol prevents lymphoma by improving antioxidant defence system of mice. Mol Biol Rep. 2013 Oct 14.
• Sliva, D.; Labarrere, C.; Slivova, V.; Sedlak, M.; Lloyd, F. P., Jr.; Ho, N. W. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 2002, 298, 603– 612.
• Unsal Y, Kıvılcım G, Ayşegül A, Arzu A, Esra G, Ercan D, Ayşe S. Matrix metalloproteinase-7 and matrix metalloproteinase-9 in pediatric multiple sclerosis. Pediatr Neurol. 2013 Sep;47(3):171-6.
• Wang KC, Lin YF, Qin CH, Chen TL, Chen CH. Bisphenol-A interferes with estradiol-mediated protection in osteoarthritic chondrocytes. Toxicol Lett. 2010 Oct 5;198(2):127-33. 
• Watanabe M, Ohno S, Nakajin S. Effects of bisphenol A on the expression of cytochrome P450 aromatase (CYP19) in human fetal osteoblastic and granulosa cell-like cell lines. Toxicol Lett. 2013 Apr 5;210(1):95-9.

Tocotrienols: What They Are, What They Do & How They Work + Why the RDA of Palm Olein is NOT 1xCup Per Day

Image 1: If you wanted to get the tocotrienol levels a producer of respective supplements says are  "required", you would have to eat at least 200g palm fruits a day. Alternatively, you can resort to 4kg of oats, if you like those better... What? you are wondering that you are not dead by now? After so many years of tocotrienol deficiency from not getting your 4kg of oats?

The long lists of pathologies related to vitamin E deficiency include, among others, all sorts of degenerative diseases from ataxia over general muscle degeneration to degeneration of sperm and subsequent infertility. But despite the fact that there is a pretty substantial amount of evidence that would suggest that a diet rich in vitamin E could not just prevent the aforementioned pathologies, but would also protect us from many of the currently prevalent ailments of western society such as obesity and coronary vascular disease (Mishra. 2003; Rimm. 1993), respective trials with dietary supplements usually show no, or even negative effects. I have already addressed a couple of  reasons why the benefits of dietary vitamin E intake often cannot be replicated with supplements in previous posts. The most significant one, probably is the absence of the "right" mixture and ratio of alpha-, beta-, gamma- and delta-tocopherols and, as an emerging contributer, the total absence of tocotrienols in the vast majority of vitamin E supplements and almost 99.9% of the pertinent trials.

What are tocotrienols? And what do they do?

I could now rant about the structural differences between the two, with the tocotrienols being an unsaturated variety of the tocopherols with a isoprenoid side chain, but I guess it is enough to know that due to  differences in their molecular structure, they also differ in their effects on the human body, of which you may already have apprehended that their cholesterol lowering effects were the first to attract the attention from researchers (Qureshi. 1986). Within the last 26 years researchers from all around the world have identified additional health benefits, the most prominent of which are...

• Anti-cancer effects (Kato. 1985; Sundram. 1989; Weng. 2009),
• General antioxidant effects (Newaz. 1999),
• Brain specific antioxidant effects (Khanna. 2003),
• Exercise-specific antioxidant effects (Lee. 2009),
• Cardiovascular disease (Shibata 2009)
• Diabetic neuropathy (Kuhad. 2009)
• Bone health (Ahmad. 2005)
• Metabolic syndrome (Weng. 2011)
• Antithrombotic effects (Qureshi. 2011)
• Endocrine health (Yu. 2005)
• Liver health (Patel. 2013)

The purpose of today's SuppVersity article is yet not so much to compile the most extensive list of potential, purported or demonstrated benefits of tocotrienols, the major dietary sources of which are (Kobayashi. 1975; Tan. 2011)

• rice bran oil (50:50 tocopherol:tocotrienol ratio), 
• palm oil (25:75 tocopherol:tocotrienol ratio), and 
• annatto (0.1:99.9 tocopherol:tocotrienol ratio) oil
• human breast milk (!) [though this is probably no major source for you ;-]

but rather to take a look at an intriguing chart of the various molecular targets (Aggarwal. 2010) and discuss the implications:

Figure 1: Molecular targets (left) and proteins that directly interact with tocotrienols (right; adapted from Aggarwal. 2010)

As you can see  without even looking really close at the above graphic, the number of those targets is vast. Another thing you should see right away is that the effect of the tocotrienols is mostly inhibitory (red ovals in the left) and include a couple of old foes, such as:

• the inflammatory cytokines & transcription factors: IL-1, IL-6, TNF-alpha, nf-kappabeta, IL-8 (probably involved in auto-immune reactions), PF-A4 (increases platelet aggregation and thus thrombosis risk)
• factors involved in angiogenesis and cardiocascular disease: VEGF (vascular growth factor, involved in CVD) and its receptor VEGF-r, VCAM-1 (increases adhesion of immune cells to the endothelial wall)
• kinases involved in the cell cycle and apoptotic regulators: CDK's, PKC, pERK, etc. & survivin, IAP-1 & 2 etc., but also telomerase, which are all involved in the proliferation of cancer
• enzymes involved in inflammatory processes: eNOS, iNOS, COX-2, etc.

On the upregulatory side of things, we have

• enzymes from the CYP cascade, which are among other involved in the clearance of estrogen, and other hormone like substances and the metabolism of drugs,
• MAPK and JNK, which exert anti-catabolic effects on muscle tissue, or 
• GPX and SOD, two of the major enzymes involved in the antioxidant defenses

Now, if we take a look at all these, you may remember that low COX-2 levels have only recently been identified with profound overtraining (cf. "Overtraining inflammation insufficient repair"), that AKT (not mentioned above, but in figure 1) is one of the driving forces of skeletal muscle anabolism and telomerase, extends cell life in general, not just in cancer cells. Which brings us back to the issue of ...

...how much anti-oxidants do we actually need?

Figure 2: Total tocopherol and tocotrienol content of high vitamin E foods / oils (top) and tocopherol ratios (bottom) , data based on Whittle. 1967 and Slover. 1971

Or, in this particular case, how much tocotrienols are still beneficial? Neither I, nor anybody else knows the exact answer to this question. And against this fact, the recommendations I came across on the website of a major producer of respective supplements, which state that you would need

• 80g of palm oilen (cooking oil),
• 160g of rice bran oil,
• 3kg of barley,
• 1.5kg of wheatgerm, or 
• 4kg of oats

to (I quote) "achieve the required [my emphasis] level of tocotrienols" should tell any reasonable person that those "required" levels (~150mg) are probably required to generate the target revenue of the said company, yet probably not required for you or any other human being to thrive.

Do not stack one more, but take one out!

Instead of adding another overpriced (and probably overdosed) tocotrienol supplement to your regimen, it is thus probably wiser to simply drop any superflous and potentially harmful alpha-tocopherol only supplements which do would offset the alpha- to gamma- and delta- tocopherol ratio (this could potentially be ameliorated by taking a natural blend) and limit the total tocopherol intake to reasonable levels, as the latter has also been shown to hamper the absorption and retention of tocotrienols (Ikeda. 2003). In this context it is also noteworthy that Ping Tou Gee writes in a 2011 paper with the aptly chosen title "Unleashing the untold and misunderstood observations on vitamin E" that this fact alone would suggest that "there is a need to review critically on the dietary reference intakes recommendations" for alpha tocopherol (α-T). His bold statement that

[i]t is not known whether α-T is still essential to humans in long terms, α-T₃ [alpha tocotrienol] diet appeared to produce healthy rats over five generations.

is yet probably an attribution to Palm Nutraceuticals Sdn. Bhd. (which is not the aforementioned company which wants to force-feed you either their supplements or 2 cups of rice bran oil), of which he states in the acknowledgments that he thanks them "for permission to publish this paper" and further evidence for how pathetic parts of the research in the medical field is - awful this science business, isn't it?

References:

1. Aggarwal BB, Sundaram C, Prasad S, Kannappan R. Tocotrienols, the vitamin E of the 21st century: its potential against cancer and other chronic diseases. Biochem Pharmacol. 2010 Dec 1;80(11):1613-31. Epub 2010 Aug 7.
2. Ahmad NS, Khalid BA, Luke DA, Ima Nirwana S. Tocotrienol offers better protection than tocopherol from free radical-induced damage of rat bone. Clin Exp Pharmacol Physiol 2005;32:761–770 
3. Gee PT. Unleashing the untold and misunderstood observations on vitamin E. Genes Nutr. 2011 Feb;6(1):5-16. Epub 2010 Jul 20.
4. Ikeda S, Tohyama T, Yoshimura H, Hamamura K, Abe K, Yamashita K. Dietary alpha-tocopherol decreases alpha-tocotrienol but not gamma-tocotrienol concentration in rats. J Nutr. 2003 Feb;133(2):428-34.
5. Kato A, Yamaoka M, Tanaka A, Komiyama Ka, Umezawa I. Physiological effect of tocotrienol. J
   Japan Oil Chem Soc (Yukugaku) 1985;34:375–376.
6. Khanna S, Roy S, Ryu H, Bahadduri P, Swaan PW, Ratan RR, et al. Molecular basis of vitamin E
   action: tocotrienol modulates 12-lipoxygenase, a key mediator of glutamate-induced
   neurodegeneration. J Biol Chem 2003;278:43508–43515.
7. Kobayashi H, Kanno C, Yamauchi K, Tsugo T. Identification of alpha-, beta-, gamma-, and delta-
   tocopherols and their contents in human milk. Biochim Biophys Acta 1975;380:282–290.
8. Kuhad A, Chopra K. Attenuation of diabetic nephropathy by tocotrienol: involvement of NFkB
   signaling pathway. Life Sci 2009;84:296–301.
9. Lee SP, Mar GY, Ng LT. Effects of tocotrienol-rich fraction on exercise endurance capacity and
   oxidative stress in forced swimming rats. Eur J Appl Physiol 2009;107:587–595.
10. Mishra GD, Malik NS, Paul AA, Wadsworth ME, Bolton-Smith C. Childhood and adult dietary vitamin E intake and cardiovascular risk factors in mid-life in the 1946 British Birth Cohort. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2003 Nov;57(11):1418-25.
11. Newaz MA, Nawal NN. Effect of gamma-tocotrienol on blood pressure, lipid peroxidation and total antioxidant status in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Clin Exp Hypertens 1999;21:1297–1313.
12. Patel V, Rink C, Gordillo GM, Khanna S, Gnyawali U, Roy S, Shneker B, Ganesh K, Phillips G, More JL, Sarkar A, Kirkpatrick R, Elkhammas EA, Klatte E, Miller M, Firstenberg MS, Chiocca EA, Nesaretnam K, Sen CK. Oral tocotrienols are transported to human tissues and delay the progression of the model for end-stage liver disease score in patients. J Nutr. 2013 Mar;142(3):513-9. Epub 2013 Feb 1. 
13. Qureshi AA, Burger WC, Peterson DM, Elson CE. The structure of an inhibitor of cholesterol biosynthesis isolated from barley. J Biol Chem. 1986 Aug 15;261(23):10544-50.
14. Qureshi AA, Karpen CW, Qureshi N, Papasian CJ, Morrison DC, Folts JD. Tocotrienols-induced inhibition of platelet thrombus formation and platelet aggregation in stenosed canine coronary arteries. Lipids Health Dis. 2011 Apr 14;10:58.
15. Rimm EB, Stampfer MJ, Ascherio A, Giovannucci E, Colditz GA, Willett WC. Vitamin E consumption and the risk of coronary heart disease in men. N Engl J Med. 1993 May 20;328(20):1450-6.
16. Slover HT. Tocopherols in foods and fats. Lipids. 1971 May;6(5):291-6.
17. Sundram K, Khor HT, Ong AS, Pathmanathan R. Effect of dietary palm oils on mammary
    carcinogenesis in female rats induced by 7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene. Cancer Res 1989;49:1447–1451
18. Shibata A, Nakagawa K, Sookwong P, Tsuduki T, Oikawa S, Miyazawa T. delta-Tocotrienol
    suppresses VEGF induced angiogenesis whereas alpha-tocopherol does not. J Agric Food Chem
    2009;57:8696–8704.
19. Tan B. Tocotrienols: The New Vitamin E. Spacedoc.net. http://www.spacedoc.com/tocotrienols
20. Weng-Yew W, Selvaduray KR, Ming CH, Nesaretnam K. Suppression of tumor growth by palm
    tocotrienols via the attenuation of angiogenesis. Nutr Cancer 2009;61:367–373.
21. Weng-Yew W, Brown L. Nutrapharmacology of tocotrienols for metabolic syndrome.
    Curr Pharm Des. 2011;17(21):2206-14. 
22. Whittle KJ, Pennock JF. The examination of tocopherols by two-dimensional thin-layer chromatography and subsequent colorimetric determination. Analyst.1967 Jul;92(96):423-30.
23. Yoshikawa S, Morinobu T, Hamamura K, Hirahara F, Iwamoto T, Tamai H. The effect of gamma-tocopherol administration on alpha-tocopherol levels and metabolism in humans. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2005 Aug;59(8):900-5.
24. Yu FL, Gapor A, Bender W. Evidence for the preventive effect of the polyunsaturated phytolside chain in tocotrienols on 17beta-estradiol epoxidation. Cancer Detect Prev. 2005;29(4):383-8.