In Type 1 diabetes, most often occurring in children and young adults, the body does not produce insulin and patients must take daily insulin injections to live. Type 1 accounts for about 10 percent of all diabetes cases. In Type 2 diabetes, the body either doesn't make enough insulin or doesn't properly use it to convert foods. This is the most common form of the disease, comprising about 90 percent of all cases. Weight loss and exercise can control many of these cases.
Scientists believe high doses of Vitamin E help diabetics on at least two levels.
First, the vitamin acts as an antioxidant, a kind of chemical shield that protects cells against free radicals - potentially damaging byproducts of the body's metabolism. The U.S. National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., says that free radicals can cause cell damage that may contribute to heart disease and certain cancers. And diabetics have an abnormally large supply of free radicals triggered by the high level of sugars, or glucose, in the blood. Second, Vitamin E appears to arrest the effects of glucose. When that is done, you reverse or stop or prevent many of the blood-vessel complications we find in diabetes,'' said King, one the country's leading Vitamin E researchers.