What are Tocotrienols?

Vitamin E is comprised of two main forms, tocotrienols (T3s) and tocopherols (TOCs). T3s and TOCs have similar chemical structures. However, T3s are chemically and physiologically distinct to TOCs, because of their unsaturated trans double bonds at the 3’, 7’ and 11’ position of the 20- hydrocarbon side chain. There are four different types of T3s (alpha, beta, delta and gamma) and four different types of TOCs (alpha, beta, delta and gamma).

In contrast to TOCs which appear to have predominantly one mode of biological activity (antioxidant activity), T3s have several dietary supplement properties and wide therapeutic potential:

As nutraceuticals, Invictus has shown in clinical studies that T3s are effective in the reduction of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), improvement of muscle recovery after exercise and maintenance of peak muscle power.

For therapeutic applications, a number of animal and human studies by other research groups have shown that orally delivered T3s show efficacy in the treatment of metabolic disease including NAFLD (reference) and also cancer (including pancreatic cancer).

Therapeutically effective levels of T3s cannot be achieved through dietary sources alone and appear to have the most beneficial effects when delivered directly to target organs and tissues in the absence of TOCs.

Studies showing little or no effect from vitamin E supplementation partly failed due to these formulations containing high amounts of tocopherols, rather than comprising mostly (T3)’s

(Khor & Chieng 1997, Qureshi et al 2002, Qureshi et al. 1996)