Recent surgery (late March) has left a fairly lurid scar on the underside of my right arm at the wrist. I’m pretty sanguine about its appearance, but last week at dinner a friend’s wife, after inspecting it, suggested I try rubbing it daily with Vitamin E oil to reduce it. I’ve searched a bit on the Internet and have found the usual sorts of things where the holistic types state that it’s a miracle scar remover, while pharmaceutical-type sites refer to unnamed studies that say it has no medical effect.
My questions, therefore are:
Any known, citable studies as to the effectiveness (or not) of vitamin E in scar reduction?
I presume the scar will reduce somewhat on its own, and am thinking this will take maybe two years to do so. Anyone have a more firm timetable, from knowledge or personal experience?
If there are, they don’t leap out of the page at through googling tocopherols, scars, wounds or scarring at .edu or .gov.
Vitamin E has been around long enough that it’s difficult to patent a new health use for it. That makes it not very profitable to rigorously study new health uses for it.
I have no studies to cite and can only report excellent person efficacy of vit E. However, I think a good part of the benefit comes from the massage that you’re supposed to do with the oil - massage breaks up the scar tissue so the body can reabsorb it faster - at the very least the vit e helps with the massage, and it’s not particularly expensive.
My pediatrician always told me to rub vitamin E oil on the kids’ various cuts and scratches. I can’t say with any certainty that the scars I treated are any less obvious than the ones I didn’t, but then again, I was more likely to put the oil on the more obvious scars.
I had thyroid surgery many years ago. The scar was extremely visible (red and raised) for about a year, but it faded away to a white line during the second year. Now, twelve years later, it’s almost invisible. I’ve limited sun exposure to my neck, and I think that makes a bigger difference than anything else in making the scar less noticeable.
When my daughter was around five or six she suffered a nasty cut in her eyelid. I rubbed the Vitamin E oil on it and now, at age 20, you’d have to look very closely to see it.
I know that she has taken it upon herself to use Vitamin E oil on her various cuts and scrapes and she’s very happy with the results.
Of the several tattoos on people I know well, one of them came with the aftercare instruction to use Vitamin E oil on it (others had antibacterial stuff or lotion in some combination), and that tattoo looks really great; I’m planning on using it on my next one, as I seem to be a little allergic to the antibacterial stuff and lost more ink than I should have on the one I’ve got.
In college days, I accidentally branded myself with a frying pan (after just having fried up some eggs). One of my housemates was a nursing student and she told me to put vitamin E oil on it.
I did so and when it healed there was no scar whatsoever. And believe me that was a nasty burn!
A few years ago I suffered a nasty 2nd degree burn on my forearm from an exhaust pipe. During the healing process I applied Vitamin E and Aloe Vera Oil to the burn in a wet bandage. A year later the scar had completely disappeared.
Now I don’t know if it was the Vit E or the Aloe Vera, a combination of the two or the fact that I used a wet bandage for a month. The one thing I can say, however, is that I have a one burn scar on my hand that is 8 years old and it is very obvious and a 2 year old burn scar on the other hand that shows no signs of disappearing. (Yes, I’m apparently accident prone)
Geeeezuz! I failed to mention that the scars that are still visible were not treated with anything at all.
:::::sulks to the chalkboard to write a thousand times, “preview is my friend”:::::
Along those lines I had two friends, one was boiling gas on the stove, don’t ask what for cause I didn’t bother to ask. The other came over and of course asked what the hell he was doing. Then it caught fire and they threw it out on the driveway buring one on the hand pretty good. He used vitamin E on it and after a couple of weeks it looked pretty good and there is no scare today.
Both of my children had the chicken pox as toddlers. Well, to be fair, my son had a good serious case of the chicken pox as a toddler. My daughter came down with it a week or two later, and her case was one that even made our Pediatrician take a close look. This child was covered. Everywhere. Everywhere a little girl can be covered, she was, with itchy irritating painful pox. It was awful.
The Pediatrician recommended that we use Vitamin E oil for the scarring, and begin liberal application the second a pox burst. Once burst, it scabs over and forms the scar. The idea was that the oil would be absorbed into the open pox, and soothe the skin and inhibit scarring.
By all reasonable expectations, my daughter should have chicken pox scars all over her body. She has two that I know of. ( She may have more but she’s 13, so it’s likely been 7 or 8 years since I had to change her in bathroom type emergency and even then, wasn’t bathing her ). She should have clusters of scarring along her legs, torso, arms and neck and face. She does not.
We were vigilant as to examining her for pox and generous to the point of sloppy about applying the Vitamin E oil. I say this to address a post up there that supposes that is the massaging action itself that helps with the scarring, rather than something about the Vitamin E oil. I would not agree. We purposely did not massage in the oil, but rather drizzled it into the area and spread it very gently with a finger for a moment.
She slept naked, and rather… oogey? with the oils , for about a week after the pox finally started to subside. In all I would say she and her brother were lucky in that the application of the Vitamin E oil did a great job in helping the skin heal without scarring. My son has a few scars on his back, and one I am aware of on a calf.
I’ve had some pretty serious scars in my life, including major facial reconstructive surgery and a pierced calf muscle. I have never used a drop of Vitamin E, and yet I have almost no scarring whatsoever.
Hey, folks, a large enough number of crappy anecdotes may eventually amount to data.
Anyway, looks like according to at least one medical professional (QtheM), no particular effect, as long as dose is not excessive. I will therefore go ahead and continue using my little bottle of ‘E’ oil until it is used up, then think no more about it. Thanks for the contributions.
I may be a bit late, and therefore this post redundant, but Vitamin E is very widely known in the skating culture as a scar visibility reducer, and as a whole we sure as hell have had a lot of scars to test it on.
Those who have done such studies and published them find no benefit.
Warning! An Anecdote follows! Back in 1974, I did a study. I grant you that the number of participants (one) were too small for it to be scientifically valid, but as long as everyone else is throwing out anecdotes in place of real science, I will too. At least this anecdote has some passing familiarity with scientific method.
I’d been in a plane crash that summer, which left a large scar on my forehead. When my senior year in high school began, our AP bio course required we do a study. So I chose to rub half my scar in vitamin E, and leave the other half alone.
End result, which still can be seen over 30 years later? Not a damn bit of difference between the two halves of the scar! Ask Elfbabe, she can verify!
Maybe that’ll show hauss what lengths a doper will go to in order to find answers!
The most I’ve ever put on a cut or scrape is antibiotic ointment. I had chicken pox when I was about 4 or 5; Mom never used Vitamin E oil (I asked, just to be sure), and I only have two scars. They’re both on my forehead; they’re the deepest scars I have, but they’re rather small and close to the hairline. My other most prominent scars are on my knuckles and ankles. I have a few acne scars on my back and chest right now, but those are pretty quick to fade.
