Vitamin E Oil for Skin and Scars: What It Does and What It Does Not

Vitamin E oil is good at one thing on skin: protecting the fats on its surface from oxidation. It is not a proven scar treatment. The best scar trials found no benefit, and one found that a third of patients reacted to it.

I use it on my own skin every day, so I would rather you hear that from me. Here is what the studies show.

Vitamin E for skin: what it does there

Your skin already uses vitamin E. It gets there through your oil glands.

• The face is loaded with it. In 8 volunteers, the outer layer of cheek skin held 20 times more alpha-tocopherol than the upper arm. Vitamin E, both alpha and gamma, turned out to be a normal part of sebum, secreted continuously. The authors think it is there to protect skin surface fats from oxidation. (Thiele 1999)
• Swallowed vitamin E reaches the skin slowly. 24 volunteers took 400 mg a day for 14 days. Blood levels rose within 12 hours. Sebum levels did not move until day 21, when they were up by 87 to 92%. (Ekanayake-Mudiyanselage 2004)

So an oral supplement takes about three weeks to show up on your face. That is one reason people put it on directly.

Vitamin E for scars

This is the most common reason people buy the oil, and it is where the evidence is worst.

• Surgical scars, 15 patients. After skin cancer surgery, each patient put plain ointment on one half of the scar and the same ointment with vitamin E on the other half, twice a day for 4 weeks, double blind. In 90% of cases vitamin E had no effect or made the scar look worse. 33% developed contact dermatitis. The authors said its use on surgical wounds should be discouraged. (Baumann 1999)
• Burn reconstruction, 159 procedures. Patients were randomized to a topical steroid, topical vitamin E or the plain base cream for four months and followed for a year. Neither active treatment helped scar thickness, range of motion or appearance. Adverse reactions occurred in 16.4% on the active creams against 5.9% on the base cream. (Jenkins 1986)
• One positive study, in children. Vitamin E was applied to the planned incision site for 15 days before surgery and 30 days after. No child in that group developed a keloid, against 6.5% of the control group, and 96% of families rated the result very good against 78%. It was single blind. (Zampieri 2010)
• The systematic review. Six prospective studies qualified. Three reported improvement, and two of those used vitamin E in combination with other things. Three found nothing. The conclusion was that there is not enough evidence that vitamin E alone improves scars. (Tanaydin 2016)

If a scar is what you care about, a later review of 34 trials found that silicone gel and silicone sheets are the topical products with solid evidence. Only a limited number of studies supported vitamin E. (Tran 2020)

Vitamin E cream and the sun

On pig skin, a solution of 1% vitamin E with 15% vitamin C, applied for 4 days, gave about 4-fold protection against UV redness and sunburn cells. Each vitamin alone also protected, and the combination was better. (Lin 2003)

By mouth the effect is small. 8 people took 400 IU a day for 8 weeks. Vitamin E in their skin roughly tripled, but their sensitivity to UV did not change. (McArdle 2004)

Vitamin E oil is not sunscreen. Do not use it as one. The full breakdown is in seed oils and sunburn.

Vitamin E for eczema

This trial used capsules, not oil. 70 people with mild to moderate atopic dermatitis took 400 IU of vitamin E a day or placebo for 4 months. Itching, the area affected and the overall severity score all improved more on vitamin E. Three months after stopping, relapse rates were no different. (Jaffary 2015)

Vitamin E capsules on the face

People pierce a capsule and rub it in. I found no trial of that. Think about what is in the capsule before you do it.

• The carrier. Many softgels are vitamin E dissolved in soybean or sunflower oil. You would be putting seed oil on your face along with it.
• The form. Most capsules are alpha-tocopheryl acetate, often synthetic. Your sebum naturally carries both alpha and gamma tocopherol.
• The dose. Pure vitamin E is thick and sticky. A drop is enough.

How to read a vitamin E label is in the vitamin E guide.

The honest part

• It can cause a rash. Patch test clinics in North America tested 38,699 patients with tocopherol between 2001 and 2016. 0.9% reacted. The authors call that relatively rare given how widely it is used, but when it happened it was usually relevant, it was often on the face, and moisturizers were the most common source. (Warshaw 2021)
• The 33% dermatitis figure in the scar trial is much higher than that. It was 15 patients using it on fresh surgical wounds. Broken skin is not the place to test a new product.
• The sun protection result is from pig skin.
• I found no trials of vitamin E oil for wrinkles, dark spots or acne that I could cite here, so I am not claiming those.

Patch test first. Put a little on your inner forearm for a few days before it goes on your face. Do not put it on a fresh wound or a healing surgical scar without asking your surgeon.

How I use it

I take a mixed-tocopherol vitamin E by mouth and I put the same oil on my skin and scalp. The product I use has all four tocopherols and no seed oil carrier.

My reason is PUFA. In my view, the unsaturated fat stored in skin is what oxidizes under stress and sunlight, and vitamin E is the body's own defence against that. I think gamma tocopherol matters as much as alpha here. That is my reading, and the trials above did not test it.

E-Complete Oral Supplementskin.foodView product

Why I prefer mixed tocopherols is in gamma vs alpha tocopherol. What Ray Peat wrote about it is in Ray Peat on vitamin E.

Quick answers

Is vitamin E oil good for your skin?

Vitamin E is a normal part of the oil your skin makes, and it protects surface fats from oxidation. Trials support some benefit in atopic dermatitis when taken by mouth. Evidence for cosmetic uses of the oil is limited.

Does vitamin E help scars?

Mostly no. In a double-blind trial on surgical scars, vitamin E had no effect or worsened the appearance in 90% of cases, and a burn surgery trial found no benefit. A systematic review concluded there is not enough evidence for vitamin E alone. Silicone gel has better evidence.

Can vitamin E oil cause a rash?

Yes. In one scar trial 33% of patients developed contact dermatitis. In large patch test data, 0.9% of 38,699 patients reacted to tocopherol. Test it on a small area first.

Can you put vitamin E capsules on your face?

You can, but no trial has tested it. Many capsules contain synthetic tocopheryl acetate in soybean or sunflower oil, so check the ingredients and patch test first.

Does vitamin E cream protect against the sun?

A vitamin C and E solution gave about 4-fold protection against UV redness on pig skin. Oral vitamin E alone did not change UV sensitivity in a human study. It is not a replacement for sunscreen, shade or clothing.

How long does oral vitamin E take to reach the skin?

About three weeks. In a study of 24 volunteers taking 400 mg a day, vitamin E in facial sebum was unchanged at day 14 and 87 to 92% higher at day 21.