diff --git a/system/helpers/email_helper.php b/system/helpers/email_helper.php
index 0516e93..628667d 100644
--- a/system/helpers/email_helper.php
+++ b/system/helpers/email_helper.php
@@ -45,9 +45,9 @@
 	 * @param	string
 	 * @return	bool
 	 */
-	function valid_email($address)
+	function valid_email($email)
 	{
-		return (bool) preg_match('/^([a-z0-9\+_\-]+)(\.[a-z0-9\+_\-]+)*@([a-z0-9\-]+\.)+[a-z]{2,6}$/ix', $address);
+		return filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);
 	}
 }
 
diff --git a/user_guide_src/source/changelog.rst b/user_guide_src/source/changelog.rst
index a234d69..c47076d 100644
--- a/user_guide_src/source/changelog.rst
+++ b/user_guide_src/source/changelog.rst
@@ -53,6 +53,7 @@
    -  do_hash() now uses PHP's native hash() function, supporting more algorithms.
    -  Added an optional paramater to ``delete_files()`` to enable it to skip deleting files such as .htaccess and index.html.
    -  Removed deprecated helper function ``js_insert_smiley()`` from smiley helper.
+   -  Updated email helper to use ``filter_var`` to validate email addresses
 
 -  Database