Author: Mark Velov
Time for reading: ~4
minutes
Last Updated:
August 08, 2022
Learn more information about lycopene and beta carotene. In this article we'll discuss lycopene and beta carotene.
But, lycopene within supplement form doesn’t appear to be powerful at decrease doses, both.
In addition to lycopene, different carotenoids in tomatoes consist of beta-carotene, gamma-carotene, zeta-carotene, phytofluene, and phytoene, all of that are known “to build up within human prostate tissue.” And, “there are also severa non–carotenoid compounds within tomatoes that [may] have [anti-cancer] activity”—no longer to mention all the compounds we've yet to even symbolize.
But, it’s no longer about finding the only magic bullet: “The anti-most cancers effects of carotenoids and different phytonutrients may reside within [their] combined hobby.” For example, at the low concentrations of the tomato compounds phytoene, phytofluene, and lycopene observed in the general public who devour ordinary quantities of tomatoes, there’s very little effect on cancer cell growth within vitro, used separately.But combine them all collectively, and a non-powerful dose plus a non-powerful dose will become effective by some means, notably suppressing prostate most cancers cell boom.
And, the same synergy may be visible throughout foods. Curcumin, the yellow pigment within turmeric and curry powder, tomato extracts, and the nutrition E observed in nuts and seeds do little to inhibit pro-growth signaling of prostate most cancers cells—less than 10%.But all three together suppresses increase signaling like 70%.
The entire is extra than the sum of its components.So, How About Instead Of Giving Cancer Patients Lycopene Pills, We Give Them Some Tomato Sauce?
“Thirty-two patients with localized prostate [cancer]” have been given three-quarters of a cup of canned tomato sauce every day “for three weeks…before their scheduled radical prostatectomy.” In their bloodstream, PSA tiers dropped “through 17.5%.” PSA, prostate-particular antigen, is a protein produced through prostate gland cells, and multiplied blood levels are automatically used “to reveal the achievement of [cancer] treatment.
It changed into sudden to locate that,” in only three weeks, a “tomato sauce-based nutritional intervention” should decrease PSA concentrations in men with prostate most cancers. Also, unfastened radical harm of the DNA in their white blood cells dropped by way of 21%.Imagine how antioxidant-bad their weight-reduction plan need to have been beforehand, if much less than a cup of tomato sauce a day ought to reduce DNA damage via more than a 5th.
Here’s the DNA damage in the prostate before the tomato sauce, and right here’s after.
Just 20 days of sauce. And, what’s interesting is that “[t]right here turned into no affiliation among” the extent of lycopene in the prostate and the protective consequences.Tomatoes comprise a whole bunch of factors, some of which can be even extra powerful than lycopene.
Regardless, in comparison to the lycopene dietary supplements by myself, “the whole-food intervention” seemed to assist. To see if lycopene performed any function at all, one could have to test a lycopene-loose tomato—within other phrases, a yellow tomato.So, what in case you in comparison red tomatoes to yellow tomatoes, which have all the non-lycopene tomato compounds, to straight lycopene within a pill?
So, they fed people pink tomato paste, yellow tomato paste, lycopene capsules, or placebo tablets, and then dripped their blood on prostate cancer cells growing in a petri dish.This downregulation of the gene by the crimson tomato intake “may additionally make contributions to decrease prostate most cancers chance by way of limiting cellular proliferation.” The crimson tomato appeared to paintings better than the yellow;
so, perhaps the lycopene helped, however not in pill shape. “[T]his gene became no longer regulated through [the lycopene-pill serum],” indicating that perhaps it’s something else.And, lycopene on my own drastically upregulated “procarcinogenic genes.