Author: Nia Rouseberg
Time for reading: ~4
minutes
Last Updated:
February 15, 2026
Learn more information about lycopene health. In this article we'll discuss lycopene health.
But, lycopene within complement form doesn’t appear to be powerful at decrease doses, both.
In addition to lycopene, different carotenoids within tomatoes encompass beta-carotene, gamma-carotene, zeta-carotene, phytofluene, and phytoene, all of that are regarded “to accumulate within human prostate tissue.” And, “there also are severa non–carotenoid compounds within tomatoes that [may] have [anti-cancer] hobby”—not to say all of the compounds we have but to even represent.
But, it’s now not approximately locating the one magic bullet: “The anti-cancer outcomes of carotenoids and different phytonutrients can also reside in [their] combined pastime.” For instance, at the low concentrations of the tomato compounds phytoene, phytofluene, and lycopene located in most of the people who consume ordinary quantities of tomatoes, there’s very little effect on cancer cell increase within vitro, used separately.But integrate all of them collectively, and a non-powerful dose plus a non-effective dose will become effective in some way, substantially suppressing prostate cancer cellular boom.
And, the identical synergy can be seen across foods. Curcumin, the yellow pigment in turmeric and curry powder, tomato extracts, and the vitamin E observed in nuts and seeds do little to inhibit seasoned-increase signaling of prostate most cancers cells—much less than 10%.But all three collectively suppresses increase signaling like 70%.
The whole is extra than the sum of its elements.So, How About Instead Of Giving Cancer Patients Lycopene Pills, We Give Them Some Tomato Sauce?
“Thirty- patients with localized prostate [cancer]” have been given three-quarters of a cup of canned tomato sauce each day “for three weeks…earlier than their scheduled radical prostatectomy.” In their bloodstream, PSA ranges dropped “by using 17.5%.” PSA, prostate-specific antigen, is a protein produced by way of prostate gland cells, and improved blood levels are routinely used “to monitor the fulfillment of [cancer] treatment.
It changed into unexpected to discover that,” in just three weeks, a “tomato sauce-based totally nutritional intervention” could lower PSA concentrations in men with prostate most cancers. Also, free radical damage of the DNA of their white blood cells dropped by way of 21%.Imagine how antioxidant-terrible their food regimen should have been in advance, if much less than a cup of tomato sauce a day could lessen DNA damage with the aid of extra than a 5th.
Here’s the DNA harm within the prostate before the tomato sauce, and right here’s after.
Just 20 days of sauce. And, what’s thrilling is that “[t]right here become no association among” the level of lycopene inside the prostate and the protective outcomes.Tomatoes incorporate an entire bunch of factors, a number of which may be even more powerful than lycopene.
Regardless, in evaluation to the lycopene dietary supplements on my own, “the complete-food intervention” seemed to help. To see if lycopene performed any position at all, one would have to check a lycopene-free tomato—within other phrases, a yellow tomato.So, what in case you compared crimson tomatoes to yellow tomatoes, which have all the non-lycopene tomato compounds, to instantly lycopene in a pill?
So, they fed humans purple tomato paste, yellow tomato paste, lycopene drugs, or placebo pills, and then dripped their blood on prostate most cancers cells developing in a petri dish.This downregulation of the gene by using the crimson tomato intake “can also make contributions to decrease prostate cancer threat by limiting mobile proliferation.” The crimson tomato appeared to work better than the yellow;
so, maybe the lycopene helped, however now not within tablet shape. “[T]his gene changed into not regulated via [the lycopene-pill serum],” indicating that maybe it’s something else.And, lycopene by myself substantially upregulated “procarcinogenic genes.