Tomatoes help prevent prostate cancer...

Today's post: Thursday, 5-29-2008

Recently a study was announced that strengthens the evidence that this is very likely true.

It’s been known that men who eat a lot of cooked tomatoes & particularly tomato sauce with extra virgin olive oil have a much lower incidence of prostate cancer than men who eat very few tomatoes or cooked tomato foods.

(It’s thought that the cooking & concentrating of tomatoes in sauce helps make the lycopene & other phytonutrients in tomatoes more bioavailable. And, since the extra virgin olive oil has its own phytonutrients that may be complementary & makes oil soluble nutrients more bioavailable it seems to increase the effect.)

And, it made TIME magazine when a study was announced that found that 30 mg a day of lycopene, the main carotenoid in tomatoes, seemed to help shrink existing prostate cancer if I remember the study correctly.

As someone who has a family history of prostate cancer, I’ve been using both these approaches ever since I read about them. Tomato sauce with extra virgin olive oil also is a part of the Mediterranean Diet that seems to be unusually heart protective. So that looks like a very good idea if you can do it. And, 10 mg Lycopene capsules are available at most health food stores. So I take 3 a day.

I’ve also found I really like sundried tomatoes. So, when I have the opportunity occasionally, I enjoy their intense burst of flavor.

Now, according to this new study, it seems that a component of dried tomatoes may have some ability to prevent prostate cancer. The researchers found that combining this ingredient with lycopene was strongly preventive of prostate cancer – in rats. If I remember the statistics right, it was 98% effective.

The researchers were careful to say that they did not test people. And, it is true that there are other studies on rats that show results that human studies simply do not.

However, given the previous background, it looks quite likely that this result does apply to human males. (And, it may also be that the lycopene plus cooked or dried tomatoes method may help prevent breast & ovarian cancer in women also.)

We’ve posted before that selenium, resveratrol, and exercise help prevent cancer.

So does staying away from all tobacco smoke.

And, we posted that while it doesn’t seem to reduce non-aggressive prostate cancer much to eat raw broccoli &/or raw cauliflower, it DOES cut the incidence of the dangerous kind of prostate cancer in about half.

Now it looks even more likely that dried or cooked tomatoes plus lycopene also help prevent prostate cancer.