What happened when cancer patients were given three-quarters of a cup of canned tomato sauce every day for three weeks?
“Occasionally… positive things happen popular savory foods in the field of cancer prevention science. “Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli are wonderful, but they can be” hard food for the public to swallow “. On the other hand, who doesn’t like tomatoes?
As I discussed earlier, studies With High-dose supplements containing lycopene, the antioxidant red pigment found in tomatoes that is believed to be the anti-cancer agent, have consistently failed to prevent or treat cancer. In fact, it can even end promote Cancer, as lycopene actually can plot As a pro-oxidant in high concentrations one can get it with dietary supplements. However, lycopene in the form of dietary supplements is not appear to be effective even at lower doses. “There is a strong reversal [protective] Correlation between fruit and vegetable intake and the incidence of certain types of cancer. “However, if we isolate a single compound in pill form, we can upset the healthy, natural balance of antioxidants.
It seems to Be It is entirely human hubris to believe we can reproduce the beneficial effects of eating whole fruits and vegetables by adding supplements to a single phytochemical that would normally interact with thousands of other compounds in Mother Nature’s intended natural matrix. “In addition to lycopene [other] known carotenoids in tomatoes and tomato-based products lock in It has been found that β-carotene, γ-carotene, ζ-carotene, phytofluene and phytoene accumulate in human prostate tissue. “There are also numerous non-carotenoid compounds in tomatoes that may have anticancer effects, not to mention all of the compounds that we haven’t even characterized.
It’s not over Find the only magic bullet. One study title reads: “The cancer-fighting effects of carotenoids and other phytonutrients lives in their combined activity. “For example, as you can see at 1:52 in my video Tomato sauce for prostate cancerwith the low concentrations of the tomato compounds phytoene, phytofluene and lycopene found Most people who eat normal amounts of tomatoes have very little in vitro effect on cancer cell growth when used separately. However, when combined, an ineffective dose of phytoene and phytofluene plus an ineffective dose of lycopene becomes somehow effective, thereby significantly suppressing the growth of prostate cancer cells. The same synergy can be seen in food. Curcumin, the yellow pigment in turmeric and curry powder, tomato extracts and the vitamin E contained in nuts and seeds inhibit the growth signal of prostate cancer cells – less than 10 percent – individually only slightly, but all three together suppress the growth signal 70 percent. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
So instead of giving cancer patients lycopene pills, what if we give give them some tomato sauce? Researcher given 32 localized prostate cancer patients three-quarters of a cup of canned tomato sauce daily for three weeks before performing radical prostatectomy. In her bloodstream, the PSA levels fell by 17.5 percent. PSA, prostate-specific antigen, is a protein produced by cells of the prostate gland, and elevated levels of PSA in the blood are routine used monitor the success of cancer treatment. “It was surprising that the 3-week tomato sauce-based dietary intervention” was able to lower PSA levels in men with prostate cancer. Free radical damage to DNA in her white blood cells also decreased by 21 percent. Imagine how low in antioxidants your diet must have been before when less than a cup of tomato sauce a day could reduce DNA damage by more than a fifth!
What have you done Find in her prostate? Human prostate tissue is thought “Particularly susceptible to oxidative DNA damage from free radicals, which are believed to play a crucial role in all stages of carcinogenesis,” that is, in the development of cancer. This could be for a number of reasons, including fewer DNA repair enzymes. Well, the researchers had tissue samples taken Biopsies before the onset of tomato sauce, as well as tissue samples from surgery after three weeks of tomato sauce, and resected tissues from patients with tomato sauce added 28 percent less free radical damage than expected. I’m showing a graph of the DNA damage in the prostate before the tomato sauce and after only 20 days of sauce at 4:18 am in mine Video. You can see the drop for yourself. It is interesting that there was no connection between the lycopene level in the prostate and the protective effects. Tomatoes contain a whole host of things, some of which can be even stronger than lycopene.
Regardless, unlike the lycopene supplements alone, the whole food intervention seemed to Help. To see if lycopene plays a role at all, one would have to test a lycopene-free tomato – in other words, a yellow tomato. What if you compared red tomatoes to yellow tomatoes, which contain all non-lycopene tomato compounds, to pure lycopene in a pill? The researchers fed the people red tomato paste, yellow tomato paste, lycopene pills, or placebo pills, and then dripped their blood on prostate cancer cells that were growing in a petri dish. As you can see in mine at 5:18 pm Video, the red tomato serum – the blood of those who ate red tomato paste – significantly decreased the expression of a growth-promoting gene called cyclin D1 by prostate cancer cells compared to those who did not eat anything. This down-regulation of the gene from eating red tomatoes “may help lower the risk of prostate cancer by limiting cell proliferation.” The red tomato seemed to work better than the yellow tomato, so maybe the lycopene helped – but not in pill form. This gene was “not regulated” by the lycopene pill serum, which suggests that it may be something else. And lycopene alone has significantly upregulated the procarcinogenic genes. “Therefore it can be stated that the consumption of tomatoes is preferable to pure lycopene …”
So what’s the best way? One spouse wrote to the editor of Harvard Men’s Health Watch that his husband would like pizza for his prostate, but they don’t believe it’s a healthy meal. The doctor responded with the suggestion of a “cheese-free pizza (please with broccoli instead of pepperoni)” or just some “tomato juice”.
Why eat tomato sauce when you can only take lycopene supplements? See my video Lycopene Supplements For Prostate Cancer.
Are There Foods We Should Avoid? Take a look at for example Prostate Cancer Survival: The A / V Ratio and How our gut bacteria can use eggs to accelerate cancer.
We can potentially prevent cancer and even reverse the progression of cancer with diet. See:
However, getting people to change is not always easy. See Diet change in a man after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.
In health,
Michael Greger, MD
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