Heart Facts | Tomato pills to beat heart disease- the truth

Tomato pills to beat heart disease- the truth

Posted on June 7, 2009
Filed Under Heart disease | Leave a Comment

Tomatoes have been shown to contain the beneficial lycopene which helps to reduce the incidence of prostate cancer, and now local newspapers are saying that tomatoes are indeed beneficial in preventing heart disease. Are they right or are they jumping the gun a little?

Lycopene is known as an antioxidant, and antioxidants have been shown to have numerous health benefits including reduction in oxidation which is responsible for high blood pressure and high cholesterol involved in heart disease. Lycopene can be difficult to absorb and the majority of our lycopene comes from tomato puree, tomato sauce, tomato juice and pizza toppings would you believe, whoever said pizza was bad for you could be wrong!!

However studies involving lycopene have yet to show that it reduces stroke, heart disease and heart attacks. The fact that it may lower oxidative processes within the body is not enough to warrant giving up your statins just yet. Another flaw in the very small studies conducted was the fact that no placebo was used. If you do not use a control then you can not compare your results to anything. The studies conducted only involved around 12 subjects, which is far too small a group to determine if lycopene is indeed useful for preventing heart disease.

It is back to the drawing board for this one, as many large scale trials are needed to indeed show the benefits of lycopene in preventing heart disease. Without such concrete evidence one cannot be sure that it is indeed lycopene and not another dietary factor which is responsible for the prevention of heart disease.

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