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Medical Forum / Diseases and Disorders / Prostate BPH / September 2003Has anyone tried Lycopene ?
A few years ago I read an article about Lycopene and tried to buy some at a local herbalists in Edinburgh. They told me that they no longer stocked it as they did not believe that it was beneficial. It has cropped up agan today in another article in the same paper. Has anyone tried it and did it have any effect? Derek. Prostate pill gives libido a lift by MARIANNE POWER, Daily Mail n over-the-counter supplement for prostate cancer may boost men's libido as a side-effect. Scientists testing the supplement, which combines the cancer-fighting ingredients found in tomatoes, say some patients have reported improved virility. The capsule, available in the UK for two years, is undergoing clinical trials on 50 patients at King's College, London. Prostate cancer is the most common form of male cancer with more than 22,000 men diagnosed each year. There are a number of ways to treat it surgically and with drugs, but as yet no way to prevent it. And many men fear impotence will follow. Several studies are being conducted into the role of nutrition. Recent research has centred on the super-nutrient lycopene - a phytochemical, that gives tomatoes their red colour and is present in watermelons, grapes and some shellfish. Studies at Harvard Medical School, involving 48,000 men, showed that those who ate tomatoes more than twice a week reduced their risk of contracting prostate cancer by as much as 34 per cent. The new supplement, Lyco Plus, contains a combination of lycopene and vitamin C which work together as powerful anti-oxidants to fight cancer. The connection between lycopene and reduced cancer risks is well documented - but by combining it with vitamin C, its durability and effectiveness in the body is said to make it even more powerful. The body can't absorb lycopene naturally from unprocessed tomatoes, but it can be absorbed from processed or cooked tomato products. Lyco Plus contains 5mg of natural tomato lycopene, equivalent to three or four large, cooked tomatoes, and gives the body its maximum daily dose. It also contains other antioxidants, including vitamin E and phytochemicals. Professor George Truscott from Keele University, one of the scientists behind the supplement, says: "People take Lyco Plus for two reasons. Either they have no prostate problems and want to ensure it stays that way or they are at greater risk of prostate cancer, with a high PSA count (Prostate Specific Antigen Levels, an indicator for the disease) or a strong family history of cancer. It was the year-long Lyco Plus trial at King's College that showed that as well as bringing down patients' PSA counts, some men also found their libido increased, and in some cases there was improved fertility. "Although we weren't designing the pill to do this,' says Prof Truscott,'it makes sense. Anything that makes the male sex gland healthier will make it more responsive and sensitive." Ed Perry, 74, from Staffordshire, has been taking Lyco Plus for two years and says: "My PSA count has gone from eight, which is high, to three/four which is normal. I walk ten miles a day and play golf three times a week. Something is going right." i use lycopene as an antioxidant, preventative (cancer, etc.). comes from tomatoes; is a good food supplement. i was stirred onto walmart as an inexpensive source. frank > A few years ago I read an article about Lycopene and tried to buy some at a > local herbalists in Edinburgh. They told me that they no longer stocked it [quoted text clipped - 61 lines] > which is normal. I walk ten miles a day and play golf three times a week. > Something is going right." Here is an interesting article about lycopene, there are several more like this so you have to make your own conclusions. Pinkot From Roger Mason, Young Again Products, Wilmington, NC 28403 Lycopene A lone voice in the wilderness. Go to your local drug or health food store and you?ll see lycopene supplements on the shelf. Look at the vitamin catalogs and you?ll see lycopene supplements. Read those doctor's newsletters and they will tell you about the wonders of lycopene, that wonderful extract of tomatoes. The Life Extension Foundation swears by lycopene and has their own brand. Dr. Robert Willix (?Health & Longevity?) swears by lycopene. Go to natural health trade shows and you?ll see many suppliers of lycopene. So why am I literally the only person in the whole wide world screaming OFRAUD?? Why am I the only person in the world who is telling you this is useless and will not help your prostate? It?s because I?m a research chemist folks. I don?t do this for money or self-aggrandizement, just for the facts. Wherever the truth leads me is where I want to go. You are probably aware that tomatoes, like potatoes and most peppers are members of the Nightshade family and have deleterious alkaloids like solanine in them. Part of the macrobiotic philosophy includes NOT eating tomatoes, potatoes, peppers or eggplants. Many people have gotten arthritis relief from taking Nightshade vegetables out of their diets. There are scientific studies to verify all this. So I was very suspicious when a major ketchup company started to promote an Israeli lycopene supplement. As I looked at the clinical studies it was absurd. Doctors asked men to remember how much pizza and spaghetti with tomato sauce they remembered eating and said lots of pizza correlated with prostate health! I don?t make these things up; I know you think I stay up late at night making this stuff up. Truth has always been stranger than fiction as we all know. So, I found the REAL studies that weren?t funded from Israel or from ketchup companies and found out what I had suspected from the beginning lycopene is useless for prostate health. One very good study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1990 (Volume 82, pages 941-6) took place in Washington County, MD. The actual blood serum of 25,802 men was drawn and the micronutrients like lycopene were analyzed. They did in fact find that retinal (Vitamin A or beta carotene intake) blood levels were very important for good prostate health, but that lycopene had no relevance. Over twenty-five thousand real men had their blood drawn and analyzed for lycopene and they found it was irrelevant. Doesn?t that sound better than asking you how many pizzas you remember eating? And, published in such a respectable journal as the JNCI, which is not one to advocate natural health very much. Another study was done in Honolulu in 1997 and published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Preview (Volume 6, pages 487-91). Here they studied 6,860 men and drew their blood. This was analyzed for lycopene content and compared with their medical records and prostate health. No relation at all was found. Almost 7,000 real men had their blood drawn and clinically analyzed and they could not find the slightest relation of lycopene to prostate health. I could go on with dietary studies such as the one from the famous Johns Hopkins University in 1991, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology (Volume 133, pages 215-9) where they concluded that dietary intake of lycopene is not associated with prostate cancer risk, but you get the idea. It?s useless. > i use lycopene as an antioxidant, preventative (cancer, etc.). comes from > tomatoes; is a good food supplement. i was stirred onto walmart as an [quoted text clipped - 75 lines] > > which is normal. I walk ten miles a day and play golf three times a week. > > Something is going right." So I was very suspicious when a major ketchup company started to > promote an Israeli lycopene supplement. As I looked at the clinical studies > it was absurd. Doctors asked men to remember how much pizza and spaghetti > with tomato sauce they remembered eating and said lots of pizza correlated > with prostate health! Correlational research is acceptable research. But it went well beyond all that with high doses of lycopene being given to men with high PSAs and found it reduced the measurements. AARP is having a very large food-based survey on health which has been underway for about 5 years. It includes quite a bit about prostate health (including whether the respondents have had a digital rectal exam and/or PSA test within 1 year of the questionnaire. I am not sure when the research will wind up. I was in the base study and they said they would find me in about 5 years. Still at the same place.... It makes you wonder about a country like Italy, prostate cancer rates must be very low there if lycopene was so helpfull. > So I was very suspicious when a major ketchup company started to > > promote an Israeli lycopene supplement. As I looked at the clinical [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > base study and they said they would find me in about 5 years. Still at the > same place.... Good point. Does anyone know if there was any research done in Italy? Did it corroborate the relationship to prostate health? Thank you. David S. > It makes you wonder about a country like Italy, prostate cancer rates must > be very low there if lycopene was so helpfull. > Good point. > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > > It makes you wonder about a country like Italy, prostate cancer rates must > > be very low there if lycopene was so helpfull. There are widespread regional differences in cancer rates overall. Tomatoes used to be called 'poison apples' in the United States because they had a natural insecticide in them which resisted disease. That was pretty well bred out of the current domestic tomato. In the chart of Age Adjusted Death Rates from Roger Mason's ebook, The Natural Prostate Cure, the rate of prostate cancer mortality in Italy is relatively low compared to that of the U.S. The chart shows about 7 deaths per 100,000 to be attributable to Prostate Cancer in Italy vs. about 15 deaths per 100,000 attributed to PC in the U.S. However, the chart is labeled "Dietary fat intake correlates extremely closely with prostate cancer rates." According to the same chart, China has the lowest rate, with approximately 1 death per 100,000. What are the Chinese doing that we Americans are not doing? Some have suggested that they eat less meat and more soy products. They certainly consume more vegetables, both in variety and quantity, and perhaps the same goes for fruits too. I have the idea that they don't consume dairy foods nearly as frequently as we do. In fact, I can't ever recall seeing cow's milk or cheese on the menu at a Chinese restaurant or in a Chinese recipe. Someone I spoke to recently suggested that Americans are taller on the average than people of other nations because of the quantities of dairy foods we eat. This would suggest a high correlation between consumption of dairy foods and PC that might be borne out with a study on diet in various countries. I have the suspicion that much Chinese farming is still performed using more traditional, old fashioned methods than the ones employed here. They are probably not as yet dependent on petrochemical fertilizers. I suspect that the typical Chinese diet includes far fewer calories per day than ours. But who can really say why Italians and Chinese have lower incidences of death from prostate cancer without a complete analysis of diets and lifestyles. Roger Mason's conclusion is "The less fat you eat the better." Mason does not advocate using Lycopene to prevent or treat prostate cancer. However here is a quote from an article to be found on Medscape.com which cites studies that suggest Lycopene may have some beneficial effects with respect to prostate cancer: > In epidemiological studies, dietary consumption of lycopene has been associated with lower risk of prostate cancer. In a review of 72 epidemiological studies that investigated a link between cancer risk and consumption of tomato products, 57 linked tomato intake with a reduced risk; in 35 of those studies, the association was considered statistically significant.[31] A major prospective study by Gann et al[32] examined the relationship between the plasma concentration of several antioxidants and the risk for prostate cancer, using plasma samples obtained in the Physician's Health Study. They reported that lycopene was the only antioxidant found at significantly lower mean levels in prostate cancer cases than in matched controls. Another study by Rao et al[33] investigated the levels of serum and prostate tissue lycopene and other major carotenoids in cancer patients and controls. They found that while the serum and tissue beta-carotene and other major carotenoids did not differ between the two groups, serum and tissue lycopene levels were significantly lower in the cancer patients than in their controls. These findings support other study results that identify lycopene as the carotenoid with the clearest inverse relation to the development of prostate cancer. In a more recent study,[34] 33 men were randomly assigned to take lycopene or no supplement for 30 days before their prostatectomies; postoperatively, researchers found that in the lycopene-supplemented group, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels fell 20% and cancer had spread in only 33% of the subjects. However, in 75% of the control group, cancer had spread and their PSAs remained unchanged.[34] Although the sample size in this study is small, these results warrant further examination of the role of lycopene in the progression of prostate cancer. You can search medscape for more information on the subject. > Good point. > [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] >>It makes you wonder about a country like Italy, prostate cancer rates must >>be very low there if lycopene was so helpfull. What an excellent post, the Chinese also suffer less from Breast Cancer, they also tend to not overcook their food. Apparently the chinese that adopt a western Style diet do get the same problems as westerns. I don`t know what sort of diseases they die from except SARS, it would be interested to know what the chinese die from actually and also the Italians. Pinkot > In the chart of Age Adjusted Death Rates from Roger Mason's ebook, The > Natural Prostate Cure, the rate of prostate cancer mortality in Italy is [quoted text clipped - 82 lines] > >>It makes you wonder about a country like Italy, prostate cancer rates must > >>be very low there if lycopene was so helpfull. George: Do you have a link to the AARP study? I am just interested in reading more about it. Hope you are well. Thank you. David S. > Correlational research is acceptable research. But it went well beyond > all that with high doses of lycopene being given to men with high PSAs and [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > base study and they said they would find me in about 5 years. Still at the > same place.... Lower prostate cancer risk in men with elevated plasma lycopene levels: results of a prospective analysis. Gann PH; Ma J; Giovannucci E; Willett W; Sacks FM; Hennekens CH; Stampfer MJ Department of Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA pgann@nwu.edu Cancer Res (United States) Mar 15 1999, 59 (6) p1225-30 Dietary consumption of the carotenoid lycopene (mostly from tomato products) has been associated with a lower risk of prostate cancer. Evidence relating other carotenoids, tocopherols, and retinol to prostate cancer risk has been equivocal. This prospective study was designed to examine the relationship between plasma concentrations of several major antioxidants and risk of prostate cancer. We conducted a nested case-control study using plasma samples obtained in 1982 from healthy men enrolled in the Physicians' Health Study, a randomized, placebo-controlled trial of aspirin and beta-carotene. Subjects included 578 men who developed prostate cancer within 13 years of follow-up and 1294 age- and smoking status-matched controls. We quantified the five major plasma carotenoid peaks (alpha- and beta-carotene, beta-cryptoxanthin, lutein, and lycopene) plus alpha- and gamma-tocopherol and retinol using high-performance liquid chromatography. Results for plasma beta-carotene are reported separately. Odds ratios (ORs), 95% confidence intervals (Cls), and Ps for trend were calculated for each quintile of plasma antioxidant using logistic regression models that allowed for adjustment of potential confounders and estimation of effect modification by assignment to either active beta-carotene or placebo in the trial. Lycopene was the only antioxidant found at significantly lower mean levels in cases than in matched controls (P = 0.04 for all cases). The ORs for all prostate cancers declined slightly with increasing quintile of plasma lycopene (5th quintile OR = 0.75, 95% CI = 0.54-1.06; P, trend = 0.12); there was a stronger inverse association for aggressive prostate cancers (5th quintile OR = 0.56, 95% CI = 0.34-0.91; P, trend = 0.05). In the placebo group, plasma lycopene was very strongly related to lower prostate cancer risk (5th quintile OR = 0.40; P, trend = 0.006 for aggressive cancer), whereas there was no evidence for a trend among those assigned to beta-carotene supplements. However, in the beta-carotene group, prostate cancer risk was reduced in each lycopene quintile relative to men with low lycopene and placebo. The only other notable association was a reduced risk of aggressive cancer with higher alpha-tocopherol levels that was not statistically significant. None of the associations for lycopene were confounded by age, smoking, body mass index, exercise, alcohol, multivitamin use, or plasma total cholesterol level. These results concur with a recent prospective dietary analysis, which identified lycopene as the carotenoid with the clearest inverse relation to the development of prostate cancer. The inverse association was particularly apparent for aggressive cancer and for men not consuming beta-carotene supplements. For men with low lycopene, beta-carotene supplements were associated with risk reductions comparable to those observed with high lycopene. These data provide further evidence that increased consumption of tomato products and other lycopene-containing foods might reduce the occurrence or progression of prostate cancer. ***** Effects of lycopene on spontaneous mammary tumour development in SHN virgin mice. Nagasawa H, Mitamura T, Sakamoto S, Yamamoto K Experimental Animal Research Laboratory, Meiji University, Kanagawa, Japan. Anticancer Res 1995 Jul-Aug;15(4):1173-8 Effects of the chronic ingestion of lycopene, a carotenoid from tomato, on the development of spontaneous mammary tumours were examined in a high mammary tumour strain of SHN virgin mice. Beginning at 40 days of age, the control and the experimental groups were allowed free access to an AIN-76TM diet and a diet supplemented further with lycopene at the concentration of 5.0 x 10(-5)%, respectively. The treatment significantly suppressed the mammary tumour development, which suppression was associated with the decrease in the mammary gland activity of thymidylate synthetase, and serum levels of free fatty acid and prolactin. Body weight was little affected and no deleterious side-effects of lycopene were detected. All results show that lycopene could be promising as a chemopreventive agent for mammary and other types of tumours. **** Just a couple things I found at lef.org. There are others. It is also shown to be helpful for women with cervical dysplasia. As for the deadly nightshade family, I think that is bunk. Millions of people have eaten tomatoes and potatoes for thousands of years, and few have problems with it. Sure, some are sensitive to it, but some are sensitive to about anything... Seems like my local herbalist is right in not stocking it. Derek. > Here is an interesting article about lycopene, there are several more like > this so you have to make your own conclusions. [quoted text clipped - 142 lines] > week. > > > Something is going right." |
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