"Lycopene Supplements vs. Prostate Cancer"
Back in the '80s, the Adventist Health Study found strong protective relationships
against prostate cancer with increasing consumption
of legumes, citrus, dried fruit, nuts, and tomatoes.
In the '90s, a Harvard study focused attention on tomatoes,
which appeared to be especially beneficial.
They suspected it might be the red pigment in tomatoes called lycopene,
which has greater antioxidant power than some of the other pigments,
like the orange beta-carotene pigment in carrots and cantaloupes.
And lycopene dramatically kills off prostate cancer cells in a petri dish,
even way down at the levels one would expect
in one's blood stream after just eating some tomatoes.
So of course the Heinz ketchup company,
along with manufacturers of lycopene supplements,
petitioned the FDA to allow them to print health claims on their products.
They were essentially denied, saying that the evidence was very limited
and preliminary, with no endorsement allowed for ketchup or supplements.
By that time, further population studies had cast doubt on the lycopene theory.
Consumers of high dietary intakes of lycopene
didn't seem to have lower cancer rates after all.
But who has high dietary intakes of lycopene?
Those that eat the most pizza;
so maybe it's no surprise there are mixed results.
What we need is to put lycopene to the test.
It started with a case study.
A 62-year old man with terminal prostate cancer, failed surgery,
failed chemotherapy, metastases all over, spread to the bone.
And so he was sent to hospice to die.
So he took it upon himself to initiate phytotherapy, plant-based therapy,
taking the amount of lycopene found in a quarter cup of tomato sauce
or a tablespoon of tomato paste every day.
His PSA, a measure of tumor bulk, started out as 365,
but dropped to 140 the next month, and then down to 8.
His metastases started disappearing, and as of his last follow-up
appeared to be living happily ever after.
But when given in higher dose pill form, lycopene didn't seem to work.
A 2013 review of all such lycopene supplement trials
failed to support the initial optimism.
In fact, they were just happy that the lycopene pills
didn't end up causing more cancer, like beta-carotene pills did.
But then came 2014.
Researchers in Italy had been giving the largest doses they could
of lycopene, selenium, and isolated green tea compounds
to men with precancerous prostate lesions,
hoping they could prevent full-blown cancer.
But in 2014, the expanded results of a similar trial were published
in which selenium and vitamin E supplements resulted in more cancer.
Yikes!
So these researchers stopped their trial
and broke the code to un-blind the results.
And indeed, those taking high doses of lycopene, green tea catechins,
and selenium appeared to get more cancer than those who just got sugar pills.
"The potential implications are dramatic," said the lead researcher,
"given the current massive worldwide use of such compounds
as alleged preventive supplementations in prostate and other cancers."
What went wrong?
Well, after the beta- carotene pill debacle,
researchers measured cellular damage at different
natural and unnatural doses of beta-carotene.
At dietary doses, beta-carotene suppressed cellular damage,
but at higher supplemental doses,
it not only appeared to stop working, but caused more damage.
And the same with lycopene.
Both lycopene and beta- carotene afforded protection
against DNA damage at the kinds of levels one might see
in people eating lots of tomatoes or sweet potatoes,
levels comparable with those seen in the blood of individuals
who consume a carotenoid- rich healthy diet.
However, at the kind of blood concentrations that one might get
taking pills, the ability to protect the cell against
such free radical damage was rapidly lost.
And indeed, the presence of high levels of beta-carotene and lycopene
may actually serve to increase the extent of DNA damage.
So no wonder high dose lycopene pills didn't work.
Phytochemicals may be guardians of our health,
but the safety of consuming concentrated extracts is unknown.
The protective benefits of a phytochemical-rich diet
are best obtained by whole plant foods.
The food industry has different ideas, though.
Soon there may be phytochemical- fortified bacon, martinis, and ice cream,
says this article in the Journal of Food Technology.
If they can find just the right mix of plant compounds,
they hope to reconstruct foods that once contributed to illness and disease
to offer significant health benefits.