'Tomato pill' hope for stopping heart disease

[Night_Hawk]

'Tomato pill' hope for stopping heart disease

By Michelle Roberts Health editor, BBC News online

Taking a tomato pill a day could help keep heart disease at bay, say UK scientists who have carried out a small but robust study.

The trial, which tested the tomato pill versus a dummy drug in 72 adults, found it improved the functioning of blood vessels.
But experts say more studies are needed to prove it really works.
The pill contains lycopene, a natural antioxidant that also gives tomatoes their colour.

“Start Quote A daily 'tomato pill' is not a substitute for other treatments, but may provide added benefits when taken alongside other medication”

Dr Joseph Cheriyan Lead researcher

Experts have suspected for some time that lycopene might be good for avoiding illnesses, including certain cancers and cardiovascular disease.

There is some evidence that eating a Mediterranean-style diet, which is rich in tomatoes (as well as other fruit and vegetables and olive oil), is beneficial for health.

Following a healthy diet is still advisable but scientists have been researching whether there is a way to put at least some of this good stuff into an easy-to-take pill.
Tomato pill A spin-off company from the University of Cambridge - Cambridge Theranostics (CTL) - has come up with its own "tomato pill".

Working independently of CTL, and instead funded by the Wellcome Trust, the British Heart Foundation and the National Institute of Health Research, a team at Cambridge University set out to see if the pill would have the desired effect.

They recruited 36 volunteers known to have heart disease and 36 "healthy" controls, who were all given a daily tablet to take, which was either the tomato pill or a placebo. To ensure a fairer trial, neither the volunteers nor the researchers were told what the tablets actually contained until after the two-month study had ended and the results were in.

For comparison, the researchers measured something called forearm blood flow, which is predictive of future cardiovascular risk because narrowed blood vessels can lead to heart attack and stroke.
In the heart disease patients, the tomato pill improved forearm blood flow significantly, while the placebo did not.
The supplement had no effect on blood pressure, arterial stiffness or levels of fats in the blood, however.

Lycopene

• A natural antioxidant - substances thought to protect the body's cells from damage

• Found in tomatoes, but also in apricots, watermelon and papaya as well as pink grapefruit

• Lycopene content varies according to the variety of tomato and how it is prepared eg. puree, ketchup, cooked or raw

• It is unclear whether supplements would ever be able to replace the benefits of a varied diet

Lead researcher Dr Joseph Cheriyan said the findings, published in PLoS One journal, were promising, but added: "A daily 'tomato pill' is not a substitute for other treatments, but may provide added benefits when taken alongside other medication.

"However, we cannot answer if this may reduce heart disease - this would need much larger trials to investigate outcomes more carefully."
Prof Jeremy Pearson of the British Heart Foundation said big studies were needed to see if this could become a viable option for patients.

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-27762995

 

[Night_Hawk]

[h=2]Health Properties of Tomatoes[/h]Here are 10 reasons you should be eating more delicious, nutritious tomatoes.



By Elaine Magee, MPH, RD
WebMD Weight Loss Clinic - Expert Column

I live in California, where we seem to eat a lot of sandwiches, salads, and Mexican food. And my favorite cuisine to cook is Italian. In my house, if we aren't enjoying tomatoes on our sandwiches or in our salads or salsa, we're saucing up dinner with some marinara. And those high-flavor, garden-fresh grape and cherry tomatoes? We eat them plain, like cherries.


Eating lots of tomatoes, any way you can, is a great thing. This fruit that acts like a vegetable is loaded with health properties.
Here are 10 reasons why you should have tomatoes in your kitchen and pantry:

1. Tomatoes contain all four major carotenoids: alpha- and beta-carotene, lutein, and lycopene. These carotenoids may have individual benefits, but also have synergy as a group (that is, they interact to provide health benefits).
2. In particular, tomatoes contain awesome amounts of lycopene,thought to have the highest antioxidant activity of all the carotenoids.
3. Tomatoes and broccoli have synergy that may help reduce the risk of prostate cancer.One study showed that prostate tumors grew much more slowly in rats that were fed both tomato and broccoli powder than in rats given lycopene as a supplement or fed just the broccoli or tomato powder alone.
4. A diet rich in tomato-based products may help reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer, according to a study from The University of Montreal. The researchers found that lycopene (provided mainly by tomatoes) was linked to a 31% reduction in pancreatic cancer risk between men with the highest and lowest intakes of this carotenoid.
5. Tomatoes contain all three high-powered antioxidants:beta-carotene (which has vitamin A activity in the body), vitamin E, and vitamin C. A U.S. Department of Agriculture report, What We Eat in America, noted that a third or us get too little vitamin C and almost half get too little vitamin A.
6. Tomatoes are rich in potassium, a mineral most of us don't get enough of. A cup of tomato juice contains 534 milligrams of potassium, and 1/2 cup of tomato sauce has 454 milligrams.
7. When tomatoes are eaten along with healthier fats, like avocado or olive oil, the body's absorption of the carotenoid phytochemicals in tomatoes can increase by two to 15 times, according to a study from Ohio State University.
8. Tomatoes are a big part of the famously healthy Mediterraneandiet. Many Mediterranean dishes and recipes call for tomatoes or tomato paste or sauce. Some recent studies, including one from The University of Athens Medical School, have found that people who most closely follow the Mediterranean diet have lower death rates from heart disease and cancer. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, who followed more than 39,000 women for seven years, found that consumption of oil- and tomato-based products -- particularly tomato and pizza sauce -- was associated with cardiovascular benefits.
9. When breastfeeding moms eat tomato products, it increases the concentration of lycopenein their breast milk. In this case, cooked is best. The researchers also found that eating tomato products like tomato sauce increased concentrations of lycopene in breast milk more than eating fresh tomatoes did.
10. Tomato peels contribute a high concentration of the carotenoids found in tomatoes. The amount of carotenoids absorbed by human intestinal cells was much greater with tomato paste enriched with tomato peels compared to tomato paste without peels, according to a study from Marseille, France. The tomato skin also holds most of the flavonols (another family of phytochemicals that includes quercetin and kaempferol) as well. So to maximize the health propertiesof tomatoes, don't peel them if you can help it!

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/health-properties-tomatoes