Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More

What Doesn’t Lycopene Do?

Lycopene is an antioxidant carotenoid famously found in tomatoes; it actually appears in even higher levels in watermelon, though. If you are going to get it from tomato, know that cooking improves the lycopene content rather than removing it (watermelon, on the other hand, can be enjoyed as-is and already has the higher lycopene content).

Antioxidant properties

Let’s reiterate the obvious first, for the sake of being methodical and adding a source. Lycopene is a potent antioxidant with multiple health benefits:

Lycopene: A Potent Antioxidant with Multiple Health Benefits

…and as such, it does all the things you might reasonably expect and antioxidant to do. For example…

Anti-inflammatory properties

In particular, it regulates macrophage activity, reducing inflammation while improving immune response:

Lycopene Regulates Macrophage Immune Response through the Autophagy Pathway Mediated by RIPK1

As can be expected of most antioxidants and anti-inflammatory agents, it also has…

Anticancer properties

Scientific papers tend to be “per cancer type”, so we’re just going to give one example, but there’s pretty much evidence for its utility against most if not all types of cancer. We’re picking prostate cancer though, as it’s one that’s been studied the most in the context of lycopene intake—in this study, for example, it was found that men who enjoyed at least two servings of lycopene-rich tomato sauce per week were 30% less likely to develop prostate cancer than those who didn’t:

Dietary lycopene intake and risk of prostate cancer defined by ERG protein expression

If you’d like to see something more general, however, then check out:

Potential Use of Tomato Peel, a Rich Source of Lycopene, for Cancer Treatment

It also fights Candida albicans

Ok, this is not (usually) so life-and-death as cancer, but reducing our C. albicans content (specifically: in our gut) has a lot of knock-on effects for other aspects of our health, so this isn’t one to overlook:

Lycopene induces apoptosis in Candida albicans through reactive oxygen species production and mitochondrial dysfunction

The title does not make this clear, but yes: this does mean it has an antifungal effect. We mention this because often cellular apoptosis is good for an overall organism, but in this case, it simply kills the Candida.

It’s good for the heart

A lot of studies focus just on triglyceride markers (which lycopene improves), but more tellingly, here’s a 10-year observational study in which diets rich in lycopene were associated to a 17–26% lower risk of heart disease:

Relationship of lycopene intake and consumption of tomato products to incident CVD

…and a 39% overall reduced mortality in, well, we’ll let the study title tell it:

Higher levels of serum lycopene are associated with reduced mortality in individuals with metabolic syndrome

…which means also:

It’s good for the brain

As a general rule of thumb, what’s good for the heart is good for the brain (because the brain needs healthy blood flow to stay healthy, and is especially vulnerable when it doesn’t get that), and in this case that rule of thumb is also borne out by the post hoc evidence, specifically yielding a 31% decreased incidence of stroke:

Dietary and circulating lycopene and stroke risk: a meta-analysis of prospective studies

Is it safe?

As a common food product, it is considered very safe.

If you drink nothing but tomato juice all day for a long time, your skin will take on a reddish hue, which will go away if you stop getting all your daily water intake in tomato juice.

In all likelihood, even if you went to extremes, you would get sick from the excess of vitamin A (generally present in the same foods) sooner than you’d get sick from the excess of lycopene.

Want to try some?

We don’t sell it, and also we recommend simply enjoying tomatoes, watermelons, etc, but if you do want a supplement, here’s an example product on Amazon

Enjoy!