Lycopene and prostate enlargement – how to get it, and how it helps.
Alright fellas, gather ‘round. We’re diving into the thrilling world of prostate enlargement—aka Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH)—which is basically your prostate saying, “Hey! Let’s grow up… and out… and mess with your pee stream.”
What’s the Prostate?
Imagine a tiny, bladder-hugging walnut that sits beneath your bladder and wraps around your urethra like a clingy ex. That’s your prostate. Its job? Help make baby juice (semen). But as you age, it gets ideas above its station and starts swelling like a balloon at a toddler’s birthday party—except less fun and more frequent urination, dribbling, weak stream, and that “I just went but I gotta go again” vibe.
Who Gets It?
If you’re under 40, congrats—you’re mostly safe. But after that? Yikes.
- 40s: ~8% affected
- 50+: over 50%
- 80s: a whopping 80% (yep, nearly all the gang)
Why’s It Happening?
Blame your hormones. Specifically, testosterone gets converted by this overachiever enzyme 5-alpha reductase into dihydrotestosterone (DHT)—the stuff that makes your prostate puff up like it’s trying to win an inflatable contest.
The Big Meds
Doctors usually toss you one of two meds:
- Alpha blockers – help relax muscles (like a spa day for your urethra).
- 5-alpha reductase inhibitors – stop testosterone from becoming that mischief-making DHT.
But here’s the twist…
Enter: Lycopene. Aka, Tomato’s Secret Weapon 🍅
This red-hot antioxidant is found in tomatoes, watermelon, grapefruit, papaya, and guava. Lycopene:
- Blocks 5-alpha reductase (just like the drugs!)
- Reduces inflammation (bye, angry prostate)
- Shrinks the dang thing down
- Drops PSA levels (the stuff they check for cancer)
- And drumroll — cuts prostate cancer risk by up to 83%
Yes, 83%. That’s not a typo. That’s a mic drop.
Lycopene and prostate enlargement: Real Numbers, Real Results
- 14mg/day of lycopene = 21% lower risk of prostate enlargement
- 44% reduction in BPH symptoms from lycopene supplements
- 48% reduction in leftover pee in the bladder
- 25% drop in PSA levels
- Over 20% reduction in cancer risk from just eating tomato sauce twice a week
Let that marinate like a good spaghetti sauce.
How Much Lycopene Do You Need?
To hit that 14mg sweet spot:
- ½ cup of tomato sauce
- 3 tablespoons of tomato paste
- A couple medium tomatoes
Or just pop a supplement (50-500mg versions exist—like going from kiddie pool to Olympic swimmer mode).
Pro Tip: Cook your tomatoes in olive oil. Lycopene’s a diva—it only struts its stuff when released from raw tomato jail and bathed in healthy fats.
Final Thoughts
If you want to keep your prostate from going full Hulk-mode:
- Eat more tomatoes.
- Or take lycopene supplements.
- Or both, because YOLO.
Seriously, tomato sauce twice a week could save your stream, your sleep, and maybe your life. So next time someone judges your 3rd serving of spaghetti, tell them it’s prostate maintenance. Classy and delicious.
You’re welcome, gentlemen. Stay juicy.
And if you want to dive deeper, below is transcript from the best youtube I’ve found on Lycopene and prostate enlargement. It’s by Dave Claytone and spells it out brilliantly.
Dave Clayton on Lycopene and prostate enlargement:
“Let’s start with what is prostate enlargement or benign prostatic hypertrophy or BPH. Well let’s start with what is the prostate. The prostate is a gland about the size of a walnut that sits right below the bladder. And it wraps around the urethra. And the urethra is that tube that takes the urine from the bladder outside the body.
Now, as that prostate enlarges, as we get older, it can put pressure on that urethra and cause a lot of uncomfortable symptoms. Now prostate enlargement is really common. It doesn’t generally impact anyone below the age of 40, but about 8% of men in their 40s will get prostate enlargement and symptoms. Over 50% of men over 50 have symptoms of prostate enlargement.
And by the time we reach the age of 80, 80% of us have got symptoms of prostate enlargement. So super common and it’s one of those conditions that almost all men are going to end up taking medications for at some point in their life. Now, prostate enlargement can cause some really uncomfortable symptoms. These include frequent urination, getting up multiple times at night or multiple times during the day to go urinate incomplete.
Emptying that feeling like I’ve empty my bladder but I gotta go again. Or the urgency of I feel like I got to go again pretty quickly because I still have a urine left in the bladder, weak stream, dribbling after urination, or difficulty starting or stopping the urine stream are all symptoms of prostate enlargement. Now, why do we get that prostate enlargement
It’s largely because of the cumulative effect of testosterone on the prostate gland. We have an enzyme called five alpha reductase that takes testosterone and converts it into a metabolite, dihydrotestosterone. And that dihydrotestosterone alone causes proliferation of smooth muscle cells and epithelial cells that gradually cause that gland to increase.
Lycopene and prostate enlargement
When we look at the medications that are prescribed for prostate enlargement, they fall into two major categories. One is the alpha blockers. And these are probably the most commonly prescribed medication for prostate enlargement.
Now the other class of medications are the five alpha reductase inhibitors. And this makes sense because if we can stop the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone by blocking the effect of five alpha reductase, we can stop that gland from enlarging.
And the second most commonly prescribed class of medications for prostate enlargement are the five alpha reductase inhibitors.
And believe it or not, we can replicate the impact of these medications. The five alpha reductase inhibitors using food or supplementation.
And the data I’m going to show you is going to blow your mind in terms of how powerful food and supplements can be for shrinking an enlarged prostate, for alleviating the symptoms of prostate enlargement, for lowering your PSA levels, and even for reducing your risk of prostate cancer.
So what is this powerful nutrient that can have this amazing effect of blocking five alpha reductase and improving the symptoms of prostate enlargement?
This is lycopene. Not only does lycopene inhibit the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone by blocking five alpha reductase, it also inhibits cyclooxygenase, which is an inflammatory mediator. So you’re getting an incredible double whammy inhibiting inflammation and reducing conversion of testosterone so that you get a powerful combined effect to shrink down that prostate. And what is lycopene? Lycopene is a red pigment found in a lot of foods.
And it’s similar to vitamin A, but it’s not actually in the vitamin A class of compounds. It is largely classified as an antioxidant. But it also, as I mentioned, has anti-inflammatory properties. And after it’s ingested by supplementation or in the diet, it gets concentrated in certain organs, including most notably the prostate, where we get this amazing effect.
Lycopene and prostate enlargement
Now, being a red pigment, lycopene can be found in a lot of red or pink colored fruits and vegetables, including strawberries, watermelon, papaya, guava, pink grapefruit and the number one food for shrinking prostate, which is, I’m sure you’ve guessed it by now. Tomatoes. Tomatoes are the single most important constituent of your diet that you need to be thinking about getting on a regular basis.
If you want to prevent prostate enlargement, alleviate the symptoms of prostate enlargement, and even prevent your risk of prostate cancer. So let’s take a quick look at the data, and I’ll show you how powerful this can be. So first off, let’s look at your risk of actually getting prostate enlargement. And right here we see that you get a 21% reduction in your risk of getting prostate enlargement if you fall into the highest categories of lycopene and tomato intake.
And in this trial, what we saw was that it took about 14mg of lycopene daily to put you in the top category. And as I’m going to show you later on, that’s pretty easy to get either from food or supplementation. But now let’s look at if you actually have symptoms of BPH, if you already have prostate enlargement, what kind of reduction in symptoms can you get.
And this is where the data gets really compelling. Because if we look at quality of life scores and symptom scores, what you see is that supplementation with lycopene can get you up to a 44% reduction in your symptoms of prostate enlargement. Now, that looks pretty compelling, but it’s even more compelling when we compare it to the data on drugs that inhibit the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone.
In the study of one of the most popular medications, which is a potent inhibitor of five alpha reductase, and it’s a prescription medication, what we saw was a 23% reduction in the symptoms of BPH, using a similar patient population and a similar scoring methodology. So what you see is that you’re getting probably even more improvement in symptoms from lycopene that you are getting for from a prescription medication, and that’s pretty cool stuff.
Let’s look at another key indicator of the efficacy of lycopene in treating prostate enlargement. And this is post residual volume. Now post residual volume is the amount of urine left in the bladder after you void. And if you’ve got an obstruction where that prostate blocking up the urethra, what we expect to see is a lot of urine left over in the bladder after we urinate.
And lo and behold, when we treat patients with lycopene as a pure supplement, what we see is a 48% reduction in that post residual volume. So another key metric to look at in terms of prostate health is the levels of prostate specific antigen, or PSA.
Lycopene and prostate enlargement
And when we look at PSA levels, lycopene can have a significant reduction in PSA levels. In this study, we saw a 25% reduction in PSA levels with patients that took a lycopene supplement. And that’s pretty significant because PSA levels tend to correlate with prostate volume. And they’re also an early indicator for prostate cancer. Now this was a study on lycopene supplementation.
And what’s really interesting is that we compare this data to patients that took tomato paste. This is three tablespoons of tomato paste every day for ten weeks. And we saw an 11% reduction in PSA. So whether we’re getting the lycopene from tomatoes or from lycopene supplementation, we’re seeing pretty substantial reductions in an important measure of prostate health. Now you might say if PSA is an indicator for prostate cancer, if it’s an early test for prostate cancer and we’re getting a reduction in PSA, are we also getting a lower risk of prostate cancer?
And the answer is yes. The data supports that. We can be getting up to an 83% reduction in the risk of prostate cancer. And in this case, we’re looking at patients who had the highest levels of lycopene in their bloodstream relative to those who had the lowest levels of lycopene in the bloodstream. We saw an 83% reduction in the risk of prostate cancer for the patients who had the highest lycopene in their bloodstream.
And in another study that I really found compelling was we compared the risk of prostate cancer in patients who had tomato sauce, just tomato sauce, like what you put on spaghetti twice a week versus less than once a month. And really compelling. You saw over a 20% reduction in the risk of prostate cancer just from having tomato sauce more often than not.
So overall, what we’re seeing is some really compelling data showing that not only are you getting a lower risk of getting prostate enlargement, but if you have prostate enlargement, it’s pretty clear that you can see a significant reduction in symptoms, a reduction in possibly residual, which correlates with those symptoms. You can see lowering of your PSA levels and a substantial reduction in the risk of prostate cancer, all from adding tomatoes or lycopene to your diet.
Lycopene and prostate enlargement
So how much lycopene do you need to be getting each day in order to see these kinds of benefits? Well, if you want to be among those who get the most lycopene in these trials, you have to be hitting at least 9 to 14mg a day. And that would put you into the highest intake category, where we saw the most benefit in the dietary trials.
Now, most supplements will have up to 50 or 60mg per capsule. And if we look at some of the intervention data that I presented earlier, you see that the high dose lycopene is what we were using to replicate the effect of a drug. And that was up to 500mg of lycopene twice a day. And there are some supplements.
I’ll leave some links in the description where you can get that kind of potency, but it’s not the run of the mill supplement that you’re going to find in most marketplaces. So let’s see, how are we going to get that much lycopene in our diet? Well, here’s some representative data. And of course these numbers vary when you search online because not every tomato is made the same.
Right. So in not every tomato sauce or tomato paste is made the same. But this gives you some general guidance on how much tomato over tomato product you would need in order to get that 14mg of lycopene daily. And that could be about a half a cup of tomato sauce. It could be about three tablespoons of tomato paste, or it could be a few, medium sized tomatoes.
So these are a couple of options. And it gives you some representative metrics. I’ll leave this data in the description as well so that you can use it as a reference. But let’s say you didn’t want to take a lycopene supplement. You didn’t want to take a bunch of tomatoes in your diet. You said tomatoes aren’t my thing.
Where else can I get lycopene? And there is really a few other fruits that are pink or red in color where you can get decent doses of lycopene. On this slide, I’m showing you a couple of those. Pink grapefruit is one pink guava. The papaya and especially watermelon. All of those are also rich sources of lycopene, so it’s important to think about getting those in your diet.
If tomatoes aren’t where you want to go to get that dose of lycopene. So now let’s cover some pro tips on how you can maximize the potential to get lycopene from tomatoes. First of all, don’t worry about how the tomatoes have been stored or processed. Lycopene holds up really well with respect to freezing, refrigerating, canning, etc.. Next, we want to think about cooking those tomatoes rather than having them raw.
Believe it or not, raw tomatoes is not your best source of lycopene. Lycopene is pretty tightly bound to the tomato pulp and the cell membranes, and cooking it will help release it and make it more bioavailable. Plus, lycopene is lipid soluble, so cooking in oil really doubles down on releasing that lycopene and making it super digestible and super bioavailable.
So you want to think about cooking those tomatoes in a heat stable oil, like an avocado, like an olive oil or coconut oil to release that lycopene and get it ready for digestion. And that’s why tomato sauces, tend to be a really good source of, lycopene from tomatoes.
Lycopene and prostate enlargement
All right. So what are our takeaways here. Number one I hope I’ve convinced you that lycopene is super important to prostate health. And tomatoes in particular are a great way to get that lycopene. Definitely want to start thinking about having tomatoes in the diet as often as you can. Remember that just having tomato sauce twice a week was a great way to significantly reduce your risk of prostate cancer and improve prostate health overall.
But the more often you can get your tomatoes, the better off you’ll be, and if you can’t get your tomatoes as often as I’m recommending, think about getting a lycopene supplement. Most supplements have up to 50 or 60mg of lycopene, and it only takes 14mg a day to put you into the highest quartiles of lycopene intake. To get most of the benefits that we’ve discussed.
And lastly, if you really want to replicate the power of medication and maximize the benefits of lycopene with the highest doses trialled, you want to go for the 500mg twice a day supplement.”
Or if you want to watch it youtube, here’s the link.