« Lycopene for Cancer Prevention | Home | The Basics of Cancer Prevention »
Debunking The Myth: Beta-Carotene Not for Prostate Cancer Prevention
By admin | November 11, 2007
Last post, lycopene’s characteristics which could prevent cancer was expounded upon. It’s pretty simple, understanding its mechanism isn’t rocket science. It’s pretty simple actually. Lycopene is an anti-oxidant, anti-oxidants mop up free radicals which cause cancer, and so, lycopene could help prevent cancer. Simple, right? Unfortunately, it might not be as simple as we’ve expected it to be. A scientific experiment was conducted back in 2001 for prostate cancer, one of the most common cancers. A number of 28,000 men have participated in the experiment, all given balanced diet with, of course, tomato-based food.
Everybody expected a positive outcome. In case lycopene does indeed turn out to help prevent all kinds of cancer, it would be the answer to help prevent prostate cancer. However, results which came out in early 2007 showed that the lycopene-driven diet had no effect at all. They had found no correlation between lycopene and lowered instance of prostate cancer among their experiment subjects. Everybody was disappointed. People thought they had found something which *could* help with the increasing number of cases. It doesn’t end at that, unfortunately. Yep, there’s more.
The scientists have discovered something which had baffled the scientific community. As it turns out, they had noticed a pattern linking increasing risk of prostate cancer with beta-carotene. Beta-carotene is also a carotenoid, just like lycopene. Beta-carotene is also an anti-oxidant. This is disconcerting especially since all types of beta-carotene-based dietary supplements are sold to help prevent prostate cancer. I have no leads yet about the science behind this singular occurrence.
As of now, we’re still relying on theory that lycopene could help prevent cancer. In the future, more detailed experiments would be held and we’ll finally know whether lycopene helps or not. Personally, however, I wish lycopene really does reduce the risk of cancer because it benefits the many, being present in common fruits and vegetables.
Topics: Clinical Trials, Prevention |
Comments are closed.