A study published in January 2024 caught my eye in the past month regards to dietary and supplemental carotenoids.
A meta-analysis of RCTs looked at 1151 adults aged 23-68 with no co-morbidities. They found that lycopene in a dose of 5-30mg, or astaxanthin in a dose of 6-18mg daily (note the FDA does not recommend taking over 12mg astaxanthin for more than a month) reduced systolic blood pressure by an average of 2.5mmHg and diastolic blood pressure by 1.6mmHg. Although these sound like small gains, from experience I know that many individual factors like this can add up to significant reductions for patients with high blood pressure.
Lycopene is well known to occur in large amounts in tomatoes. Ketchup contains 9.9–13.44 mg lycopene/100 g, whereas fresh tomatoes contain anywhere from 0.88-7.44mg lycopene/100 g.
As for Astaxanthin, it's the pink pigment found in fish and shellfish (salmon and rainbow trout are the most concentrated sources with approximately 3mg per portion) but it can also be found in vegetarian sources such as lentils and one of my personal favourites , blueberries! Astaxanthin also has evidence it has a positive effect on dry macular degeneration and also activates NRF2 and AMPK- two well study pathways in longevity research.
The largest reduction was using 15-20mg carotenoids daily.
A reason to get eating those tomatoes!
Behzadi M, Akbarzadeh M, Mohammadi Sartang M, Rabiee M, Bideshki MV. Effect of carotenoid supplementation on blood pressure in adults: a GRADE-assessed systematic review and dose-response meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Nutr Rev. 2024 Jan 14
Dr Andrew Fisher, April 2024
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