New research revealed that lycopene has more to offer to our health than first met the eye. But tomato is by far not the only or most abundant source of lycopene.

New research results have been on offer for an illness called endometriosis. If you don’t know exactly what it is, join the club; I spent the day reading it up in three languages. To put it diffidently, doctors agree not to agree what it is and where it comes from. Or more succinctly, it’s once more one of those doctor’s illnesses: I don’t exactly know what it is but it has to do with the womb, I therefore diagnose endometriosis. At that point I abandoned that track and went back to what lycopene was able to do.

That proved easier to follow, as lycopene seems to stop the body from building scar tissue in or around affected areas where aspects of any form of endometriosis is found. As it does this also with scar tissue after surgical treatments, let’s keep that in mind even if it is only one of the symptoms of the illness. That at least is one point where the doctors agreed in all three languages, the scar tissue is not the illness. But the scar tissue is the source of the pain patients feel.

Wayne State University in Detroit had done tests with lycopene levels equal to a healthy diet, and found that 90 per cent of chemical activity leading to scar tissue was suppressed by lycopene. As we are talking about a healthy diet, this means it can be taken with any fruit that contains lycopene without resorting to tablets, which already are foisted off again on the unwary.

The top placement in lycopene content goes to gac, a Chinese sweet gourd, which contains 70 times as much as the runner up, the tomato. Further fruits in the list are watermelon, rose grapefruit, papaya, and rose-hip. The last four again have much lower contents than the tomato. And you thought ketchup was unhealthy? Contrariwise, as you may read up in Little Known Facts About Ketchup.

Is it possible to overdose lycopene? (Just to get the usual pirate story out of the way, this time of a woman who became all red from drinking too much tomato juice; balderdash.) No it is not possible to overdose, as long as you don’t take any pharmaceutical products. Pharmaceutical products contain several thousand times what may be found in natural sources. Therefore, what I said on vitamins in Vitamin Overdose: A Myth holds true here as well.

Lycopene has many side effects, and all of them positive. For the total please refer to the articles Lycopene and the Tomato and A Tomato A Day to get the details. For those who like their looks in the mirror, the skin is also positively affected as seen in Avid Tomatoes Eaters Have Healthy Glowing Skin: Myth or Fact?. And for healthy skin care on a budget, you might want to read Natural Skin Care Solution 1: Tomato and Lemon Juice.

All these articles contain valuable information about lycopene and what it can do for you. And I go and buy my next bottle of ketchup now. I knew, something as good as that couldn’t be unhealthy.