if you're worried about prostate enlargement and you want to avoid the symptoms of prostate enlargement as you get older you're definitely going to want to watch this video because I'm going to give you great tips on how you can use food just like medicine to shrink and enlarge prostate so what are we going to cover in this video we're going to cover what is prostate enlargement and what are those symptoms that we're trying to avoid then I'm going to talk to you about the medications that are commonly prescribed for prostate enlargement and how we can
recreate those same effects using food or supplementation I'll give you the data to show you how powerful food and supplements can be for shrinking in a large prostate and then I'll give you specific tips for how you can put this into use in your own life in order to get the results that I'm going to share with you today so 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 emptied my bladder but I got to go again or the urgency of I feel like I got to go again pretty quickly because I still have uh 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 causes proliferation of smooth muscle cells and epithelial cells that gradually cause that gland to increase when we look at the medications that are prescribed for prostate enlargement they fall into two major categories one is the alpha blockers
and that's medications like Flomax which is probably in my practice 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 like prar like avadar 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 enlarge 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 lopine not only does lycopene inhibit the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone by blocking five Alpha reductase it also
inhibits cyc oxygenase 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 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 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 lopine and tomato intake and in this trial what we saw was that it took about 14 Mig 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 F 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 comp compelling when we compare it to the data on drugs that inhibit the conversion of
testosterone to dihydrotestosterone in the study on finasteride which is a potent inhibitor of 5 Alpha reductase and it's a prescription medication called prar 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 that you're getting probably even more Improvement in symptoms from lopine 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 is 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 lopine 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 and when we look at PSA levels
lopine 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 lopine 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 10 weeks and we saw an 11% reduction in PSA so whether we're getting the lycopene from
Tomatoes or from lopine 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 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 in enlargement but if you have prostate enlargement it's pretty clear that you can see a significant reduction in symptoms a reduction in postvoid 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 really compelling stuff 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 lopine in these trials you have to be hitting at least 9 to 14 milligram a day and that would put you into the highest intake categories where we saw the most benefit in the dietary trials now most supplements will have up to 50 or 60 milligrams per capsule and if we look at some of the intervention data that I presented earlier you see that the high do lycopene is what we were using to replicate the effect of a drug and that was up to
500 mg 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 is made the same right so not every tomato sauce or tomato paste is made the same but this gives you some general guidance
on how much tomato or tomato product you would need in order to get that 14 mg of lycopene daily and that could be about a half a cup of tomato sauce it could be about 3 tablespoons of tomato paste or it could be a few uh mediumsized tomatoes so these are a couple 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 lopen 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 lopine and there's 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 r grapefruit is one pink guava um 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 lopine 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 lopine hold 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 lopine 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 a coconut oil to release that lycopene and get it ready for digestion and that's why tomato sauces uh tend to be a really good source of uh lycopene from Tomatoes 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 lopine 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 lopine supplement most supplements have up to 50 or 60 Mig of lycopene and it only takes 14 Mig a day to put you
into the highest uh cor tiles of lopine 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 lopine with the highest doses trial you want to go for the 500 mgram twice a day supplement and I'll leave a link for that in your description I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see you next time
