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Lycopene - Do You Know About This Antioxidant?

Lycopene is an antioxidant you may not have heard of, but it has become of more and more interest to researchers lately. Antioxidants have powerful disease-fighting abilities that can help protect the cells in your body from being damaged by free radicals. They also help boost the immune system and fight diseases.

Lycopene is what makes fruit and vegetables like tomatoes look red, and it may be useful in battling prostrate cancer and cardiovascular disease. Research has actually shown that eating ten daily servings of food containing lycopene can actually decrease the risk of prostate cancer by over 30 percent. Antioxidants have also been proven to help protect against heart disease

Lycopene, unlike some antioxidants, is not naturally produced in the body. This means the only way we can increase our lycopene levels is to eat foods rich in this antioxidant. Tomatoes, including sauces, juices, and ketchup, are the biggest source of lycopene. Over red colored fruits and vegetables like watermelon also contain lycopene, but they don't contain as much as tomatoes do. Another interesting fact about lycopene is that the body absorbs it better when it comes from processed tomato products. Why do processed products work better than fresh tomatoes? No one is really certain. Cooking tomatoes with just a bit of oil does increase the body's lycopene absorption rate, though.

If you're a man wanting to protect yourself against prostate cancer or are concerned about heart disease, eating tomato products is the best way of increasing your lycopene levels. There are a few quick ways of doing this. One is to add tomato sauce to pasta - You must admit that's a simple enough recipe for anyone to follow. Another is to have tomato soup with your meal or have tomato juice as a refreshing drink. You can also eat watermelon or pink grapefruit for breakfast, but note that you'll need to eat more of these fruits since they don't contain as much lycopene.

Given the benefits credited to Lycopene, it looks like a pretty safe guess that red foods will be in for a while.

Anna Ruth is a passionate follower of natural health and natural health products. She has recently become interested in MAX GXL. MAX GXL is a Glutathione precursor and it's role is to help the body manufacture this valuable anti-oxidant.

Unlike Lycopene, Glutathione is manufactured in our bodies and no effective supplementary product has been found for it yet so whatever can be done to improve our own ability to produce it is good news given that once we leave our twenties, our own production tends to fall pretty dramatically.