Inhibiting Platelet Activation with Tomato Seeds

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The yellow fluid around tomato seeds appears to suppress platelet activation without affecting blood clotting. This anti-inflammatory effect may explain why eating tomato products is associated with lower cardiac mortality.

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In the prevention of cardiovascular disease, the consumption of fruits and vegetables is crucial. Yes, preventing the oxidation of cholesterol may be one of the mechanisms by which fruits and vegetables reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. However, hyperactivity of platelets is also critically important in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease, as I’ve covered before.

In recent years, it has been shown that platelets are not only involved in the arterial clotting process, but also that they play an active role in the inflammatory process of atherosclerosis from the beginning. And that means from childhood. By the end of our teens atherosclerotic lesions are present in most people living in industrialized societies, and so suppressing the overactivity of platelets may be beneficial not only for heart disease but for cancer and allergies, and disease for which inflammation plays a major role.

The antioxidant properties of fruits and veggies are well-known. However their anti-clotting effects on platelets are less known. Preliminary studies have demonstrated the platelet activation suppressing activity of a variety of fruits and vegetables, so much so they can mess up platelet function tests. And the effects are so long-lasting, just fasting the morning of your blood test may not be sufficient.

Out of 16 different fruits tested, tomatoes came out #1. The anti-platelet activation components in tomatoes are water soluble, so you don’t have to eat them with fat, heat stable, meaning you can cook tomatoes without losing the benefits, and concentrated in the yellow fluid around the seeds, which is why tomato pomace beat out tomato juice, sauce or ketchup. Pomace is basically the seeds and the peel, which the industry throws away, and it may be the healthiest part. And the more tomato seeds the better. But this was measuring platelet activation in a petri dish. Grapefruit came in #2 here, and grapefruit juice at least didn’t appear to help when people actually drank it. Would drinking tomato juice actually help? Yes.

Platelets of patients with diabetes are characterized by intensified activation, so 20 diabetics were asked to drink a daily cup of tomato juice for three weeks —or a tomato-flavored placebo beverage and there was a significant drop in platelet activation.

Works in healthy people too. Within 3 hours of consumption, two tomatoes are good, but six tomatoes are better. And the effects were more wide-ranging than those of aspirin in that the tomatoes targeted multiple pathways of platelet activation. About 1 in 4 people are aspirin resistant, meaning aspirin doesn’t work to calm down their platelets, whereas only 3% of study subjects were found to be tomato resistant.

This finding indicates an advantage of the tomato extract’s broad antiplatelet activity profile over single-target drugs such as aspirin, and when researchers stuck tubes into people while they were eating them, they found no changes in blood clotting times, implying that supplementation with tomatoes should not result in a prolonged bleeding times, so one might get the best of both worlds, less platelet activation without the bleeding risk. But if tomatoes don’t thin our blood do they work?

Consumption of tomato products has been found to be protectively correlated with a lower incidence of acute coronary events, less development of early atherosclerosis, and lower mortality from heart disease.

If you don’t like tomatoes, kiwifruit recently beat them out in a test tube study of platelet activation. Strawberries may help too, but we have data showing kiwis may actually work in people too, and two kiwis appeared to work just as well as three kiwis. It appears to work for green-on-the-inside kiwifruit; and for yellow-on-the-inside kiwifruit. In this case, though, one a day seemed to help whereas two-a-day did not, which seems a little strange. And there haven’t been any studies to see if kiwifruit eaters actually have fewer strokes and heart attacks, so the best evidence for a dietary intervention to decrease platelet activation currently rests with tomatoes.

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Katie Schloer.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Images thanks to Chiot’s Run via Flickr.

In the prevention of cardiovascular disease, the consumption of fruits and vegetables is crucial. Yes, preventing the oxidation of cholesterol may be one of the mechanisms by which fruits and vegetables reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes. However, hyperactivity of platelets is also critically important in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease, as I’ve covered before.

In recent years, it has been shown that platelets are not only involved in the arterial clotting process, but also that they play an active role in the inflammatory process of atherosclerosis from the beginning. And that means from childhood. By the end of our teens atherosclerotic lesions are present in most people living in industrialized societies, and so suppressing the overactivity of platelets may be beneficial not only for heart disease but for cancer and allergies, and disease for which inflammation plays a major role.

The antioxidant properties of fruits and veggies are well-known. However their anti-clotting effects on platelets are less known. Preliminary studies have demonstrated the platelet activation suppressing activity of a variety of fruits and vegetables, so much so they can mess up platelet function tests. And the effects are so long-lasting, just fasting the morning of your blood test may not be sufficient.

Out of 16 different fruits tested, tomatoes came out #1. The anti-platelet activation components in tomatoes are water soluble, so you don’t have to eat them with fat, heat stable, meaning you can cook tomatoes without losing the benefits, and concentrated in the yellow fluid around the seeds, which is why tomato pomace beat out tomato juice, sauce or ketchup. Pomace is basically the seeds and the peel, which the industry throws away, and it may be the healthiest part. And the more tomato seeds the better. But this was measuring platelet activation in a petri dish. Grapefruit came in #2 here, and grapefruit juice at least didn’t appear to help when people actually drank it. Would drinking tomato juice actually help? Yes.

Platelets of patients with diabetes are characterized by intensified activation, so 20 diabetics were asked to drink a daily cup of tomato juice for three weeks —or a tomato-flavored placebo beverage and there was a significant drop in platelet activation.

Works in healthy people too. Within 3 hours of consumption, two tomatoes are good, but six tomatoes are better. And the effects were more wide-ranging than those of aspirin in that the tomatoes targeted multiple pathways of platelet activation. About 1 in 4 people are aspirin resistant, meaning aspirin doesn’t work to calm down their platelets, whereas only 3% of study subjects were found to be tomato resistant.

This finding indicates an advantage of the tomato extract’s broad antiplatelet activity profile over single-target drugs such as aspirin, and when researchers stuck tubes into people while they were eating them, they found no changes in blood clotting times, implying that supplementation with tomatoes should not result in a prolonged bleeding times, so one might get the best of both worlds, less platelet activation without the bleeding risk. But if tomatoes don’t thin our blood do they work?

Consumption of tomato products has been found to be protectively correlated with a lower incidence of acute coronary events, less development of early atherosclerosis, and lower mortality from heart disease.

If you don’t like tomatoes, kiwifruit recently beat them out in a test tube study of platelet activation. Strawberries may help too, but we have data showing kiwis may actually work in people too, and two kiwis appeared to work just as well as three kiwis. It appears to work for green-on-the-inside kiwifruit; and for yellow-on-the-inside kiwifruit. In this case, though, one a day seemed to help whereas two-a-day did not, which seems a little strange. And there haven’t been any studies to see if kiwifruit eaters actually have fewer strokes and heart attacks, so the best evidence for a dietary intervention to decrease platelet activation currently rests with tomatoes.

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring, watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by Katie Schloer.

Please consider volunteering to help out on the site.

Images thanks to Chiot’s Run via Flickr.

Doctor's Note

The video that I set up the background on the role of platelet activation is Inhibiting Platelet Aggregation with Berries.

One of my favorite videos, The Tomato Effect, is actually not about tomatoes at all, but talks about the power of a diet composed entirely of plants to combat the heart disease epidemic. After all, Heart Disease Starts in Childhood.

I do have some others that really do touch on tomatoes, though:

More on kiwis here:

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