Digital Resource for Health

The Mediterranean Diet is widely agreed to be one of the healthiest in the world, and is associated with enjoyment of food and a longer and healthier life. 

There are several nutritious foods in a traditional Mediterranean cuisine, but for many experts the most convincing associations are the link between tomatoes and prevention of heart disease; still the leading cause of death in the UK.

Numerous studies have shown the higher the intake of tomatoes the lower the risk of heart disease and stroke. Cooked tomatoes are eaten regularly and in quantity from the south of France, through Italy, Greece and all around the Mediterranean.

It is the antioxidant lycopene found in tomatoes that improves heart health when eaten regularly. Cooking tomatoes with oil, makes the lycopene more ‘bioavailable’, meaning it is easier to use in the body.

Not many of us today manage to eat the quantity of bioavailable lycopene required on a daily basis to provide heart health benefits. Our normal dietary intake from food ranges from 0.5-5milligrams (mg) per day to an unusual high intake of 8mg. Typical average daily intake in the UK is 1.10mg.

Even if your diet does contain reasonable amounts of lycopene it may not be of the most beneficial type or bioavailable. Recognising the heart health potential of lycopene, and the hit and miss way it arrives in the diet, scientists at a biotechnology spin-off company from Cambridge University have developed a supplement that contains the right amount of bioavailable lycopene to benefit the heart.

Ateronon® is a daily supplement to prevent oxidative damage to bad cholesterol. Once low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol become oxidised it is taken up in the artery walls where it forms a plaque. The result is atherosclerosis, harmful narrowing and hardening of the arteries.

Heart attacks occur when atherosclerosis stops the supply of blood in the coronary arteries reaching the heart with oxygen. It causes stroke when blood vessels affected prevent blood reaching the brain. Atherosclerosis is also responsible for other diseases of the circulatory (or vascular) system.

A daily capsule of Ateronon® which is also known as the tomato pill, provides 7mg lycopene in a unique patented form that combines lycopene with whey protein and soy making it easily bioavailable. In clinical studies it has lowered LDL oxidation by more than 90 per cent within two months.

Oxidation of LDL is caused by highly active molecules called free-radicals. These are produced during normal body processes such as burning energy (calories) and during exercise, and by exposure to smoking and other pollutants.  If the body does not contain enough antioxidants to stop free radicals attacking LDL cholesterol it becomes damaged and the result is atherosclerosis.

The benefit of achieving an optimum lycopene intake from Ateronon is that it provides amounts comparable to those found  in the Mediterranean Diet. The benefit of a regular intake of lycopene is backed up by one of the latest rigorous diet studies.

Research published in April 2009 in Archives of Internal Medicine compared 189 valid dietary studies and trials between 1950 and 2007, and concluded: “Only a Mediterranean dietary pattern has been studied in randomized controlled trials and significantly associated with coronary heart disease.”

New way to cut heart and stroke risk

The story is about a clinically proven supplement that prevents oxidation of LDL cholesterol, which as you know, is the first step in the build up of atherosclerosis, the main cause of heart attack, stroke – and even circulatory dementia and AMD (age related macular degeneration).

The supplement, medical name Ateronon, is based on lycopene, but whereas other supplements on sale are not bioavailable and haven’t been proved in clinical studies, this one has – so it’s going to be launched in June at the British Cardiovascular Conference for cardiologists at Excel, London.

The feature would be a useful way of reminding readers how their clogged up arteries can have even more consequences than a heart attack (i.e. stroke, AMD, dementia, other diseases of circulation).

But it is also a Good News story, because it is something practical that readers can do to help prevent atherosclerosis in the first place.

The product was developed by a Cambridge University biotechnology spin-off company, and is being referred to in the media as the tomato pill, and in addition to the clinical studies on patients that show more than 90% reduction in oxidation of ‘bad’ cholesterol within 2 months; there are on-going trials at Harvard Uni (re: reversal of atherosclerosis, reduction of hypertension), and at Addenbrooke’s, Cambridge Uni Hosp.

For years, there has been a huge amount of very interesting debate about the benefits of the Mediterranean diet, and lycopene in particular. The Mediterranean diet which is based on high consumption of fruit and vegetables, with olive oil replacing butter on bread and in cooking, gives people a higher lycopene intake. Lycopene comes from the red pigment in tomatoes and seems to protect people against heart disease, cancer, and a whole variety of other chronic and ultimately fatal, diseases.

Greeks, Italians and Spanish people have been smoking and drinking more than anyone else for centuries, but still live longer than the rest of us – because of lycopene.
The problem for scientists until now, has been finding a way of ensuring that lycopene is reliably absorbed. Now a team of Cambridge scientists have come up with Ateronon, a new lycopene compound which can be taken as a one pill a day treatment, which instantly raises blood lycopene to the optimum level.

The first data on this new wonder treatment were presented at the World congress on heart disease in Toronto last year (2008), http://www.cardiologyonline.com/wchd08/advance_program.htm

The study ATERONON: FIRST CLINICALLY PROVEN ANTI-ATHEROGENIC ANTIOXIDANT
makes interesting reading. It claims to have completed eliminated the low density lipoprotein oxidation that leads to the build up of atherosclerosis.

Another study by ATERONON, CHLAMYDIA INFECTION IN CARDIOVASCULAR PATHOLOGY: SEQUEL II from the same Ateronon inventors, showed how chlamydia pneumoniae, a bacterial infection, seems to be involved in the development of clogged arteries. People with the condition always seem to have the bacteria in their bodies. Cambridge Theranostics, the team who have invented Ateronon, has also developed a blood test for the antibodies to chlamydia pneumoniae. This tells you whether active atherosclerosis is going on, or whether the tomato pill is effectively damping down the disease process.

It is a simple, but clever way of finding out how well Ateronon is doing. There is a lot of interest in Ateronon from researchers investigating heart and circulatory disease, and projects have just got underway at Harvard medical school in America and Cambridge university in Britain, to monitor the future health of sick people taking Ateronon long term.