Inhibiting Platelet Activation with Tomato Seeds | NutritionFacts.org
https://nutritionfacts.org/2016/07/28/I ... ato-seeds/
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.
A study done by the Rowett Research Institute, highlighted in my video, Inhibiting Platelet Activation with Tomato Seeds, found this works in healthy people as well. Within three hours of consumption, two tomatoes lowered platelet activation, and six tomatoes worked even better. Also, the effects were more wide-ranging than those of aspirin, in that the tomatoes targeted multiple pathways of platelet activation.
About one in four 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. Also, when researchers stuck tubes into people while they were eating tomatoes, 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?
Researchers out of North Carolina State University report that, “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.”