Health gem

If you do one thing this week. . . drink tomato juice for your bones

Could drinking tomato juice help protect bone health in post-menopausal women? A new study in Canada suggests there could be benefits.

The researchers in Toronto had previously found that high levels in the blood of an antioxidant molecule found naturally in tomatoes, lycopene, seemed to be associated with a protective effect on bone in that age group. So they set about an “intervention” study to look at its effects more specifically.

A group of 60 women, aged 50-60, were asked to take tomato juice, lycopene capsules or a placebo twice daily. After four months, the ladies who drank the juice or took the lycopene showed more favourable measurements for markers of bone health, suggesting they were less at risk of osteoporosis.

“Our findings are the first to show that lycopene intervention, given in capsule or juice form, supplying at least 30mg/day, may decrease the risk of osteoporosis by decreasing oxidative stress and bone resorption,” write the authors in the journal Osteoporosis International.