Depression stinks and the drugs used to treat it are harsh. But researchers have found a new way to battle it naturally – lycopene.
You would not want to be a mouse involved in a depression study. Researchers study depression by using the Chronic Social Defeat Stress (CSDS) model. They take a little mouse and toss it into a cage with big, aggressive mice.
The little guy is exposed to repeated bouts of social stress: he gets bullied and humiliated. Sure enough, after ten days, the mouse is depressed. Then, researchers treat the mouse with some kind of intervention and try to cure his depression.
That's exactly what happened in the study below, and its implications could be a big win for depressed mice and humans. The cool part? The treatment isn't a drug, but a healthy plant compound: lycopene.
The study
Researchers put some unfortunate male mice through the CSDS model until they were stressed out and sad. How do scientists know when a mouse is depressed? Good question.
Depressed mice (and people) withdraw socially, they're anxious, and they show signs of anhedonia – the inability to feel pleasure from activities that are normally fun, like eating good food, engaging in hobbies, and having sex.
The researchers then fed the mice lycopene, the red pigment found mainly in tomatoes.
What happened to the sad mice?
Those treated with lycopene experienced significant improvements in social interaction and increased interest in pleasurable activities – a reversal of depression-like behaviors.
At the molecular level, lycopene enhanced synaptic plasticity and upregulated the BDNF–TrkB signaling pathway in the hippocampus, suggesting that lycopene's antidepressant effects may be mediated through these mechanisms. This suggests that lycopene has the potential to be a natural antidepressant.
More research is needed, but scientists think this study opens the doors to future depression treatment. Getting plenty of lycopene in your daily diet could even help prevent depression-like symptoms.
The only problem
The mice in the study were given a load of lycopene. The human equivalent would be about 1.62 mg/kg. That means a 150-pound person would need 110 mg daily.
A raw tomato has only 5-6 mg, and tomatoes must be cooked to make the lycopene bioavailable. Tomato paste (cooked and concentrated tomatoes) contains 42 mg of lycopene per 100-gram serving. Tomato sauce has about 21 mg.
To possibly help alleviate depression, a person would need to eat a lot of cooked tomatoes AND take a supplement to get an effective dose. You need 30 mg of supplemental lycopene to reap its health benefits, which include warding off prostate problems.
P-Well ➔ Buy at Biotest contains 30mg of lycopene per serving. Take P-Well and add a few tomato-based dishes to your weekly menu, and you can get hit the amount of lycopene used in the study.
Reference
- Xu, et al. Lycopene Alleviates Depression-Like Behavior in Chronic Social Defeat Stress-Induced Mice by Promoting Synaptic Plasticity via the BDNF–TrkB Pathway, Food Science and Nutrition, 22 January 2025.