Olive Oil: A Natural Painkiller?

A Mythical, Sacred Oil

From ancient Greece to the Holy Land, olive oil has been trea­sured. Celebrated as sacred in Greek mythol­ogy, the olive branch sym­bol­ized peace in Hellenic cul­ture. Evidence of this ancient oil was dis­cov­ered in 1901 at the “Room of the Olive Press” at Knossos on the island of Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. From there olives were pressed into oil over 4,500 years ago and the olive oil was exported to North Africa and main­land Greece.

Cultivation of olive trees spread around the Mediterranean where olive oil flour­ished along with many early civ­i­liza­tions. The bible speaks of olive oil, and it has been used by Christianity and Judaism as a holy anoint­ing oil.

Today, the major pro­duc­ers of olive oil are Spain, Italy, Greece, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco and Syria.

But the grow­ing pop­u­lar­ity of olive oil can be seen in the spread of cul­ti­va­tion around the world to coun­tries such as the U.S., Chile, and South Africa. Australia has become an ener­getic olive oil pro­ducer and exporter, and has just announced a record crop.

During trav­els with my fam­ily from the south of France to Tuscany to Greece I have wit­nessed the spe­cial beauty of the olive tree and tasted its fruit. Able to with­stand heat, sun and sur­vive on only a lit­tle mois­ture, the hardy olive tree became an icon of the Mediterranean region. Freezing tem­per­a­tures, how­ever, can harm the trees and the crop.

Eating Healthy With Olive Oil

Extra vir­gin olive oil can con­tribute nutri­tional sup­port in the fight against such health prob­lems as arthri­tis, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, high cho­les­terol, and in pain management.

A research study from Spain has shown that higher olive oil con­sump­tion is asso­ci­ated with leaner body weight, an impor­tant fac­tor in pre­ven­tion of chronic conditions.

Another study from the uni­ver­si­ties of Navarra and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in Spain looked at how diets includ­ing olive oil might offer pro­tec­tion against depres­sion: Bad Fats Linked to Depression

Natural Painkiller Discovered in Olive Oil

Recent research has iden­ti­fied the antiox­i­dant called oleo­can­thal, which is only found in extra-virgin olive oil. Scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, in Philadelphia, found that oleo­can­thal in olive oil has a potency strik­ingly sim­i­lar to that of the drug ibupro­fen in inhibit­ing the cyclooxy­ge­nase (Cox) enzyme that causes pain and inflam­ma­tion. Their find­ings were pub­lished in the sci­ence mag­a­zine Nature.

Given the side effects of com­mon pain reliev­ing drugs, find­ing a nutri­tional way to reduce pain and inflam­ma­tion could be a solu­tion for peo­ple suf­fer­ing from pain.

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