Can Olive Oil Remove Plaque From Arteries
by Sunshine · November 22, 2020
One cause of a heart attack or stroke is plaque rupture within a blood vessel called an artery. When a plaque ruptures, platelets rush to the scene and clump together to form a blood clot. Once formed, the blood clot blocks blood flow to the heart or brain, leading to a heart attack or stroke respectively.
One way to lower the risk of heart attack and stroke is to keep plaque from accumulating inside arteries and prevent a rupture of any plaque thats there. Can olive oil do this? Studies show that people who eat a traditional Mediterranean diet have a lower risk of heart attack and stroke, and some health experts believe the abundance of extra-virgin olive oil they eat is a factor. Why olive oil, and can consuming olive oil prevent or remove plaque build-up inside arteries?
Make Sure To Get The Right Type
Buying the right kind of olive oil is extremely important.
Extra virgin olive oil retains some of the antioxidants and bioactive compounds from olives. For this reason, its considered healthier than the more refined variety of olive oil.
Even so, there is a lot of fraud on the olive oil market, as many oils that read extra virgin on the label have been diluted with other refined oils.
Therefore, examine labels carefully to ensure youre getting real extra virgin olive oil. Its always a good idea to read ingredients lists and check for quality certification.
Truth: The People On Earth With The Longest Life Expectancy And The Least Heart Disease Do Not Eat Diets Rich In Olive Oil Or Any Other Fat They Do Eat A Diet Rich In Whole Natural Foods Like Vegetables Fruits Whole Grains And Beans
Yes, in the 1950s Ancel Keys and fellow scientists observed that people living in the Mediterranean, especially on the isle of Crete, were lean and heart disease-free. And true, their diet consisted of olive oil, but it also had an abundance of fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices, coarse whole-grain breads, beans, and fish. And they walked about nine miles daily, often behind an ox and plow.
But much has changed on Crete and throughout the Mediterranean since then. Today, the people of Crete still eat a lot of olive oil, but their intake of whole, natural foods has gone way down, as has their physical activity. The islands new staples are meat, cheese, TV, and the Internet. Today, more than 60% of Cretes adult population and an alarming 50% of its children are overweight.
And has maintaining an olive oil-rich diet saved them from disease? Not at all. In recent years, rates of heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension have skyrocketed.
You May Like: How Much Cholesterol In One Egg Yolk
Myth #: Cholesterol Is Cholesterol
While cholesterol is an actual molecule, what it is bound to, while it’s floating through your blood is what’s more important – than just how much of it there is overall.; In fact, depending on what it’s combined with can have opposite effects on your arteries and heart.; Yes, opposite!
So cholesterol is just one component of a compound that floats around your blood.; These compounds contain cholesterol as well as fats and special proteins called lipoproteins.;
They’re grouped into two main categories:
- HDL: High Density Lipoprotein that cleans up some of those infamous arterial plaques and transports cholesterol back to the liver.
- LDL: Low Density Lipoprotein that transports cholesterol from the liver .
And yes, it is even more complicated than this.; Each of these categories is further broken down into subcategories which can also be measured in a blood test.
So cholesterol isn’t simply cholesterol because it has very different effects on your body depending on which other molecules it’s bound to in your blood, as well as their size and type and what it is actually doing there.
Olive Oil Use Recommendations
The Food and Drug Administration says research supports but doesn’t prove conclusively that daily consumption of about 1 1/2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil may lower coronary heart disease risk. In addition, according to the University of California Davis Olive Center, 2 tablespoons per day can reduce blood pressure. So, getting 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons daily may be a good idea.
Olive oil has many culinary uses. Harvard Health Publishing suggests using it in place of butter for scrambling eggs or sauteing vegetables. The University of Virginia Health System School of Medicine suggests pouring it over ripe tomatoes or using it as a base for a homemade salad dressing by mixing it with balsamic vinegar and Dijon mustard.
Other ideas include adding it to vegetable soups, drizzling it over roasted chicken or cooked fish or using it as a bread-dipping sauce combined with herbs and Parmesan cheese.
Read more:Can Too Much Extra Virgin Olive Oil Be Bad for Your Health?
Exercising care in storing olive oil can increase the shelf life. Instead of storing it near the stove or a source of heat, keep it in a cool dark cabinet. If you use the oil infrequently, store it in the refrigerator. Wrap a clear bottle of oil in aluminum foil to protect it from light exposure.
Don’t Miss: How To Decrease Bad Cholesterol
How To Live To 100
Indeed, the people most likely to live 100 robust years and beyond, the citizens of Okinawa, Japan, dont even use olive oil. They do eat a lot of fiberrich, straightfromtheearth foods, as do other communities with high percentages of centenarians, such as the Seventh Day Adventists of Loma Linda, California; and the people of Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; Icaria, Greece; and Sardinia, Italy.
The above communities eat diets with plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans, and lowtomoderate servings of animal meat, usually seafood or lean meat. It is this diet, not olive oil, that is the common denominator of these five longevity hot spots.
Tactics To Reduce Cholesterol Quickly
For most of us, there’s really no need to pack our medicine cabinets with pills to reduce cholesterol levels. Natural, lifestyle-based strategies have proven extraordinarily effective in reducing cholesterol quickly and permanently.
Get the top 5 food and fitness tips recommended by the doctors, dietitians, exercise experts, and other faculty at the Pritikin Longevity Center. Pritikin has been helping people lower cholesterol levels since 1975.
Did you know that for every 10% drop in your cholesterol level, your heart attack risk drops by 20% to 30%? Theres more good news: Most of us can reduce cholesterol quickly, and without the need for medications. Simple lifestyle strategies can be very powerful.
Thats what;several studies;on thousands following the Pritikin Program of diet and exercise have found. Within three weeks, people were able to lower their cholesterol levels on average 23%, which translates into a 46% to 69% drop in heart attack risk.1
Read Also: Is Cholesterol Genetic Or Environmental
Truth: All Highfat Diets Promote Inflammation
Increased fat in the blood after fat-rich meals including meals rich in olive oil may also injure our arteries and promote heart disease because they increase inflammation.
And meal after meal, year after year, of high-fat, calorie-dense foods promotes weight gain, which leads to adverse changes in blood lipids as well as increased levels of inflammatory substances in the blood.
Whats really intriguing is that high-fat meals increase inflammation even when calorie intake is restricted and weight is lost. In a study published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition, a diet high in fat raised an inflammatory protein in the blood by 25% despite the fact that the subjects lost weight. By contrast, CRP levels dropped by 43% when the subjects lost the same amount of weight on a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.
Eat Fewer Refined Grains Such As White Flour
Were a nation of white food eaters white bread, white rice, white pasta, and white-flour foods like muffins, croissants, bagels, crackers, dried cereals, tortillas, pretzels, and chips. Yes, more than half of many Americans typical diets are made up of hyperprocessed refined white flour, often injected with sugar, salt, and/or fat.
Thats a real problem in part because the more white, or refined, grains we eat, the fewer whole grains we tend to take in. Research has found that eating whole grains can help lower both total and LDL cholesterol, and improve heart health.
In Harvard Universitys;Nurses Health Study, for example, women who ate two to three servings of whole-grain products each day were 30% less likely to have a heart attack or die from heart disease over a 10-year period than women who ate less than one serving of whole grains per week.2
When first starting to make the switch from refined to whole grains, many people often feel a bit confused. Where to begin? Whats whole? What isnt?
The registered dietitians at the Pritikin Longevity Center start with one very simple rule. When looking at products like breads and cereals, they recommend turning the package around and making sure the first word in the Ingredient List is whole. If you see the word whole at the top of the list, its a good bet that what youre buying is in fact 100% whole grain, or close to it.
Don’t Miss: How To Reduce Ldl Cholesterol In 30 Days
Olive Oil Bad For Your Heart
Unfortunately, we’ve grown used to this kind of dietary flip-flop. Many Americans have begun to wonder if even the experts know what they’re talking about. One day margarine is good for you, the next it’s bad. One day vitamin E protects against heart disease, the next it offers no benefit at all. Now it’s olive oil’s turn.
Vogel tested the effects of three different meals on a group of 10 volunteers who had normal cholesterol levels. One meal consisted of canola oil and bread. Another was olive oil and bread. The third meal was a piece of salmon. All three meals contained 50 grams of fat.
But their effect on blood vessels was very different. Before and again three hours after each meal, Vogel’s team measured constriction of the volunteers’ arteries. Sharp constriction can injure the inner lining of blood vessels, according to Vogel.
The arteries didn’t constrict much after the salmon meal. After the meal containing canola oil, they constricted slightly, reducing blood flow by 11%. After the olive oil and bread combination, however, blood flow plummeted 34% — exactly the effect that Vogel had seen in previous research after volunteers ate a Big Mac with fries.
How Can I Get All The Benefits Of Polyphenols
Making extra virgin olive oil a key part of your daily diet is a powerful way to expose your body to all the nutritional benefits found in polyphenols, decreasing your levels of bad cholesterol while increasing the good levels. By consuming extra virgin olive oil daily, youll effectively move excess cholesterol out of your arteries and liver.
Other ways to naturally reduce bad cholesterol in your body include following a healthy diet, reducing alcohol consumption, not smoking, and exercising at least three times a week. Maintaining a healthy weight is also key.
You May Like: Are Almonds High In Cholesterol
Just Two Tablespoons Of Olive Oil Packs In 240 Calories
Most fundamentally, olive oil, like all oils and fats, are a concentrated source of calories. With over 4,000 calories per pound, olive oil is far more calorie dense than even pure refined sugar, which has 1,725 calories per pound. Because of its extremely high calorie density, adding olive oil to any food or meal will dramatically increase its calorie density.
Ldl Tocopherol Retinol And
LDL-protein was mixed with 250 L cold methanol containing 100 L –dl-tocopherol acetate as internal standard and extracted with hexane . The hexane phase was dried under N2 and reconstituted in ethanol as described by . Ethanol extracts were analyzed by reversed-phase HPLC on a Lichrospher 60 RP-select B column using methanol/water as the mobile phase and a flow rate of 1 mL/min. Under these conditions, retinol, -carotene and -tocopherol were determined simultaneously.
Also Check: Is 228 Cholesterol Too High
Description Of The Studies
Most of the included studies were randomized cross-over controlled clinical trials with dietary interventions . The characteristics of participants were: healthy subjects in the majority of the studies. Participants with an established metabolic syndrome were reported in 2 studies and with hypercholesterolemia in 6 studies, while patients with an established cardiovascular or peripheral vascular disease were reported in one study. Postmenopausal women, which were reported in 2 studies, were included in the healthy participant’s category. Only males participated in 15 studies and only women in 2 studies, while both sexes were reported in 13 studies. Eleven studies covered a wide range of ages from 18 to 89 years, others focused only on young adults , others examined middle-aged and the rest of the studies focused on old aged participants >65 years. In most studies , the number of participants ranged from 10 to 100 , in others the number of participants ranged from 100 to 200 and it was >200 in 4 studies.
In most studies participants received a daily dose of 25 ml olive oil and 15 ml in one study. In some studies , the participants received a daily olive oil dose of 40 ml and 50 ml and in the rest of the studies , the participants received 6870 g of olive oil per day.
Olive Oil And The Liver
A 2018 review of laboratory studies found that molecules in extra virgin olive oil may help prevent or repair liver damage.
The oils MUFAs, which are mainly oleic acid, and its phenolic compounds appear to help prevent inflammation, oxidative stress, insulin resistance, and other changes that can result in liver damage.
Read Also: What’s A Normal Cholesterol Level For A Man
Colorimetric Evaluation Of Total Phenolic Acids In Oils
The total phenols were extracted from the oils according to the method described by . Oil was dissolved in 50 mL hexane; the phenolic solution was extracted three times with 30 mL of a methanol/water mixture and shaken for 2 min. The combined extracts were evaporated completely in a rotary evaporator at 40°C, dissolved in 1 mL methanol and stored at 80°C.
The concentration of total phenols in the methanolic extracts was estimated with the Folin-Ciocalteu reagent using caffeic acid as standard. The procedure consisted of dilution of 0.1 mL of the extracts with water to 5 mL and the addition of 0.5 mL Folin-Ciocalteu reagent. After 3 min, 1 mL of Na2CO3 solution was added, mixed with a vortex and incubated at room temperature for 1 h. Absorbance was measured after 1 h at 725 nm against a blank.
Truth: Many People With High Hdls Have Diseased Arteries And Many With Low Hdls Have Very Clean Arteries
One of the hearty healthy effects of olive oil, argues the olive oil industry, is that it raises levels of HDL good cholesterol. But higher HDL levels do not always mean better arteries. Remember the study on monkeys discussed at the beginning of this article? The higher HDL levels of the monkeys consuming a diet rich in monounsaturated fat did not prevent them from developing plaqueridden, diseased arteries.
Moreover, recent research; has called into question just how good HDL cholesterol is. Yes, it may have benefits, but scientists are now finding that theres also a bad side to HDL that promotes inflammation and contributes to the build-up of plaque in the artery wall.
This bad side of HDL may explain why several;clinical trials aimed at increasing HDL levels failed to show benefits, such as fewer heart attacks.
Whats more, the populations who enjoy the lowest incidences of heart disease in the world, the people living in Okinawa and in other rural regions of Japan, as well as the Tarahumara Indians in Mexico, have very low levels of HDL in the 20s.
Conversely, other people, like some Americans, have very high levels of HDL and still have high rates of clogged arteries and heart attacks.
Finally, always keep in mind that HDL is just one number in a risk group of many. Ultimately, we should focus on the big picture on all the numbers that contribute to heart health.
You May Like: What Is A Dangerous Cholesterol Level Uk
Myth #: Your Cholesterol Should Be As Low As Possible
As with almost everything in health and wellness, there’s a balance that needs to be maintained.; There are very few extremes that are going to serve you well.
People with too-low levels of cholesterol may have increased risk of death from other non-heart-related issues, like certain types of cancers, as well as suicide.
We commonly hear that a high level of LDL in blood increases risk of plaque formation inside arteries – raising risk of a heart attack. Conversely, the lower the LDL level, the lower the risk of heart attack.
This is a simplistic and incomplete picture.
Its not just the total amount of LDL cholesterol that should be of concern, but also the type and size of the LDL particle. Research indicates that those whose LDL particles;are predominantly small and dense, have a significantly greater risk of cardiovascular disease, whereas the large and fluffy type of LDL may actually be protective.
Its a similar story with HDL cholesterol. Commonly perceived as the good type, HDL cholesterol acts like a scavenger, and removes harmful LDL cholesterol, by transporting it to the liver for processing. But were finding out, that the size of the HDL particle is of significance as well. This research indicates that women who had larger HDL particles had a higher risk of atherosclerosis, versus those who had smaller HDL particles.
Size really matters when it comes to cholesterol.