Olive Oil’s Heart Healthy Compound Revealed
We all know that olive oil is liquid gold for your cardiovascular health, cholesterol level, and skin. It’s beneficial fatty acid profile and antioxidant polyphenols make consuming it one of the easiest and tastiest ways to make your diet work for you. An advanced understanding of what makes olive oil work may someday make it possible to harness this almost magic ingredient for even greater rewards.
A study of olive oil’s major antioxidants published in Molecular Nutrition & Food Research has identified the source of its cardiovascular benefits. When free radicals act on LDL, a.k.a. “bad,” cholesterol in the blood the oxidization that results contributes to heart diease. The study compared the effect of affects of four polyphenolic compounds from olive oil on red blood cells that had been exposed to a free radical generating chemical.
A compound called DHPEA-EDA was shown to have the strongest protective action on the blood cells, even in low concentrations. As it turns out, DHPEA-EDA makes up as much as half the antioxidants in olive oil, a very high level when compared to other oils.
The hope is that this research could lead to so-called “functional” olive oils produced to maximize the amount of this powerful antioxidant. Considering what a cardiovascular boon olive oil already, the idea of supercharged oils on the horizon is great news for everyone’s heart.
