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Fibromyalgia is a chronic dis­ease syn­drome that causes wide­spread mus­cu­loskele­tal pain for suf­fer­ers. The pain can be so debil­i­tat­ing that it can imposes phys­i­cal, psy­cho­log­i­cal and social lim­i­ta­tions that decrease qual­ity of life. The over­all preva­lence of fibromyal­gia is 1.2 to 5.4 per­cent, with women suf­fer­ing with the con­di­tion more than men.

Its onset and causes are not fully under­stood. Various research stud­ies have tried to inves­ti­gate the con­di­tion and have found the cause to be many fac­tors includ­ing impaired hor­mone func­tion, altered neu­ro­trans­mit­ters, increased inflam­ma­tion, and oxida­tive stress, which arises as a leader.
See Also: Olive Oil Health Benefits
Extra vir­gin olive oil (EVOO) is a nat­ural antiox­i­dant that has been shown to play a role in down­reg­u­lat­ing oxida­tive stress in var­i­ous stud­ies. Previous research has shown that antiox­i­dant rich sup­ple­ments and foods have decreased pain in fibromyal­gia sufferers. 

Until now, there have been no stud­ies exam­in­ing the effects of EVOO on fibromyal­gia out­comes. For the first time ever, a study pub­lished in Biological Research for Nursing, aimed to inves­ti­gate if EVOO could con­tribute ben­e­fits on oxida­tive stress mark­ers and health para­me­ters in 23 women par­tic­i­pants suf­fer­ing from fibromyalgia.

Participants were enrolled in a 3 week ran­dom­ized, con­trolled, dou­ble-blind trial. The inter­ven­tion included the con­sump­tion of EVOO or refined olive oil (ROO), each group con­sum­ing 50 ml/ day of raw oil. The organic olive oil sam­ples were both from Olifarma S.L., Granada, Spain and con­sisted of dif­fer­ent antiox­i­dant content. 

Participants were required to com­plete a series of 24-hour food recalls. Estimates of olive oil con­sump­tion, along with macro and micronu­tri­ent quan­ti­ties were cal­cu­lated from the aver­age of 3 days of food recall data. Based on base­line results, par­tic­i­pants were given nutri­tional instruc­tion for improv­ing their diet and sup­plied with olive oil samples.

Along with dietary data, par­tic­i­pants were also required to undergo inter­views and ques­tion­naires about their phys­i­cal and men­tal sta­tus and func­tional capac­ity in activ­i­ties of daily liv­ing, along with hav­ing blood sam­ples col­lected to mea­sure var­i­ous oxida­tive parameters.

The results showed that the EVOO group sig­nif­i­cantly reduced oxida­tive stress mark­ers, had a greater reduc­tion in lev­els of pro­tein car­bonyls, and decreased lipid per­ox­i­da­tion lev­els, whereas the ROO group showed no such effects. However, as far as the antiox­ida­tive pro­file, there was no dif­fer­ence between the two groups for enzy­matic activ­ity. Though zinc lev­els did increase in both groups.

The EVOO group showed sig­nif­i­cant changes in rela­tion to health-related para­me­ters, where the ROO group showed no effect on these out­comes and even showed a wors­en­ing of scores in rela­tion to some values.

The authors con­cluded that for the first time, it had been revealed that ​“EVOO may pro­tect patients against fibromyal­gia-induced oxida­tive stress by dimin­ish­ing pro­tein, lipid, and DNA oxi­da­tion and rais­ing zinc lev­els as well as improve func­tional capac­ity and health-related psy­cho­log­i­cal status.”

They stated, ​“our data reveal that con­sump­tion of organic EVOO may improve oxida­tive stress in patients with FM, sug­gest­ing that its con­sump­tion con­tributes to the dietary intake of bio­log­i­cally active compounds.”

The authors spec­u­lated that these effects are likely due to phe­no­lic com­pounds oleu­ropein and hydrox­y­ty­rosol but sug­gest that fur­ther research is needed to con­firm these results and estab­lish con­tribut­ing mech­a­nisms to these effects.

• Biological Research for Nursing