` Maybe You Shouldn't Do Something About That Cough
en English
en English fr French el Greek it Italian pt Portuguese es Spanish tr Turkish
en English
en English fr French el Greek it Italian pt Portuguese es Spanish tr Turkish

Health

Maybe You Shouldn't Do Something About That Cough

Jan. 19, 2011
By Tom Baker

Recent News

For years extra-vir­gin olive oil has been tasted and judged on its abil­ity to pro­duce a tin­gling or burn­ing sen­sa­tion in the back of the throat, the belief being that the more you cough, the bet­ter the qual­ity of the oil. Now sci­en­tists have come up with evi­dence to sup­port this method of tast­ing and to explain why it works.

In a paper pub­lished today in the Jour­nal of Neu­ro­science, researchers revealed that sen­sor mol­e­cules, located in the human throat but not the mouth, attach to a chem­i­cal found in high-end olive oils caus­ing the very notice­able sen­sa­tion.

The idea to study olive oil first occurred to the paper’s co-author Gary Beauchamp around 10 years ago when he was vis­it­ing Italy to attend a meet­ing on mol­e­c­u­lar gas­tron­omy, an emerg­ing field study­ing the physics and chem­istry of cook­ing. A friend brought him some freshly pressed extra-vir­gin olive oil to taste and one sip caused ​“a very odd sen­sa­tion,” said Beauchamp, direc­tor of the Mon­ell Chem­i­cal Senses Cen­ter in Philadel­phia. ​“It’s got this burn in the throat, but not in the mouth.”

The dis­cov­ery not only qual­i­fies an age-old tra­di­tion, but also fur­thers the con­ver­sa­tion around olive oil’s health enhanc­ing attrib­utes. Dur­ing the study researchers found that when crushed Ibupro­fen was swal­lowed and came in con­tact with the throat, it cre­ated the same sen­sa­tion as oleo­can­thal, the cough-induc­ing agent present in olive oil. Sci­en­tists now believe that their find­ings could shed fur­ther light on the devel­op­ment of anti-inflam­ma­tory drugs.

But why this sen­sa­tion should be felt in the throat rather than the mouth wasn’t
fully under­stood until researchers turned their atten­tion to a spe­cific fla­vor-sens­ing mol­e­cule named TRPA1, known to react to nox­ios pol­lu­tants and chem­i­cals found in foods such as wasabi, mus­tard, and gar­lic.

Advertisement

Focus­ing on the TRPA1 mol­e­cule, sci­en­tists began tests to locate its pres­ence within the body. In tak­ing tis­sue biop­sies from a num­ber of vol­un­teers, they found TRPA1 to be mostly absent from mouth and tongue tis­sue, but present in large quan­ti­ties in the upper throat and nose, which was “…a big sur­prise,” Beauchamp said. Although other nox­ious chem­i­cals are sensed by many dif­fer­ent recep­tors, it seems that oleo­can­thal can only be detected by TRPA1 and it is because of this that it is most felt in the throat when high qual­ity extra-vir­gin olive oils are sam­pled.

Beauchamp raised a related ques­tion, not­ing that humans have come to appre­ci­ate the ​“pain” from oleo­can­thal in olive oil, as if there is an inner knowl­edge that it is advan­ta­geous. ​“How this hap­pens remains a fas­ci­nat­ing puz­zle,” he said.

TRPA1 also senses the chem­i­cally-unre­lated ibupro­fen, the team found. Beauchamp believes that it will be in under­stand­ing the cor­re­la­tion between the two diverse inflam­ma­tion fight­ers that new leads in the devel­op­ment of bet­ter anti-inflam­ma­tory drugs could be found.

More articles on:  ,

Related Articles