The reg­u­lar use of olive oil has been found to reduce car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk fac­tors for female suf­fer­ers of fibromyal­gia, accord­ing to a new study.

While olive oil is a well-known rem­edy for many health con­di­tions, new research pub­lished in the open-access jour­nal Nutri­ents went a step fur­ther in iden­ti­fy­ing the ben­e­fits for fibromyal­gia female patients, who cur­rently have a 30 per­cent higher risk of mor­tal­ity.

“Our results have shown that con­sump­tion of olive oil may have anti-throm­botic and anti-inflam­ma­tory prop­er­ties in women with fibromyal­gia, thus improv­ing a num­ber of car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk mark­ers,” Fran­cisco Molina, a researcher at the Uni­ver­sity of Jaén and one of the authors of the study, told Olive Oil Times.

In a pre­vi­ous study, the same research team found that fibromyal­gia female patients often show altered lev­els of sev­eral throm­bo­sis-related para­me­ters when com­pared to healthy women. Those para­me­ters, accord­ing to the new research, can be returned to the same lev­els found in healthy women through the reg­u­lar con­sump­tion of olive oil.

“In this study, we focused on exam­in­ing whether the diet and specif­i­cally olive oil, could mod­u­late para­me­ters related to a higher risk,” noted Molina.

The study was con­ducted using both extra vir­gin olive oil (EVOO) and refined olive oil (ROO). EVOO is col­lected by crush­ing olives, while ROO is extracted using chem­i­cal processes. The oils have some dif­fer­ences, but both retain monoun­sat­u­rated fatty acids.

“The ben­e­fi­cial prop­er­ties of olive oil in women with fibromyal­gia may be related to its fatty acid com­po­si­tion,” Molina said. ​“For the first time, the results of our study have revealed that con­sump­tion of both EVOO and ROO may improve a num­ber of car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk mark­ers in patients with fibromyal­gia, evi­denc­ing the anti-throm­botic and anti-inflam­ma­tory prop­er­ties of olive oil.”

He said that improve­ment was seen in the inflam­ma­tory marker of ery­thro­cyte sed­i­men­ta­tion rate val­ues, among study par­tic­i­pants who used EVOO as well as those who used ROO. The research also found that EVOO con­sump­tion improved the red blood cell count, while ROO intake improved mean platelet vol­ume, platelet dis­tri­b­u­tion width, fib­rino­gen lev­els and the inflam­ma­tory marker neu­trophil-to-lym­pho­cyte ratio.

“We found that con­sump­tion of EVOO sig­nif­i­cantly improved both func­tional capac­ity in activ­i­ties of daily liv­ing and health-related psy­cho­log­i­cal sta­tus in women with fibromyal­gia. The level of mus­cu­loskele­tal pain was also improved, but in a non-sta­tis­ti­cally sig­nif­i­cant way. There­fore, all these data show olive oil as one of the dietary fats with more health-related ben­e­fits,” Molina said

The research team also included Alma Rus, Maria Encar­nación Aguilar-Fer­rán­diz and Ramón Car­mona from the Uni­ver­sity of Granada, and Maria Luisa del Moral and Maria Josefa Martínez-Ramírez from the Uni­ver­sity of Jaén.

• The new research


• EVOO improves fibromyal­gia suf­fer­ers’ lives