`EVOO Effective in Lowering High Blood Pressure - Olive Oil Times

EVOO Effective in Lowering High Blood Pressure

By Sukhsatej Batra
Dec. 29, 2015 11:59 UTC

The sec­ond report in the series Olive Oil as Medicine” by the University of California at Davis Olive Center rec­om­mends con­sump­tion of extra vir­gin olive oil to lower high blood pres­sure. The first report, pub­lished in March 2015, looked at the impact of EVOO on blood lipids and lipopro­teins.

For the pur­pose of this lat­est report the authors, Mary Flynn and Selina Wang, looked at human stud­ies pub­lished in PubMed car­ried out from 1998 through July 2015 on olive oil and its effect on high blood pres­sure and found only seven stud­ies that met their strin­gent estab­lished cri­te­ria.

The first study, con­ducted in 2000, found that daily con­sump­tion of 40 to 30 grams of EVOO by 23 hyper­ten­sive indi­vid­u­als for six months was more effec­tive in low­er­ing blood pres­sure (both sys­tolic and dias­tolic) than sun­flower oil. In fact, 35 per­cent of the par­tic­i­pants were able to dis­con­tinue their hyper­ten­sive med­ica­tions after con­sum­ing EVOO daily for six months.

The other stud­ies found that EVOO with a high phe­no­lic con­tent was more effec­tive in low­er­ing either sys­tolic or dias­tolic blood pres­sure in com­par­i­son to sun­flower oil, soy­bean oil, or refined olive oil with low phe­nol con­tent.
See Also:Olive oil as med­i­cine: the effect on blood pres­sure
Only one other study con­ducted on young women with high blood pres­sure found that con­sump­tion of EVOO with high phe­no­lic con­tent for eight weeks was more effec­tive in low­er­ing both sys­tolic and dias­tolic blood pres­sure than refined olive oil. This study fur­ther reported that phe­nol-rich EVOO was more effec­tive in low­er­ing blood pres­sure than that reported from a DASH study. The DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet rec­om­mended con­sump­tion of about nine serv­ing of fruits and veg­eta­bles daily to reduce blood pres­sure.

The DASH diet, effec­tive in low­er­ing blood pres­sure and LDL cho­les­terol lev­els in blood, is rec­om­mended for patients with high blood pres­sure in the US, where the inci­dence of high blood pres­sure or hyper­ten­sion is par­tic­u­larly high.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, high blood pres­sure affects one in three Americans. Making dietary and lifestyle changes could be effec­tive in pre­vent­ing com­pli­ca­tions that arise from high blood pres­sure such as increased risk of heart attack, stroke, chronic heart fail­ure, and kid­ney dis­ease.

In this lat­est report, the University of California Davis Olive Center aims to pro­vide clin­i­cians with prac­ti­cal advice backed by sci­en­tific evi­dence on the effec­tive­ness of olive oil in low­er­ing blood pres­sure.

The report sum­ma­rizes that a daily con­sump­tion of at least two table­spoons of phe­nol-rich EVOO can be effec­tive in low­er­ing blood pres­sure. The authors rec­om­mend fur­ther research to deter­mine spe­cific EVOO phe­nols that have blood pres­sure low­er­ing effect.



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