(11-04-13) How extra virgin olive oil protects against Alzheimer's

by Sherry Baker, Health Sciences Editor

(NaturalNews) According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH),
Alzheimer's disease (AD) -- which robs people of the ability to think, remember
and reason -- is an irreversible, progressive disease that eventually destroys
even the ability to carry out the simplest tasks. The NIH predicts that as many
as 5.1 million Americans may have Alzheimer's disease. There's no cure and no
treatment that works for long.

But does that mean there's no hope you can stave off AD in the first place? So
far, Big Pharma has nothing that works but researchers working on natural
approaches are making progress. The latest is from a team of scientists in the
Department of Basic Pharmaceutical Science at the University of Louisiana at
Monroe. They say consuming extra virgin olive oil helps reduce the risk of
Alzheimer's -- and they think they know why.

In their new study, just published in the American Chemical Society (ACS)
journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience, they conclude that a component of olive oil
helps shuttle abnormal proteins associated with AD out of the brain. Amal
Kaddoumi and colleagues explained that the prevalence of Alzheimer's has long
been known to be lower in Mediterranean countries and, in the past, this has
been attributed to the high concentration of healthful monounsaturated fats in
olive oil which is a big part of the Mediterranean diet. However, more recent
studies have suggested that the actual protective agent might be a natural
substance in olive oil called oleocanthal that protects nerve cells from the
kind of damage that occurs in AD.

Kaddoumi's team set out to investigate whether oleocanthal actually helps
decrease the accumulation in the brain of beta-amyloid, which is believed to be
the culprit behind the mind-destroying properties of AD. For their study, they
tracked the impact of oleocanthal in the brains and cultured brain cells of
laboratory mice (a strain of rodents bred to use as stand-ins for humans with
Alzheimer's disease).

The results? Oleocanthal was clearly effective. In every case, it showed a
consistent pattern of it boosting the production of two proteins and key
enzymes believed to be critical in ridding beta-amyloid from the brain.

"Extra-virgin olive oil-derived oleocanthal associated with the consumption of
the Mediterranean diet has the potential to reduce the risk of AD or related
neurodegenerative dementias," the report concludes.

As Natural News has also reported previously, scientists are finding that
olive oil contains natural health-protective components that may be effective
against many serious diseases. For example, researchers from the Catalonian
Institute of Oncology (ICO) in Girona and the University of Granada in Spain
discovered that extra virgin olive oil's polyphenols have bioactivity against
breast cancer cell lines. And in a review of olive oil research published in
the journal Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, scientists from
Deakin University in Victoria, Australia, concluded the health benefits of the
Mediterranean diet (which include a lower incidence of cardiovascular disease
and atherosclerosis as well as several types of cancers) could be attributed to
the regular consumption of virgin olive oil by Mediterranean populations.

Sources:

http://pubs.acs.org= ation:
http://portal.acs.org
http://www.naturalnews.com/025633_cancer_oil_olive.html

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