Olive oil fights heart disease, breast cancer
They may smoke more than Americans and their health care system is far from perfect, but Greeks usually live longer than their U.S. counterparts, and they have some of the world's lowest rates of heart disease and cancer.The secret may be their olive-oil-drenched diet. Scores of scientific studies in the past decade have shown that olive oil, which is high in monounsaturated fat -- the "good" fat -- may prolong life by combating coronary heart disease and different types of cancer. No wonder the Greek physician Hippocrates, known as the father of medicine, is said to have referred to olive oil as "the great therapeutic." A few months ago the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) credited olive oil with decreasing the risk of coronary heart disease. Up to 80 percent of olive oil is made up of monounsaturated fatty acids, which resist oxidation (the process by which fatty acids are degraded) better than poly-unsaturates. Monounsaturated fatty acids help keep HDLso-called good cholesterollevels up and LDL, "bad" cholesterol, down. In addition, the presence of phenols, tocopherols, and other natural antioxidants in olive oil also prevent the formation of certain free radicals (highly reactive molecules) that may cause cell destruction within the human body. "Indeed, it is the only added lipid [fat] that has not been associated with increased risk of cancer," said Dimitrios Trichopoulos, an epidemiology professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Olive oil may actually prevent cancer, according to a study released earlier this year. The study showed that oleic acid, the main monounsaturated fatty acid in olive oil, can cripple a cancer gene responsible for 25 to 30 percent of all breast cancers. "Our findings underpin epidemiological studies that show that the Mediterranean diet has significant protective effects against cancer, heart disease, and aging," said one of the study's authors, Javier Menendez of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. Other studies have found that olive oil has a favorable effect on both ovarian cancer and bowel cancer. In addition, olive oil is well tolerated by the stomach. It appears to prevent the formation of gallstones as well as have a therapeutic effect on ulcers. Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com
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