According
to a new study, people that consume abundant olive oil can protect their cells
from damage which finally lead to the cancer.
Olive Oil Fighting Cancer
According
to a new study, people that consume abundant olive oil can protect their cells
from damage which finally lead to the cancer.
This discovery
can explain why the cases of enough forms of cancer are higher in northern
European countries than those in the states of south, where the olive oil
constitutes the main grease of diet.
The study also supports the
experts’ constitution for replacement of saturated greases which origin from
animal foods with greases that originate from plant foods - mainly from olive oil.
As the researchers from Denmark write in the inspection "The FASEB Journal"
which is published by the Federation of American Companies of Experimental
Biology (FASEB), the olive oil can decrease the oxidant damage in the genetic
material (DNA) of the cells - a process that can give the spark for the growth
of cancer.
The discovery came up from the
study of 182 Europeans, 20 to 60 years old, from five different countries. For
two weeks, each man consumed daily half a cup of olive oil.
In the end of the study, it was
realised that they had decreased at 13% the levels of a substance in their
blood, which is called 8oxodG and constitutes an indicator of oxidant damage in
the DNA of the cells.
Such kind of damage is caused when a sub-product of metabolism - named free
roots of oxygen - overcomes the antioxidant defences of organism.
The olive oil contains a group
of substances that is called phenols and it is believed that they have powerful
antioxidant attributes. However,
the phenols did not appear to be accountable for the reduction of oxidant damage
in the DNA of the volunteers of a new study, according to Dr Henrik E. Poulsen,
from the Academic Hospital of Copenhagen, and his collaborators.
And this happened, because the
men of the new study consumed three different kinds of olive oil, with different
levels of phenols each one - and the oxidant damage was decreased regardless of
the content of each olive oil in phenols.
This discovery makes the
scientists conjecture that the benefit that they observed is owed in the
mono-unsaturated greases of olive oil.
Whatever the
cause is, the researchers believe that the olive oil constitutes one from the
reasons that some forms of cancer (as the cancer of breast, thick intestine,
ovaries and protector) are more infrequent in the Mediterranean countries than
in those of Northern Europe.
At the beginning of the study,
the volunteers from Southern Europe had, in any case, lower levels of the
substance 8oxodG in their blood compared to the volunteers from the Northern
Europe.
"This discovery is reliable
with the expected effect of Mediterranean diet which is rich in olive oil ", the
researchers point out.
In any case, Dr Poulsen
declared in the Reuters that the named Mediterranean diet, that substantially is
the traditional Greek diet, is something more than just olive oil, as her base
is the fruit, the vegetables, the cereals of total milling, the fish and -
naturally - the olive oil.
Moreover, "even though the
olive oil provides a lot of benefits, it does not constitute a substitute of the
daily exercise and the reasonable consumption of calories", he added.
SOURCE:
Reuters, The FASEB Journal