The Amazing Truth about Olive Leaf Extract Benefits
Just like olives and olive oil, olive leaf extract benefits most everyone’s health. Unlike so many supposedly healthy extracts on sale these days, olive leaf extract really is a bit of a wonder compound. In fact, olive leaf extract has so many different beneficial effects that it is hard to touch on all of them, so I will not even try to do so. Instead, I will just touch on some of the major highlights and key points to give you a fairly good sense of how many ways this medicinal product can help you and your loved ones.
Basics about the Olive Leaf
The olive tree, the Olea europaea, has built quite a reputation for itself. Not only has olive oil become common cooking oil but also its positive attributes for health have long made it one of the favorites of nutritionists. In fact, the history of the medicinal uses of olive leaf goes back at least as far as the Ancient Egyptians who believed it had several health boosting properties.
Olive leaf extract currently comes in four different forms: the classic concentrated liquid form, the dry powder form, as pills, or bagged for tea. This makes it easier to fit consumers’ personal preferences. In fact, you can even find olive leaf extract as a soap or a cream.
WARNING: Like any highly active compound, olive leaf extract also has a series of potentially dangerous side effects. For example, olive leaf extract can potentially reduce blood pressure or blood sugars below a point that is safe. If you have diabetes or suffer from diseases that lower blood pressure, olive oil extract might not be for you. Along the same lines, certain medications may have a negative effect when combined with olive leaf extract. YOU SHOULD ALWAYS CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR BEFORE TAKING ON ANY NEW CHEMICAL COMPOUND; especially when you are already on certain medications.
Cardio-Vascular Benefits
Among its many positive effects, researchers have shown that olive leaf extract helps to reduce LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) and that it helps decrease blood pressure, as I mentioned above, and it has beneficial effects on blood flow by reducing tension in the arteries.
Anti-Oxidant Qualities
Even more amazingly, a recent study showed that olive leaf extract benefits health at a much greater level than many of us believed prior to this point. In fact, olive leaf extract’s ability to prevent oxidation turned out to be greater than the highly tooted antioxidant qualities of not only green tea, but was four times that of Vitamin C.
The compounds responsible for these positive effects seem to be oleuropein and hydroxyturosol, although olive leaf also contains many separate polyphenols and flavonoids such as Oleocanthal.
Early studies suggest that olive leaf extract may have beneficial effects for fighting cancer as well. These results are still only very early in the research process but medical researchers are looking into olive leaf extract benefits for reducing breast, liver, and prostrate cancers. It is still far too early to add this to olive leaf extracts already long list of benefits, however. Many studies in this early stage turn out to lead to dead ends when researchers pursue them.
Olive Leaf Extract Benefits List
In truth, it is difficult even to try to list all of the positive benefits of olive leaf extract. Here are some for you to consider. Olive leaf extract helps increase longevity, boost the immune system against colds, fight viral and bacterial infections, and even fight fungus. It also helps reduce inflammation, and helps against both herpes and the much less common Epstein-Barr Disease (a degenerative condition).
With so many positive benefits, the only real surprise is that more people haven’t started proselytizing for olive leaf extracts.