`Olive Oil Joins the Fight Against Osteoporosis - Olive Oil Times
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Olive Oil Joins the Fight Against Osteoporosis

By Tom Baker
Feb. 7, 2011 10:26 UTC

The results of a study announced this week into the pos­si­ble treat­ment meth­ods for osteo­poro­sis have found that olive oil could play a role in both the future devel­op­ment of drugs as well as in the dietary require­ments of patients.

Osteoporosis is a dis­ease char­ac­ter­ized by a decrease in bone mass, which in turn causes the archi­tec­ture of bone tis­sue to become frag­ile. This can then increase the pos­si­bly of frac­tures, mak­ing even the slight­est of knocks poten­tially fatal for suf­fer­ers.

The dis­ease is rec­og­nized as being par­tic­u­larly preva­lent among post­menopausal women for whom a decrease in the pro­duc­tion of estro­gen then weak­ens bone struc­tures and most com­monly affects the ribs, wrists, and hips. For this study, sci­en­tists were par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in how a sup­ple­men­ta­tion of olive oil could be used to help women in this cat­e­gory.
See Also:Olive Oil Health Benefits
Tests were car­ried out on rats show­ing com­pa­ra­ble con­di­tions to female human menopause, with one group being treated orally with olive oil. At the end of the exper­i­ment, blood sam­ples were col­lected and tested for lev­els of cal­cium, phos­pho­rus, alka­line phos­phatase (ALP), mal­on­di­alde­hyde (MDA), and nitrates.

The results found that that rats not treated with olive oil showed a sig­nif­i­cant decrease in cal­cium lev­els and a sig­nif­i­cant increase in plasma ALP, MDA, and nitrates lev­els.

Olive oil sup­ple­men­ta­tion proved to be ben­e­fi­cial and was found to both atten­u­ate these changes and to pos­i­tively affect the thick­ness of bones.

Diet plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in main­tain­ing healthy bones for which it is impor­tant to eat foods rich in cal­cium and Vitamin D, as well as those con­tain­ing min­er­als includ­ing: phos­pho­rus, mag­ne­sium, zinc, boron, iron, flu­o­ride, and cop­per. Doctors often rec­om­mend foods such as nuts, seeds, beans, and grains to improve min­eral lev­els, while cod liver oil and fish such as tuna and salmon are con­sid­ered to be good sources of Vitamin D. When it comes to improv­ing lev­els of cal­cium, dairy prod­ucts like yogurt, cheese, and for­ti­fied milk are very often rec­om­mended but olive oil can also be a good source. In one cup (216mg), olive oil con­tains 2.2mg of Calcium, as well as nec­es­sary min­er­als such as Iron (1.2mg), Potassium (2.2mg), and sodium (4.3mg).

Olive oil will not be the only solu­tion in the con­tin­u­ing fight against post­menopausal osteo­poro­sis but hav­ing per­formed well in the lab, sci­en­tists have con­cluded that it is a very promis­ing can­di­date for future treat­ments of the dis­ease.

The authors of the study are Dr. Nermine K Saleh and Dr. Hanan A Saleh, Ain Shams University, Egypt.

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