The Mediterranean diet has been hailed as the healthiest lifestyle for some time now, and a new study is suggesting that the fat in olive oil improved failing hearts in rats.

Ed. Note: The following content was provided by Luna Olivo who is a client of KHTS AM-1220.

Researchers were surprised by the findings, according to a Time article. To see exactly how fat moves around in the cells of these impaired hearts, they removed hearts from rats, kept them beating normally and put them in a strong magnetic field through a process called nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy.

They delivered two types of fat directly to the hearts—either oleate, the kind of fat found in olive oil and canola oil, or palmitate, which is in dairy products, palm oil and animal fat, according to the Time article. When the scientists followed the fat around, they found drastic differences in how the hearts reacted to the two fats.

“We didn’t think it would have such profound effects,” said E. Douglas Lewandowski, study author and director of the University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Cardiovascular Research. “When we think about normalizing the metabolism, it’s so far upstream of so many disease processes that it’s very exciting.” In just half an hour, the fat induced all of these positive changes.

People who follow the Mediterranean diet which is high in olive oil, have long shown lower rates of heart disease death and heart problems, and the good monounsaturated fats, like the kind in oleate, raises the good kind of cholesterol and lowers the less desirable kind, according to the Time article.

Luna Olivo is a high end Olive Oil company that specializes in pure and infused olive oils, perfect for your heart, and your taste buds.

Check out their interview on KHTS here:

Based in Santa Barbara, they source their olives from the very best growers and orchards in California based on the micro climate

Using such a high quality strain of olives, from artisan growers here in California, makes a world class olive oil.

“Our olives are hand harvested, as opposed to some olives that are grown using hedge row farming,” said Luna Olivo owner  Steve Barry. “They are nurtured to bring out the best in the trees.”

More research—especially on humans—is needed before imagining that oleate could help the failing hearts of people, but Lewandowski admits his study shows the potential for actual dietary therapeutic regimens, according to the Time article. And the results might help partly explain why the Mediterranean diet is so heart-healthy.

Read more about the study on rats with heart failure, here.

To learn more about Luna Olivo, visit their website here.

Luna Olivo

Santa Barbara, California

steve@lunaolivo.com

Tel: 1-805-620-7230