olive oil and high blood pressure

High arterial pressure is a big threat to our health and is widespread throughout the world. The cause is largely unknown, except in those few cases with clear secondary causes of high blood pressure, 94% of high pressure forms are defined as "essential", ie lack of a precise aetiological recognition.

Olive oil helps to regulate blood pressure and decreases blood pressure.

There are many hypotheses that have attempted to explain the casues of the onset of high blood pressure, many of them have highlighted the diet (excess of calories, of alcohol, of salt, lack of calcium, etc.)

We must point out that some researchers have found a positive correlation between the use of saturated fatty acids and the increase of blood pressure and negative correlation with the use of unsaturated fatty acids, so much so with monounsaturated as with polyunsaturated, among which feature Omega6 and Omega3. This effect could be due to increased production of prostaglandins with a decreasing effect on pressure or to an introduction of salt in a smaller quantity for people who don't consume enough animal fats in comparison to those who essentially consume animal fats.

Diverse studies have demonstrated that monounsaturated fatty acids exercise a clear pressure increasing action. Williams and col., parting iversos estudios han demostrado que los ácidos grasos monoinsaturados ejercen una clara acción hipotensora. Williams y col., based on the observation that the rate of cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure is lower among Mediterranean populations than in other populations of the Western world, have formulated the hypothesis that high blood pressure, or rather the blood pressure within normal values, may be due to the high monounsaturated fatty acid intake through regular consumption of olive oil.

Olive oil helps us maintain a balanced blood pressure.

Olive oil is a nutrient of great biological value, rich in calories, which could lead us to believe that its use would promote obesity. However, experience demonstrates that Mediterranean people, who cosume the most olive oil, suffer from a lower rate of obesity than Anglo-Saxon countries. Among the Mediterranean population only 10% of its people suffer from obesity, which is three times less than the amount of sufferers in the U.S.A.

Up unitl recently, dietary recommendations for the treatment of patients with high blood pressure consist in the restriction of salt and weight control. The knowledge that we had about the influence of fats on health was really little, so it was recommended that the consumption of olive oil was reduced due to the large adverse effect attributed to it because of its rich calorie content. In the last few years we have discovered that different fats have very different effects. In this sense one of the most interesting facts is the demonstration that the consumption of olive oil, within a Mediterranean diet, reduces high arterial pressure.

Olive oil is a natural and healthy food. For this reason it is called liquid gold.

Due to the importance of olive oil in the dressing and cooking the majority of foods in the Mediterranean diet olive oil is a source of supplementary health. The reducing effect on arterial pressure associated with the Mediterranean diet has been observed not only in patients with high blood pressure but also in healthy people. This fact has extraordinary importance as it would imply that the presence of olive oil in our diet has a preventative and curative effect. The preventative action of olive oil means that a population that consumes olive oil on a daily basis will probably have a lesser risk of high arterial pressure in the future.

A greatly important fact, in clinical management of high blood pressure patients, is the observation that usually high blood pressure is associated with other risk factors. As high blood pressure patients suffer, more often than healthy people, from obesity, diabetes, resistence to insulin, decrease of HDL cholesterol, elevated LDL cholesterol and elevated triglycerides. Medically, the presence of these abnormalities in a person is called plurimetabolic syndrome and implies that different risk factors are grouped into the same people, who are most at risk of cardiovascular disease.