Olive Oil can Fight a Failing Heart, Finds New Study

A recent study suggested that olive oil could prove beneficial in providing improvement to failing hearts.
The research was conducted on the hearts of rats with heart failure. Although some more research is needed but the findings can have same implications for humans also.

During the research, which was published in the journal Circulation, the hearts from rats with heart failure were removed in order to study the effects of fat on the heart. The researchers kept the hearts beating by treating some of them with oleate, which is a substance found in olive oil and canola oil and some of them with palmitate, a substance found in palm oil, animal fat and dairy products.

The hearts were found to react in different ways to the two types of fat. This made the researchers to believe that olive oil could prove to be beneficial for heart health. Author of the study and director of University of Illinois at Chicago Center for Cardiovascular Research, E. Douglas Lewandowski told Time that the hearts that were treated with palmitate ``looked like failing hearts’’.

But, the hearts that were treated with oleate the fat content in the cells was restored to normal and the hearts ``contacted better and showed normalized genes that help in fat metabolism’’.

Lewandowski told Time "we didn't think it would have such profound effects". When we think about normalizing the metabolism, it's so far upstream of so many disease processes that it's very exciting."

The heart failure in humans takes place over time as high blood pressure makes it tougher for the heart to pump blood. More research, especially on humans, is needed although it can be concluded that olive oil will have similar effects on human hearts as it did have on the hearts of rats.

Image courtesy: Getty Images

News source: theweek.com

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