Medicinal Uses for Olive Oil

Olive oil has been prized and valued for thousands of years. This has been not only for it's use as a food oil but due to it's medicinal qualities as well. Did you know that bacterium cannot exist in olive oil? Olive oil almost never causes allergic reactions thus to it's use in cooking and in medicines you can add it's helpfulness to alternative treatments that involve massage or pressure put on various parts of the body. Athletes have used olive oil in training rooms for thousands of years. Wrestlers used olive oil as a lubricant to help ward off quick attacks from opponents in the early classic Olympic games.

Olive oil has been used in treatment of ear conditions, such as excess wax build up. It also is known to assist in relieving constipation. In modern times we now know that mixing olive oil with vegetables allows our body to absorb double and triple multiples of vitamins and minerals. Olive oil is a major ingredient in the elixir developed in the movie Lorenzo's oil which showed that long chain fats help breakdown and allow digestion of key nutritional elements needed by our bodies. It is also suspected that long term use of olive oil instead of saturated fats is the contributing factor to lower rates of heart disease in Mediterranean countries.

Anyone with an Italian grandmother has been given Mussolini's cure for constipation. Two teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil in the morning before breakfast. This followed by a very warm glass of water that has had half a lemon squeezed into it.

By saving the medicinal properties of other plants and herbs which are kept in olive oil it indirectly aids in many other medicinal ways.

Olive oil can be mixed with flowers and some mashed fruits to use as a salve for chapped or cracked skin. Women have used it in many cosmetic and personal hygiene ways since time was first recorded.

Olive oil is used to help with gall bladder and liver ailments but how this works is still understudy and not yet verified. This also applies to use when mixed with equal amounts of oil from Geranium plants for reducing menstrual pain and PMS.