Olive

Scientific Name: Olea europea

Part Used: Oil squished from the seed

In a word: Healing oil

Reasonable uses: Applied to the skin or to a joint, it will initiate healing

The olive tree played a major role in ancient Mediterranean life. We still have a Mount Olive in Jerusalem as a monument to the days when olive trees literally carpeted the Holy Land. The hills of Galilee, Samaria, and Judea were covered with them. When Noah sent out the dove, she came back with an olive in her mouth. "And the dove came back to him in the evening and lo, in her mouth a freshly plucked olive leaf; so Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth." Genesis 8:11. When a plant is mentioned in Genesis it means that it was in use by the Israelites at an early age. This was true of all ancient people in the region.

The olive tree and its fruit were a part of daily life in the ancient world. The fruit was eaten as a major source of food. More importantly, the same fruit was pressed to produce oil which was used by everyone every day. Olive oil was the base for the holy ointments used in the Temple and for creating light in both homes and Temple. It was used as a solvent for various spices and aromatics to be used in incenses, perfumes, medicines, and cosmetics. It has used in cooking and every kitchen had a bottle of it. Life revolved around this oil and the tree that made it was revered.

Topically applied, olive oil reduces inflammation and pain.

In the Bible times, the olive fruit was allowed to stay on the tree until fully black. In the fall, workers would pass through the trees beating the branches with a long stick and the fruits were collected as they fell. Once collected, the fruits were either treated with salt to be eaten at a later date or were pressed for oil. Interestingly enough, Mount Olive had a large stand of olives on it in ancient times. Normally, the presses were situated close to the trees. The olives were carried from the trees directly to the press. Gethsemane literally means oil press (gat = press and shmanin = oil).

The oil used in the temple was prepared differently than that used for domestic purposes. Firstly, temple oil was made with olives that were not entirely ripe. Rather than being pressed in the normal presses, ritual oil was pressed in a container using a minimum of force. The Israelites felt that the oil pressed from the partially ripe fruits was far superior to the oil pressed from entirely ripe fruits, though the later were richer in oil. The oil pressed from unripe fruits is what we call extra virgin olive oil. Even today, extra virgin olive oil is more expensive.

We read that the Israelites bought many goods from the spice merchants. You may wonder what they used to buy the desired items. Mastic was one local product valued by the ancient worlds outside of Israel. Olive oil was another. The Israelites not only depended upon olive oil for daily life, they used it as currency.

Unlike some of the biblical plants that have been mistranslated, the olive has always been translated correctly. Zayit is the Hebrew word for olive and it is still used today in modern Israel. The Israelites distinguished themselves with the production of both the olive and its oil. Records from other cultures discuss Israelite olive oil, the oil of the zayit.

The olive tree, in and off itself, is quite an interesting tree. It grows very slowly but can live forever. There are specimens living in the Holy Land that are said to be in excess of a thousand years old. If you have a chance to visit Israel, you will notice them right off the bat. You will no doubt wonder exactly how old some of these trees are. The trunk can be entirely hollowed and worm eaten and the tree will continue bearing fruit in prodigious quantities. They look ancient!

In order to appreciate why the Israelites so loved their olive trees, you have to put yourself in their shoes. Survival, at the time, meant providing your family with food. This meant more than running down to the grocery store. You had to grow it, harvest it, and process it before you could eat it. This is easier said than done in a country that gets little rain. The olive tree was, and still is, perfectly happy to produce hundreds of pounds of food with virtually no assistance from the owner. Apart from harvesting and processing of course. The ancient world was all about getting enough calories to survive. Oil is rich in calories and kept the body in energy for a long time. Its incredible ability to produce in the absence of hard work from the farmer, and produce for generations, made the olive tree popular.

By the time the Bible was written down the olive tree had been in cultivation in Israel and other countries for ages. Evidence of its use dates to 3700 BC, which you will note, was almost five thousand years ago. It has been found in elsewhere in the Mediterranean region at equally early dates and, is believed to be native to the region. The olive tree is a member of the Oleaceae family of which there are 400 species. The entire family resides in the temperate zones, Africa, India, Australia included. The olive tree is the only member of the family native to the Mediterranean region.

Getting back to the olive, there is a difference between the cultivated olive and the wild olive. Cultivated olive varieties are grafted onto the wild olive tree as it provided a stronger base for the domesticated olive. Planting an olive seed did not necessarily result in a tree that produces a nice olive. At the time of the Bible, the olive had been bred to the extent people distinguished between the wild tree and the domesticated varieties. Olive culture was a sophisticated affair even 5000 years ago.

The biblical garden is not like anything you would find in the suburbs today. In those days, a garden was a walled area filled with olives, grapes, vegetables, chickens running around, and a fig tree in one corner. If the person was wealthy, they might have almonds, walnuts, and pistachios in their garden. The garden was filled with plants intended to flavor food and make medicine. Wealthy farmers had a guard in a small tower to watch over the garden and to keep thieves away. When you see the word garden in the Bible, it was not a decorative garden filled with flowers waiting to be cut, rather what we would call a kitchen garden. The olive was a prominent feature in everyone''''''''s garden, no matter how big or small. Everyone had an olive tree.

There is one last biblical olive fact that is important to understand. The Israelite Kings were brought into the office by being anointed with olive oil. The word for king in Hebrew really means "the anointed one". The Kings were anointed by either the prophets or the priests. The term the "anointed one" is synonymous with king. In Judges 9:8, we read that when the trees decided to anoint or select a king over all trees, the olive tree was quickly selected.

The Israelites were not the only ancient Mediterraneans to nearly worship this tree. Homer talks about green olives in the gardens of Alcinous and Laertes, trees that were said to have been brought to Athens by the city founder, Cecrops. Dioscorides talks about both the cultivated olive and the wild olive. The tree arrived in Rome in the year 571 BC. By the time Pliny was living, olive culture had spread from Rome all the way to Spain. In Cato''''''''s lifetime, the Romans were working with 9 different olives, when Pliny was living there were 12, and in modern Italy, there are hundreds.

It may come as a shock, but, the tree was sacred to the Greeks and the Romans. It was the symbol of Athena and Minerva, goddesses of medicine and health. This should tell you something straight away as to where we are going with this ancient plant. In Greece and Rome, people debated who gave man the greater gift, Athena with her gift of the Olive or Poseidon with his gift of the horse.

Throughout the Mediterranean, people hung olive branches on their doors as a means of protecting the family from both ill fortune and ill health. At the time the Bible was happening, olive bark, leaves, and the oil pressed from its fruit were used in medicine. Much like the date palm, it was seen as a grocery store and superdrug all at the same time. As an example, Ramses II, ruler of Egypt around 1300 BC, used the oil as his general health booster. He was not alone in this notion, olive oil was seen as a complete cure-all. The other tree parts were equally well used as medicine.

The leaves were used as an astringent disinfectant, topically and internally. The leaves were also used to reduce fevers, something handy in the Holy Land. When the Jewish settlers started returning to their homeland at the beginning of this century, their biggest enemy was malaria. A lot of back breaking labor went into draining the swamps that harbored the mosquitoes that caused the disease. Malaria is usually associated with moist environments, however, the Holy Land had its share of the disease. The bark and the leaves were used to treat diseases like malaria that were marked by fever. Additionally, the olive leaf was used to increase urine production, reduce blood pressure, and to treat what we would now call diabetes.

In many Mediterranean countries olives are served before a meal as an appetizer. The fruits are seen as an appetite stimulant. Maimonides spoke of this use, "Olives strengthen the stomach and open ones appetite. The best type is that prepared with vinegar." There is a flip side to this coin. Herbal practitioners from Mediterranean will tell you that olives are bad for people on a diet!

Northern Europe got its first glimpsed of olive oil when the Romans were helping themselves to the local riches, prior to the age of Christ. The Romans liked to bring food from home and I suspect, occasionally, they let the natives have a taste. The northerners did not take a shine to the Roman treat, as many say, olives are "an acquired taste." The people of the north may not have relished the olive, but they did see the olive oil for its medicinal value. When the Romans pulled out of England, they left the local doctors with a new tool for their healing practices.

Gerard had something to say about the olive. "the oile of ripe of olives mollifieth and asswageth paine, dissolveth tumors or swellings, is good for the stiffenesse of the ioints, and against cramps, especially being mingled according to art, with good and wholesome herbes appropriate unto these diseases and griefes, as hypericum, cammonill,dill, lilies, roses,and any others, which do fortifie and increase its vertues. The oil of unripe olives, doth stay , represse, and drive away the beginning of tumors and inflammations,cooling the heate of burning ulcers, and exculcerations. Unripe olives are dry and binding."

In the ancient world olive oil was seen as a healing and pain relieving ointment. Straight out of the bottle. As Gerard told us, it was used to heal painful joints, muscles and wounds. Olive oil was also used as a vehicle for other drugs. I touched upon the idea of topical application of medicines in the mustard. We need to take a deeper look.

The ancients felt that applying medicine was as powerful as swallowing it. We don''''''''t see our skin as entry point into the body but it is. Just like nicotine patches transmit nicotine into the body, herbal drugs can be introduced via the same route. The ancients knew this and took advantage of it. First they infused the drugs in oil. This means they floated something like myrrh in a bowl of olive oil. They then applied the oil to the body, the medicine of the drug having been absorbed by the oil.

Olive oil is a particularly good "vehicle", or mover of drugs into the body, as it soaks right into the skin. Apply a patch of olive oil on your arm and within a few hours it will have been absorbed entirely. Olive oil does not evaporate, so you know where it has gone. When you see an ancient reference to applying an herb to the skin, don''''''''t dismiss it. The chemicals in the plant are absorbed via the skin. In some ways skin application is better than oral. When you swallow something, it is subject to all kinds of stomach acids which tend to rip things apart. Not so with the skin, straight in it goes!

Maude Grieve didn''''''''t want to get left out of the show and had a few words to say about olive oil, "The oil is nourishing, demulcent, and laxative. Externally it relieves pruritus (itching), the effects of stings or burns, and is a good vehicle for liniments. With alcohol it is a good hair tonic. As a lubricant it is valuable in skin, muscular, joint, kidney, and chest complaints, or abdominal chill, typhoid and scarlet fevers, plague, and dropsies. Delicate babies absorb its nourishing properties well through the skin. Internally, it is a laxative and disperser of acids, and a mechanical antidote to irritant poisons."

We have lost some of the most human elements of healing, at home and at the hospital. A hundred years ago, it was not uncommon for mothers to massage olive oil into the skin over the chest or the stomach when a child had some discomfort in either region. Touch was seen as healing. Uncomfortable hospital patients were rubbed with the same to relieve their pain and to strengthen their systems. Imagine how much a modern hospital would charge you for an olive oil body rub! The ancients saw olive oil as healing, period. No matter what was wrong with you, a rub down with olive oil would help your body to heal itself. Massage is extremely healing on its own, a coating of olive oil would double this effect.

Olive oil has received a lot of attention in the press over the past few years. It may be coming back into vogue. I think we will spend a little time looking at the facts and figures. Here is a basic fact. Olive oil is fattening, not a little bit fattening, a lot fattening. When ever I talk about olive oil in America, people say the same tired thing. "Oh, it''''''''s so fattening." Americans have become obsessed with weight and fat. I saw apple cider advertised as fat free at a supermarket in the states recently. If you write fat free on a product Americans think it is ok. If you write fat full, God help you. Fat has become a dirty word. This is stupid. There are a lot of fat bearing foods that are wonderful for the body and people are missing out on them because of this obsession with fat. Olive oil is one of them. As concerned as Americans are about fat free foods, they win the award for being the most obese nation. Clearly, eating fat free foods is not working.

I spend a lot of time in Mediterranean countries where people practically drink olive oil for breakfast. They are not fat and they do not have heart disease. When I go to American grocery stores, all I see is fat people pushing grocery carts filled with food marked "fat free". Eating garbage makes American people fat, not products like olive oil.

Some foods are good for you and contain a lot of fat. Olive oil is electric with life and when you take it into your body, it makes you electric. The object of eating is to fill your body with life. Processed microwave food is dead and if you eat enough of it, whether its lean or not, you too will become dead. Olive oil is fatty, fattening, and fabulous. We would all be better off if we drank it instead of garbage filled diet sodas.

Olive oil is largely made up of oleic acid and linoleic acid. It contains sterols including beta-sitosterol, cholesterol, delta-7-stigmasterol, stigmasterol, and campesterol. The main sterol is beta-sitosterol. The oleic acid has been shown to increase the production of bile, which validates Maude Grieve''''''''s notion that it improves the functioning of the digestive tract. Remember, we need bile to process our food efficiently. Linoleic acid has a liver protecting action. We need healthy livers and anything that can help is a good thing. Both actions of the oils main constituents shed some new light on an old idea. The idea was coating your stomach with olive oil would prevent drunkenness. Olive oil will not prevent drunken behavior, but it would help to protect their liver from the beating it gets when a person drinks excessively.

When I was a child, I developed a nasty ear ache while away at the beach. My extra dear aunt, Janice Banta, put some olive oil in my ear and the pain went away. This experience always stayed with me. When I discovered that olive oil contained phytosterols, I was intrigued. Phytosterols are quite similar to cortical steroids used to reduce inflammation. As it turns out, beta-sitosterol is anti-inflammatory. Earaches and ear pain are caused by inflammation and putting some olive oil in the ear will reduce the pain. This anti-inflammatory action may explain why olive oil makes an inflamed joint feel better. Stigmasterol, another phytosterol found in olive oil, is a sedative. This would only help matters. Topically applied, olive oil reduces inflammation and pain.

Research has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that olive oil is something that everyone should take every day. The list of reasons is long and we will plod through it slowly. First of all, one of the number one killers in the western, or the so called developed world, is heart disease. There are a number of risk factors for developing heart disease. One factor is a high ratio of low density lipoproteins (LDLs) to high density lipoproteins in the blood. To make this simple, there are good cholesterols and bad cholesterols. If you have too many bad cholesterols (LDLs), you are more likely to develop heart disease. For a long time, the American Medical Community peddled the idea that you could eat your way out of having high bad cholesterol levels. Unfortunately, people with high bad cholesterol levels, eating rabbit food, have not had the drop in cholesterol levels the medical community suggested they would. The theory that high cholesterol is caused by a high fat diet has not panned out.

Faced with defeat, the medical community has in part abandoned this faulty theory. The new theory is that high LDL levels are genetically predetermined, if you were meant to have high cholesterol, regardless of what you eat, you are going to have it. It sounds pretty depressing. There is a glimmer of hope for those with high LDL levels. Though cutting out fatty meats may not do much, eating certain foods does reduce LDL levels.

Olive oil is just such a food. Several tablespoons of olive oil per day has been proven to knock down LDL levels in many patients. The upshot of reducing cholesterol levels in the blood is that in time the arteries will clear themselves out. When the body has extra of anything, it has special places it likes to store them. Normal fat gets stored in the hips of women and the guts of men. LDLs get laid down along the interior of the blood vessels. Like when you lose weight, when you lose LDLs, the stored surplus disappears.

The problem with LDLs is that they literally clog up the arteries. Blood has a harder time getting through vessels blocked with cholesterol. The problem with blood is that if it sits too long in one place, it tends to clot. You are probably quite aware that blood clots are a bad thing, especially if they happen in the brain or in the vessels that serve the heart. Olive oil has been proven to reduce blood clotting in all people. This means that if your arteries are already clogged with cholesterol, the oil can help prevent clot formation.

Remember that Pharaoh Ramses used olive oil to preserve his health? Well, it seems it might have preserved his whole body. Free radicals that roam the body damage cells and cause aging. They also make cells more likely to go funny, or become cancerous. Anti-oxidants have become the craze in recent years, cod liver oil, primrose oil, and vitamin C have all gotten a lot of press for clearing oxidants before they have the chance to do damage. Olive oil has chemicals that vacuum up free radicals and it is a lot cheaper than the previously mentioned articles. In that free radicals do so much damage, Ramses was quite correct to pursue a health regimen that contained olive oil.

Earlier in this section, I mentioned that the ancient physicians used olive leaves to treat high blood pressure. This practice has been validated by contemporary research. The key to this blood pressure lowering activity is based on a compound known as oleuropein. The chemical has proven to drop blood pressure in dogs and rats. When the blood pressure is lower, the heart itself gets better blood supply. The chemical has been proven to increase circulation to the heart muscle. Oleuropein has also been proven to be an antispasmodic and to act as an anti-oxidant. Unfortunately, most of us don''''''''t have access to the leaves. If you do, make tea.

Practitioners’ Advice

Olive oil, applied externally, is one of the most ancient and healing of applications. It sooths chaffed skin, sun burns, and indeed all manner of skin trouble. It can be massaged into the skin, or added to the bath. Coat the skin with olive oil and the skin will thank you. On the internal front, you can take the tea made of the leaves, or have the occasional swig from the olive oil bottle. In both instances you will be better off.