It was said to one of the newspaper that virgin olive pain could be used to relieve pain. The Guardian suggested that the oil could be eaten on a salad as a replacement for ibuprofen tablets.
The story came from a US study which found that a compound in the oil called oleocanthal has the same anti-inflammatory properties as ibuprofen and aspirin. Many of the stories started that olive oil, when consumed regularly, could protect against cancer and heart disease. Yet they went n to report that there is not enough oleocanthal in the oil to use it as a replacement for painkillers.
The study was conducted at the Monell Chemical Senses Centre in Philadelphia. Gary Beauchamp, lead researcher and centre director became interested in the properties of olive oil after realizing that drinking extra virgin olive oil causes an irritation at the back of the throat similar to that caused when drinking ibuprofen syrups. He hypothesized that it was the effect of the oleocanthal in the oil that caused the irritation and decided to test the theory.
There are several stages made to experiment. The volunteers asked to rate the irritating effects of oils containing different levels of the compound. People rated the oils as more irritating when the level of olecanthal was higher. In the second stage, oleocanthal was higher. In the second stage, oleocanthal was extracted from olive oil and put into corn oil at different concentrations. Again the volunteers rated the higher concentrations as more irritating.
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