The Mediterranean diet is enjoying a moment as one of the healthiest, most effective diets to adopt to heal your body. Diving deeper, though, it is not the Mediterranean diet as a whole; olive oil is one of the greatest assets in this diet and boasts an impressive slew of benefits.

Food and Diabetes

Food is one of the most important players in diabetes, both regarding prevention and management. While diet alone is often not enough to treat diabetes after it has developed, it can go a long way in fending off a diabetic diagnosis, even in someone who has been diagnosed with pre-diabetes.

For that reason, choosing the foods you eat is one of the best ways to make sure your body is strong, healthy, and controlled. A healthy diet can reduce high blood pressure, combat insulin resistance, improve inflammation, and provide overall health to the body.

Olive oil is one such “super food” that can provide powerful healing to the body, and improve a host of health concerns, including diabetes.

Olive Oil Benefits

Olive oil is comprised of several fatty acids, all of which are linked to increased health and longevity. In addition to Omega 3s and Omega 6s, olive oil contains oleic acid. Oleic acid is incredibly healthy, providing the human body with ingredients required to keep inflammation at bay, which can help prevent chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s—all conditions linked to one another, perpetual inflammation, and the reduced ability to use and metabolize sugar.

Aside from these important benefits, however, another possible benefit of olive oil was discovered: oleuropein. Oleuropein is a compound found in olive oil that improves the body’s ability to secrete insulin, making it a powerful tool in the fight against diabetes.

Oleuropein and Diabetes

Oleuropein is an amazing discovery for diabetes, in that it improves insulin secretion and protects against some of the bodily damage caused by Type 2 diabetes, preventing diabetes complications and the onset of heart disease.

The exact mechanism behind oleuropein has not yet been separated and made available as a form of medication, but including 1-4 tablespoons in your daily diet can help keep many health risks at bay, including obesity, inflammation, heart disease, high cholesterol, and insulin resistance, all of which heighten your risk of developing diabetes.

In people who already have diabetes, olive oil is similarly helpful; it cannot reverse diabetes, but it can certainly improve some of the complications and symptoms involved in Type 2, and can provide improvements to your body’s overall health, longevity, and inflammatory response.