` New Research Shows Olive Oil's Impact on Gut Health - Olive Oil Times
Enter keywords and hit Go →
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी
enEnglish
enEnglishfrFrançaiselελληνικάdeDeutscheitItalianozh-CN中文ptPortuguêsesEspañoltrTürkçehrHrvatskija日本語hiहिंदी

New Research Shows Olive Oil's Impact on Gut Health

By Paolo DeAndreis
Jul. 17, 2025 18:26 UTC
Summary Summary

New research sug­gests that extra vir­gin olive oil plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in main­tain­ing a healthy micro­biota, cru­cial for over­all health, by enhanc­ing bac­te­r­ial pop­u­la­tions in the gut. The review high­lighted the pos­i­tive effects of olive-derived bioac­tive com­pounds, such as polyphe­nols and triter­penes, in pro­mot­ing gut health and pre­vent­ing var­i­ous health issues by mod­u­lat­ing the gut-micro­biota-brain axis.

New research sug­gests extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion plays a more sig­nif­i­cant role than pre­vi­ously believed in main­tain­ing a healthy micro­biota, a cru­cial aspect of health.

According to a sci­en­tific review pub­lished in the jour­nal Foods, extra vir­gin olive oil may mod­u­late and enhance the vast bac­te­r­ial, viral, fun­gal, and archaeal pop­u­la­tions inhab­it­ing the human gut, known as the micro­biota.

These microor­gan­isms and func­tional cells are essen­tial for metab­o­liz­ing nutri­ents, drugs, and tox­ins, as well as for syn­the­siz­ing many vit­a­mins.

See Also:Health News

The micro­biota also stim­u­lates and sup­ports the immune sys­tem, strength­en­ing the intesti­nal bar­rier and mod­u­lat­ing aller­gies, bowel dis­eases, meta­bolic syn­drome, and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive con­di­tions.

A healthy micro­biota is asso­ci­ated with lower risks of car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, can­cer, obe­sity, dia­betes and other con­di­tions. It also impacts mood, stress response and men­tal health.

Researchers reviewed how olive-derived bioac­tive com­pounds pro­mote intesti­nal health while mod­u­lat­ing gut activ­ity.

More specif­i­cally, they focused on the impact of polyphe­nols, sec­oiri­doids and triter­penes on the human gut.

Although they make up less than two per­cent of extra vir­gin olive oil, these com­pounds can reduce inflam­ma­tion and com­bat oxida­tive stress.

They help pro­tect blood ves­sels, reg­u­late metab­o­lism and influ­ence brain and immune func­tion.

The review took into con­sid­er­a­tion hun­dreds of exist­ing stud­ies from a vast array of in vitro (lab­o­ra­tory-based), in vivo (ani­mal stud­ies) and human clin­i­cal tri­als.

The review con­firmed that polyphe­nols, sec­oiri­doids and triter­penes boost ben­e­fi­cial bac­te­ria pop­u­la­tions, notably Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium.

These microbes are essen­tial for main­tain­ing gut bal­ance, pro­duc­ing ben­e­fi­cial metabo­lites and sup­port­ing over­all gut health.

The review also showed that these sub­stances sup­press poten­tially path­o­genic bac­te­ria, con­tribut­ing to a more bal­anced and resilient micro­bial ecosys­tem.

One of the most crit­i­cal effects high­lighted by the review is the role of polyphe­nols, sec­oiri­doids, and triter­penes in stim­u­lat­ing the pro­duc­tion of SCFAs, which are fatty acids pro­duced when gut bac­te­ria break down dietary fiber and cer­tain polyphe­nols in the colon.

These fatty acids are vital for nour­ish­ing the cells lin­ing the colon, main­tain­ing the integrity of the intesti­nal bar­rier and reduc­ing inflam­ma­tion within the gut.

According to the researchers, these olive com­pounds have been shown to con­tribute to a more robust intesti­nal bar­rier.

See Also:Mediterranean Diet and Exercise Associated with Better Gut Health in Older Adults

This ​“pro­tec­tive shield” is con­sid­ered key to pre­vent­ing the leak­age of harm­ful sub­stances from the gut into the blood­stream, which can trig­ger sys­temic inflam­ma­tion and var­i­ous health issues.

The review also noted evi­dence from the cur­rent lit­er­a­ture of how these olive bioac­tive sub­stances can alle­vi­ate meta­bolic, inflam­ma­tory and neu­rocog­ni­tive dis­or­ders.

This wider influ­ence is attrib­uted mainly to their mod­u­la­tion of the gut-micro­biota-brain axis, where gut microbes pro­duce com­pounds that inter­act with the cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem.

The authors also noted some lim­i­ta­tions due to inher­ent chal­lenges in gut micro­biome research. 

These chal­lenges include the vast interindi­vid­ual vari­abil­ity in gut micro­biota com­po­si­tion.

In addi­tion, they noted the cur­rent lack of stan­dard­ized inter­ven­tion pro­to­cols across stud­ies and the rel­a­tively lim­ited num­ber of human clin­i­cal tri­als com­pared to those involv­ing ani­mals.

In their opin­ion, the poten­tial demon­strated by these sub­stances high­lights the need for more robust research to bridge find­ings from ani­mal mod­els to human phys­i­ol­ogy effec­tively.

The authors empha­sized that future human stud­ies must con­sider key indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences, includ­ing age, diet, genet­ics, health sta­tus, and gut micro­biota com­po­si­tion. 

The researchers indi­cated that these dif­fer­ences can influ­ence how peo­ple respond to olive bioac­tives. If ignored, they could lead to unre­li­able results.

The authors noted that by care­fully con­trol­ling or track­ing these ​“host vari­ables,” researchers can enhance the qual­ity, accu­racy, and repro­ducibil­ity of their find­ings, thereby ensur­ing that the observed effects are gen­uinely due to the com­pounds stud­ied, rather than under­ly­ing per­sonal or bio­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences.

“Translating these insights into dietary rec­om­men­da­tions and func­tional prod­ucts will require mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary, inte­gra­tive stud­ies that com­bine clin­i­cal tri­als with advanced multi-omics and sys­tems biol­ogy approaches,” the authors wrote.

Multi-omics refers to the inte­grated study of mul­ti­ple bio­log­i­cal lay­ers, like genes (genomics), pro­teins (pro­teomics), metabo­lites (metabolomics) and microbes (micro­bio­mics).

“By deep­en­ing our mech­a­nis­tic under­stand­ing and stan­dard­iz­ing olive oil com­po­si­tions, we could fully unlock the ther­a­peu­tic poten­tial of olive bioac­tives for meta­bolic, inflam­ma­tory and gut-brain axis-related dis­or­ders,” the researchers con­cluded.

More articles on:  , ,

Advertisement
Advertisement

Related Articles