Olive Leaf and Oil | Elixir of Long Life

Hey my friends, Herbal Jedi signing in and I'm here in Italy in the heart of olive country. Now this is one of the most well-renowned herbs. Of course it has a lot of benefits for the body, both the oil and the leaf and the olive itself. So I want to share with you a bit about this. We've been dipping everything in olive oil, feeling renewed in this kind of elixir of life, this beautiful plant that has so much to offer us. So this is olive and today we're going to Olive is one of the world's oldest cultivated plants with over 7,000 years of history being used internationally in barter and trade. This is the elixir of life in this part of the world. It has so many health benefits and such a rich tapestry of use over the years. The very first Olympic torch was made with olive oil. The crown of the Olympians was olive. The olive branch is a symbol of peace and prosperity. This tree is a symbol of youth and life and some of the benefits that it has is really around helping the body to be more healthy as we age. So let's look at it a little deeper and get to know olive. Olive is an evergreen medium-sized tree that has a strong constitution. It can often be gnarly at the bark and it can grow to be really, really old. Most olive was cultivated and has been cloned almost to become the same plant because a lot of the wild olives are not quite as rich in oils or as flavorful. We can't actually eat these like this. They need to be processed in a way of either fermented or cultured to pull out some of the bitter flavors. So if you try to eat green olives, it'll make your lips pucker. It'll be bitter and not as flavorful. But of course, if you've ever had olives before, they are delicious and have a wonderful flavor. The leaves are what we're going to use as medicine as well as the oil. But first, we're going to start by talking about the leaves, some of the benefits to them, and how they can be worked with. One of the main active compounds is oleuropein, which is a type of polyphenol that has a lot of antioxidant, anti-inflammatory capacity. It really helps to open up the capillary beds of the body and get better oxygen through the body and really help with plaquing and artery walls. So this is one of the main reasons why olive has become a really powerful medicine. But also, there's a lot of those antimicrobial properties to this too. Probably the most well-known time-tested medicine for working with olive is its use for cardiovascular health. Now, this plant has a lot of different ways that it supports our blood pressure as well as arterial cholesterol and so much more. It helps to lower the LDLs, the bad cholesterol, and really support having better quality oils in the body, mostly because of these polyphenols and terpenes. We also see that it helps with stiffening of the arteries, so helping to give them more elasticity, but also work with arterial plaquing and reduce blood pressure. So it has a hypotensive quality, which means that it really reduces down the blood pressure. This is partly because it's also diuretic and antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory. So all of these combined make it one of the best medicines for cardiovascular health. That is why you see here in Italy, anyway, a lot of people eat pasta and pizza, a lot of carbohydrates. They drink lots of alcohol. Some of them even smoke quite heavily, but they look healthy and young and have a great cardiovascular system that you can tell. Now, this can also be used on the skin, right? So the oil is classically used to help keep vibrant skin health. Remember how I said it's cooling and astringent and toning, which means that it's helping to invigorate the cells and move the energy and really tighten up the gums, the skin, the arteries, give them more elasticity, more suppleness, and really more vitality in general. Another important area of health that olive leaf can be used for is the immune system. Now, this is really good for the respiratory tract because of its antioxidant qualities and its antimicrobial qualities. So fevers, flus, coughs and colds, of course, but it also has a lot of antiviral qualities that is part of the reason we put this into our viral formula. Now, I've seen the research originally around it being used for hepatitis C and A and B, of course, as well as influenza virus, but there's been a lot of recent research looking at how it worked with COVID, both long-term and short acute COVID. It actually has the ability to support stopping the C-reactive proteins binding in the body temperature regulation, as well as saturation of oxygen within the blood and blood pressure regulation. So really working with kind of stabilizing the body so that it can respond and be more effective in working with the virus, but also having that ability to stop viruses from sticking to cells and really protect as more of that biofilm disruptor that some of these other antiviral substances have. So this might be one that you want to turn to if you're dealing with long COVID or have somebody in your relationship, your family, or people like that are working with this. So olive leaf, again, to the rescue, what an awesome plant this is. Really stoked to be connecting with it and hope to use it a bit more in my practice. Because this plant has the energetics of being cooling and astringent and toning, as well as those antimicrobial properties, we see that olive is really good for all the mucosal membranes of the body. What this means is that it can work with the digestive tract and the urinary tract specifically, helping to tone those mucous membranes, help as an anti-inflammatory, and to invigorate those tissues, but also work with killing any kind of microbial pathogenic cultures that are there. Classically, olive leaf is consumed as a tea, but I like to work with it as a tincture as well because it has all those phenolic compounds that are easily extracted in alcohol. Because this is not a plant that grows near me, I haven't got a lot of time to really get to olive. I'm going to harvest a few of these. I'm going to try and process them myself and see if I can make them tasty. One thing I love about working with plant medicine is getting to know the plants more intimately. Here's one where I've consumed a ton of oil. We've used it for all of ourselves. We've used it in our cooking, of course. I've used the tea for its flavor, but also for its antiviral properties and its cholesterol supportive properties, but I've not got a lot of chance to hang out with olive trees and really pick and connect with the olives. I'm going to pick a few today and just really try to process these in a way that I can start to use them as a great food when I get home. We'll see. I mentioned how olive can live a long time. This is a good example of a really old witchy one that has probably been here for, I don't know, but I'm going to say well over 100 years, has seen a lot go on in this place and really holds that kind of energy of grounded vitality and remembering to this place. This is one that was offered to the gods. This is a plant of power and potency, one that we all respect and love and have the just delicious enjoyment of the oil. So I hope you get to know olive leaf and olive oil a bit better. I hope you resonate with working with this type of oil over any of the other kind of oils. Olive oil is one of the best oils we can use for our body to just really work with our cardiovascular health and so much more. Thanks for joining me and learning a bit about olive. I hope that you have worked with us before and I'd love to hear from you. What is your favorite way to work with olive? Have you used the leaf as medicine? Have you eaten the fruits? Do you like different types of olive products? How do you work with this plant? Share with us in the comments and thank you so much for joining us in the Olive Leaf and Olive Connection today. Ciao for now. May the olive peace be with you.