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Dear Colleagues and Friends,
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The Mediterranean diet has long been recognized one of the healthiest dietary patterns to prevent cardiovascular diseases, cancer and age-related diseases such as neurodegeneration. Just recently an article on the reduction of total and all-cause mortality in association with olive oil consumption corroborated that many of the Mediterranean diet’s health benefits are actually conferred by olive oil (Marta Guasch-Ferré et al.). Step by step these findings also reach people outside the scientific-community, so the new evidence can translate in lifestyle changes among average citizens and promotes well-being in the whole society (Olive oil is the key to the Mediterranean diet).
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A prospective cohort study could complement the picture of the numerous health benefits due to olive oil consumption by relating it to lower frailty risk, a typical syndrome among elderly with huge impairment of their quality of life. Frailty includes three or more of five clinical manifestations: weakness, slow walking speed, low physical activity, fatigue and unintentional weight loss. Over a mean follow-up of three and a half years, the odds ratio for frailty incidence dropped to 0.52 for medium and to 0.47 for the tertile with highest olive oil consumption respectively. Remarkably, associations did not sustain for common (refined) olive oil and therefore underline the importance of using virgin oil instead. In summary, this study demonstrates for the first time olive oil’s association with reduced frailty and therefore adds further evidence for the nutritional advice to prefer virgin olive oil over other fats. Its health benefits go far beyond singular clinical endpoints such as mortality, and therefore extend to quality of life related diseases.
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In her editorial Maria Mirabelli shares the current recommendations for diabetes prevention through lifestyle interventions. Undoubtedly an effective prevention comprises several lifestyle aspects and therefore cannot be reduced to a single component. The author highlights that only through combination of nutrition and physical activity the whole synergistic potential can be used and only multifaceted interventions tackle the complex pathogenesis of diabetes. However, high adherence to the Mediterranean diet alone already proved its protective effect and its key component extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) plays a pivotal role. A beneficial high proportion of mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids as well as polyphenols are identified as key players which are involved in the networks of insulin receptor (INSR) signaling. While many potentially active compounds lack bioavailability Oleacein stands out as a good exception to this general observation due to its lipophilic character. It is capable of causing clinically relevant insulin-sensitizing actions. Due to its successful synthetic production it is now discussed as potential supplement to enrich commercial oils. In summary, the editorial highlights the necessity that the optimization of prevention is two-fold: On the one hand comprehensive and broad intervention is needed to counteract the numerous pathways leading to diabetes as a reductionist approach tends to ignore the complexity of disease development, on the other hand identifying key components can bring us close to an in-depth understanding of the underlying mechanisms allowing for optimization of prevention. By all means, EVOO showed great potential in prevention of numerous diseases including diabetes and therefore should be further studied.
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