Okay, what happens to your body when you take a shot of extra virgin olive oil daily? Well, you know, I said it a thousand times, the purpose of food is to get olive oil into your mouth. But I don’t just cook with it. Every single day I take a shot of it, a straight shot. So what would happen to you if you did the exact same thing for 30 days? Well, let’s get into it. So what does a shot really mean? Well, it means about one to two tablespoons straight daily. Now, how do I take mine? I actually take a shot in the evening, but if you want to take a shot in the morning, that’s fine with me. I only go to restaurants where I know the olive oil, believe it or not. And so I personally don’t take my olive oil with me to restaurants, but I have many friends like Dr. David Pollman who takes a flask of olive oil to restaurants where he dines because I guess he doesn’t trust the olive oil in those restaurants.

(01:08)
I know the olive oil in the restaurants I go to and they’re actually really high quality. So I don’t do that. But consider it. It’s kind of fun to f – pull out your flask of olive oil while dining in a restaurant. Uh, you’ll get some interesting looks. If you don’t like the taste of olive oil, I personally like it, you can cut your olive oil with vinegar or lemon juice or lime juice. And that’ll be like actually drinking a shot of salad dressing and most people like the combination of acid and oil. That’s another way to do it. Now, I like a very high polyphenol olive oil. And usually the higher the polyphenol, the more you get this feeling that you really wanna cough after you swallow it. That’s actually a good thing. When I’m tasting olive oils in Italy, olive oil tasters actually gargle the olive oil.

(02:17)
And that’s how they aritilize the various fanolic compounds. And if you’ve never done it, it’s a fun exercise, just don’t choke. But they, that’s how they taste olive oil by gargling it. We now know that polyphenols are actually some of the favorite food for gut bacteria. And this is a fairly recent finding. I’ve been experimenting with polyphenols. I’ve been writing papers about polyphenols for, for over 20 years. And we’ve not really grasped the power of polyphenols to be a prebiotic that gut bacteria not only like, but thrive with. And again, the more we research the action of polyphenols, the more we’re realizing that one of the main components of polyphenols is improving gut bacteria health, improving the biodiversity of the gut bacteria. And that just means the more we have a tropical rainforest in our gut of multiple different important species, the better we are, the better our gut is.

(03:45)
So that’s one of the things they do. The other thing is we know now that you hopefully have read my book, The Gut-Brain Paradox, but there’s also a gut-brain skin connection. And I think this is now more and more understood, uh, like I’ve been describing for a very long time. The lining of your gut is your skin literally turned inside out. And so it makes sense if you think about it, that what happens on the lining of your gut is reflected in your skin. And so if you’re having issues with eczema or psoriasis or acne or dry skin or dull skin or thin skin, believe it or not, we can trace all of that to the condition of the lining of your gut. And the better the lining of your gut, the better your microbiome, the more that’s going to be reflected on your skin with, you know, glowing skin.

(05:04)
You know, I’m, I’m now in my mid – 70s and people look at my hands and go, “Oh my gosh, you know, let me see your hands. Looks like a baby’s hand. What the deal?” And it, people stop me all the time. Actually, just last night, uh, at a dinner party, uh, person who I didn’t know was sitting next to me, “Let me see your hands.” And that’s reflective of what’s going on inside my gut. And again, that’s the sort of things you change. I don’t wear makeup for any of this and people go, “Wow, you’ve got such a glow to your skin. What’s the deal?” Well, that’s the healthy glow that’s coming from my gut, and that’s what we should see on skin. Now, is there real science behind how beneficial olive oil is? Well, I think the best one was the famous PrediMed trial from Spain where they took 65-year-old people who had had a heart attack and they were randomized to three groups.

(06:15)
One group was given a liter of olive oil per week to use at home. They had to bring that liter bottle back to the clinic once a week to basically prove they were using it and get it refilled. The second group was given the equivalent amount of calories in mixed nuts. Now a lot of it was walnuts. The third group was given a low-fat Mediterranean diet. They were followed for five years, so from age 65 to age 70. And one of the first things that was noted is that only the olive oil and the nut group had reduced incidents of new heart disease, new heart attacks, new strokes. The low-fat Mediterranean diet had no benefit. Strikingly, the nut group and the olive oil group at the end of five years had actually improved memory and improved cognition. Whereas the low-fat Mediterranean diet group, as you would’ve guessed, actually had diminished memory and diminished cognition.

(07:37)
They were five years older. And there are other interesting sidelights of the study. But the point of all that is, here’s a controlled trial showing that, yes, olive oil had a distinct benefit in heart health and a distinct benefit in brain health. Now, those two correlate because what we now know is that what happens in the gut, what happens with your microbiome, what happens with the wall of your gut being intact is reflected not only in your coronary arteries, but also in your brain, the gut-brain paradox. So that is no surprise, but here’s again, a clinical human trial going five years that proves that that connection is real. And so why wouldn’t you, knowing this, make olive oil a daily part of your life? One of the ways that I think is fascinating about how polyphenols in general work, uncoupling effect of polyphenols on mitochondria.

(08:54)
And I won’t belabor this because I’ve given many lectures on this before, but mitochondria produce energy. They manufacture ATP, the energy currency that we spen. And making ATP is very hard work. And the process of making ATP damages mitochondria. And the more damaged the mitochondria, the less effective they are. Think of making ATP like being in a pressure cooker. And just like a pressure cooker has a pop-off valve that if the pressure gets too high in the pressure cooker, the pressure pops off and you hear that little thing jiggling. Mitochondria have five different pop-off valves to, if you will, release the presure in mitochondria. And they’re controlled by what are called uncoupling proteins. Popping off in a mitochondria is protective of mitochondria. So to a point, the more you uncouple your mitochondria, the more you activate those pop-off valves. The better your mitochondria work, the more mitochondria you make.

(10:26)
And again, it’s called mitochondrial uncoupling. But one of the unique properties of polyphenols is that they are mitochondrial uncouplers. So once again, from a different perspective, we’re not talking about feeding your gut microbiome, but we are talking about taking care of your power plants, the mitochondria. And another huge benefit of polyphenols. Olive oil is a great for your skin, like I mentioned before, but also topically. Cleopatra used to bathe in olive oil. Uh, Sophia Loren, great Italian beauty, really owes, she says, much of her beauty to the fact that she uses olive oil as a skincare. And she also consumes a great deal of olive oil. So because of the polyphenols in olive oil, we now know we have a skin microbiome and polyphenols are really important to feed the skin microbiome and a great source of polyphenols is olive oil. So it, it all makes sense.

(11:44)
So there’s a lot of good reasons to get olive oil into your mouth. And one of the easiest ways, I mean, you’re probably not gonna have a salad every day. You’re probably not gonna be in a position where every meal you consume, you’re at McDonald’s and I doubt if you’re gonna pour olive oil on your fries. The point of all this is taking a shot of olive oil ev- every day is a really easy way to make olive oil a daily habit. So this is not just a silly habit that I picked up along the way. It’s really one of the most targeted things that you can do for your gut, your heart, your brain, and yes, even how you look in the mirror. And don’t forget, it’s National Polyphenol Day and Week and we got all sorts of exciting stuff going on. We got prizes, we got giveaways, we got deals.

(12:43)
So make sure to check it out in the link below. I