Does olive oil protect against diabetes?

If the relationship between particular eating habits and the appearance of some diseases, such as diabetes and atherosclerosis, has now become clearer, as the diet goes on to evaluate the effect of individual foods and nutrients, the level of uncertainty and conflict between the results of the studies significantly increases. This should not surprise us, as it is not enough to take a single miracle food to stay healthy; rather we need to take care of our eating habits at 360 degrees.

This premise to remember that the lists of beneficial properties of various foods do not help much: if you do not care about lifestyle and diet as a whole, individual foods can do very little. That of course also applies to olive oil and its potential protective efficacy in the development of type 2 diabetes.

In recent years, glucose toxicity and lipotoxicity have risen to the fore, to indicate damage to organs and tissues caused by chronically high levels of glucose and fatty acids in the blood.

One of the most studied aspects of this phenomenon is the damage to pancreatic cells, a fundamental event in the onset of type 2 diabetes mellitus. In vitro studies, in fact, both glucose toxicity and lipotoxicity have been shown to reduce the survival of pancreatic beta-cells. (responsible for the synthesis of insulin). As far as lipotoxicity is concerned, it has been found that the most deleterious fatty acids are above all the long-chain saturated acids (palmitic and stearic in particular), while the oleic acid seems to have a protective effect on the health of beta-cells.

Olive oil, in addition to being particularly rich in oleic acid, also contains substances with antioxidant and anti-inflammatory action, such as oleocantal, oleuropein and vitamin E. Since the chronic inflammation, often associated to obesity, it reduces the sensitivity of tissues to insulin, and since free radicals are also involved in beta-cell damage, olive oil could also have protective effects in the appearance of insulin resistance.

There are also some clinical and population studies that confirm these antidiabetic properties of olive oil; however - and this should not surprise us given the broad premise - the relationship between olive oil consumption and the prevention of type 2 diabetes has not yet been established with sufficient scientific evidence.