The Morning Olive Oil Shot: A Ritual Older Than the Trend
It starts the same way in thousands of kitchens every morning. A spoonful of golden olive oil goes into a small glass. Half a lemon is squeezed over it, maybe with a pinch of cayenne for heat. It goes down in one swallow before breakfast, filmed and shared as the newest wellness and beauty trend.
It is not new though. Fourteen centuries ago the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said, “Eat olive oil and anoint yourselves with it, for it comes from a blessed tree” (al-Tirmidhi and Ahmad). Eat it and rub it on the skin. Inside and out. The wellness world has finally arrived at an instruction Muslims have carried all along.
Olive Oil in the Quran: The Tree Allah Swore By
Allah opens Surah At-Tin with an oath: “By the fig and the olive” (Quran 95:1). An oath in the Quran is a call to pay attention, and here the olive is named in it by name.
The tree returns in one of the most beautiful verses in the Quran. In Surah An-Nur, Allah likens His light to a lamp “lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the east nor of the west, whose oil would almost glow forth of itself though no fire touched it. Light upon light” (Quran 24:35). The tree stands in the open, catching the sun from morning until evening, never shaded on one side. Its oil is so pure it seems to shine before it is lit.
Yusuf al-Hajj Ahmad puts it simply in his book Islamic Medicine. The tree is blessed and the oil is blessed, but many people are unaware of it.
Olive Oil in Prophetic Medicine: Soft Skin, Slow Ageing and Healthy Gums
Nearly seven hundred years ago Ibn al-Qayyim which is one of Islams greatest scholars gave olive oil, zayt, the first entry under the letter zay in his book Prophetic Medicine. He opens with the verse of light and the narrations from Abu Hurayrah and Ibn Umar. Then he describes the oil the way that sadly we dont hear much of anymore. Its nature is warm and moist. Oil pressed from ripe olives is the finest. Unripe olives give a cooler, drier oil while black olives give a warm, moist one.
Then he lists what it does. The list reads like a modern skincare shelf and a medicine cabinet in one.
- Olive oil softens the skin and slows the ageing process, he writes, and every kind of olive oil does this.
- Mixed with salty water it protects burned skin from blistering. It strengthens the gums.
- Inside the body it works as a gentle laxative, helps against poisons and clears the gut of worms.
- Even the leaves have their use: he prescribes them for skin infections, sores, ulcers and hives.
The Island Where Hearts Did Not Fail: Olive Oil, LDL Cholesterol and the Mediterranean Diet
In 1960 the American scientist Ancel Keys began following around 13,000 men in seven countries, from Finland to Japan, to find out why heart disease struck some nations and spared others. The answer that stood out came from a Greek island. The men of Crete had the lowest death rates from heart disease of any group in the study. Most of the fat they ate came from olive oil, poured over their vegetables and bread every single day.
For years the West feared all fat equally. Yusuf al-Hajj Ahmad describes how that changed in the mid-1980s, when the American researcher Scott Grundy showed that the fat in olive oil lowers harmful LDL cholesterol without touching the protective HDL. The old myth that olive oil raises cholesterol was laid to rest. In his words, olive oil turned out to be the enemy of bad cholesterol.
The deeper story is in the arteries. LDL cholesterol does its worst damage when it oxidises. It turns sticky, lodges in the artery wall and slowly hardens and narrows the vessel. Extra virgin olive oil, the oil of the first pressing, is rich in polyphenols and vitamin E. Studies published in the journal Atherosclerosis in the mid-1990s found that these compounds stop LDL from oxidising in laboratory tests. Olive oil does more than lower cholesterol. It protects what remains from turning against the arteries, which is why Islamic Medicine describes it as delaying their hardening.
Olive Oil and High Blood Pressure
In Naples, Professor Aldo Ferrara of the Federico II University tried something simple. He took 23 patients with high blood pressure, all of them on medication. For six months half of them ate a diet rich in extra virgin olive oil while the other half used sunflower oil. Then the two groups swapped for another six months.
The results appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2000. On olive oil the patients’ blood pressure fell and their need for medication dropped by about half. Eight of them no longer needed their medicine at all during the olive oil months. On sunflower oil very little changed.
Islamic Medicine adds a caution that belongs with this story. Every change in medication was made under a doctor’s supervision. Olive oil works beside medical care, so no one should stop their medicine on their own.
Olive Oil, Heart Disease and Living Longer
The modern evidence has only grown. In Spain the PREDIMED trial followed 7,447 adults at high risk of heart disease. One group ate a Mediterranean diet with a generous supply of extra virgin olive oil. Over about five years they had roughly 30 percent fewer heart attacks, strokes and deaths from heart disease than a group told to cut down on fat.
In 2022 researchers at Harvard published 28 years of records on more than 92,000 American men and women. Those who used more than half a tablespoon of olive oil a day were 19 percent less likely to die of heart disease than those who rarely used it. Their risk of dying from neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia was 29 percent lower.
Even poverty could not cancel it out. Islamic Medicine describes a report in The Lancet on Albania, at the time the poorest country in Europe and a Muslim-majority one. The death rate among its men was around half that of Britain. The researchers pointed to the Albanian plate: little meat or dairy with plenty of fruit, vegetables and olive oil. The lowest death rates of all were in the south-west, where the most olive oil was eaten.
Olive Oil and Cancer: Breast, Womb and Skin
Islamic Medicine notes that cancer causes around one in five deaths in Europe, yet the rates are clearly lower in the countries along the Mediterranean coast. Researchers trace much of that difference to the plate, where olive oil is the main fat alongside vegetables, fruit and herbs.
The book says women have been singled out for some of the blessings of this oil. A 1995 Greek study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that women who used olive oil more than once a day had around a quarter less risk of breast cancer. The most striking result came later from the Spanish PREDIMED trial. Among 4,282 women aged 60 to 80, those given extra virgin olive oil had 68 percent fewer cases of breast cancer than women told to cut down on fat. The number of cases was small but the difference was large.
For cancer of the womb, Islamic Medicine describes a 1996 study in the British Journal of Cancer of 145 Greek women with the disease. Women who ate a lot of olive oil had about a 26 percent lower risk.
Even the skin has a story. Researchers at Kobe University in Japan exposed mice to sunlight three times a week and rubbed olive oil onto some of them afterwards. After 18 weeks tumours began to appear in the mice that had no olive oil. It was an early study in animals, yet it echoes the second half of the hadith: anoint yourselves with it.
Olive Oil and Rheumatoid Arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis attacks the joints of the hands, feet and beyond. In 1999 the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a study from southern Greece comparing 145 people with the disease against 188 healthy people. Those who ate the least olive oil had around two and a half times the risk of those who ate the most. The researchers credited the healthy fats and antioxidants in the oil. People who ate plenty of cooked vegetables were protected too.
Olive Oil, Stomach Ulcers and H. pylori
Many stomach ulcers are caused by a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori, which also raises the risk of stomach cancer. Islamic Medicine reports that in 2000 a Harvard researcher presented findings that unsaturated oils such as olive oil may stop this germ from growing. Spanish researchers took it further in 2007, when they found that the polyphenols of virgin olive oil killed H. pylori in the laboratory. Ibn al-Qayyim already knew olive oil as a friend to the gut, a gentle laxative that clears it of worms and this was written 600 years ago!
Olive Oil and Constipation
Of all its uses, this is one of the oldest. Ibn al-Qayyim describes olive oil as a gentle laxative. Anyone who has tried the morning shot on an empty stomach knows why. The oil coats and softens the stool so it passes more easily. It also wakes up a sluggish gut without the cramping of harsher laxatives.
Modern research has tested it in some of the hardest cases. In a trial published in the Journal of Renal Nutrition, 50 dialysis patients with constipation took a small daily dose of olive oil, flaxseed oil or mineral oil for four weeks. Olive oil worked as well as the mineral oil that doctors usually reach for. It started at just 4 millilitres a day, less than a teaspoon.
For a slow gut, take the morning shot before breakfast with a large glass of warm water, and give it a few days to work.
Olive Oil and Breastfeeding
A mother’s milk is shaped by what she eats. Islamic Medicine describes a 1996 study from the University of Barcelona that tested the breast milk of 40 nursing mothers. Most of the fat in their milk was monounsaturated, the same healthy fat olive oil is famous for. The researchers put it down to how much olive oil Spanish women eat. What a mother pours over her food finds its way into the very first food her baby tastes.
Olive Oil for Hair, Grey Hair and Glowing Skin
The second half of the hadith is just as practical. In the lands of the olive, its oil was for centuries the moisturiser, hair oil and massage oil all in one. Ibn al-Qayyim wrote that it softens the skin and slows ageing. Ibn Sina, the physician known in Europe as Avicenna and father of western medicine, went further for the hair. In the volume of his Canon of Medicine devoted to single remedies, he records that olive oil used on the hair every day preserves it and delays greying.
Hair oiling does not need to be complicated. Warm a few spoonful’s of olive oil between the palms. Massage it into the scalp with the fingertips for a few minutes, then smooth what is left along the lengths. Leave it for an hour or overnight, then wash it out. A few times a week is plenty.
For the skin, press a few drops into damp skin after washing to seal in the moisture.
Olive Oil for Head Lice
Head lice have grown harder to shift as the usual treatments lose their power, Islamic Medicine notes. The studies it describes found that olive oil left on the head for several hours kills lice. The book sets out a simple routine to use alongside a standard lice treatment. Coat the hair and scalp in olive oil at bedtime and cover it with a shower cap. In the morning comb through with a fine metal nit comb before washing the oil out. Keep checking and combing until the head has been free of lice and eggs for three weeks.
Olive Oil for Gums: Oil Pulling
Ibn al-Qayyim wrote that olive oil strengthens the gums. The simplest way to put that to work is oil pulling, an old practice of swishing oil around the mouth before the day begins. Small studies with other oils such as sesame and coconut have found less plaque and calmer, less inflamed gums in people who pull oil regularly.
Take one tablespoon of olive oil into the mouth first thing in the morning. Swish it slowly between the teeth and around the gums for five to ten minutes, then spit it into the bin rather than the sink. Rinse with warm water and brush as usual. It works beside brushing and the dentist, never in place of them.
How to Take Olive Oil: The Morning Shot Recipe
The morning shot. Pour one tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil into a small glass. Squeeze in the juice of half a lemon and add a pinch of cayenne pepper if you like the heat. Stir and drink it first thing in the morning before breakfast. One tablespoon is about double the amount linked with longer life in the Harvard study.
Every day. Use it raw wherever you can, over salads, vegetables, bread and eggs. Cooking with it is fine too, since olive oil holds up well to ordinary home cooking.
Choosing the oil. Look for extra virgin olive oil from the first cold pressing, in a dark glass bottle with a harvest date. Ibn al-Qayyim valued oil from ripe olives most highly. Keep it away from heat and light, which break down the very polyphenols that make it worth taking.
Eat it and anoint yourselves with it. The advice is fourteen centuries old and science is still catching up.
Basically, if you are serious about health maxxing and being preventative with your health, the instruction has been here all along: “Eat olive oil and anoint yourselves with it, for it comes from a blessed tree.” Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), al-Tirmidhi and Ahmad.
Body Scription team
References
- Quran 95:1 and 24:35.
- Jami’ al-Tirmidhi and Musnad Ahmad. Sunan Ibn Majah 3319 and 3320. “Eat olive oil and anoint yourselves with it, for it comes from a blessed tree.”
- Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah. Zad al-Ma’ad, the chapters known as at-Tibb an-Nabawi (Healing with the Medicine of the Prophet).
- Yusuf al-Hajj Ahmad. Islamic Medicine: The Key to a Better Life.
- Ibn Sina. The Canon of Medicine, Book II: Simple Remedies.
- Keys A. The Seven Countries Study, begun 1960.
- Grundy SM. Comparison of monounsaturated fatty acids and carbohydrates for lowering plasma cholesterol. New England Journal of Medicine, 1986.
- Ferrara LA et al. Olive oil and reduced need for antihypertensive medications. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2000.
- Estruch R et al. Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease with a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts. New England Journal of Medicine, 2018.
- Guasch-Ferré M et al. Consumption of olive oil and risk of total and cause-specific mortality among U.S. adults. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2022.
- Trichopoulou A et al. Consumption of olive oil and specific food groups in relation to breast cancer risk in Greece. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 1995.
- Toledo E et al. Mediterranean diet and invasive breast cancer risk among women at high cardiovascular risk in the PREDIMED trial. JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015.
- Linos A et al. Dietary factors in relation to rheumatoid arthritis: a role for olive oil and cooked vegetables? American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 1999.
- Ramos CI et al. The short-term effects of olive oil and flaxseed oil for the treatment of constipation in hemodialysis patients. Journal of Renal Nutrition, 2015.
Keep reading: The Miracle of Black Seed Oil: Sunnah and Science Unite · The Power of Ginger: A Sunnah Remedy and a Modern Superfood · Natural Remedies for Constipation: A Gentle Protocol to Get Things Moving