Olive Oil Damages Skin

Many LivingTheCRWay members have stopped eating olive oil.Yet, some still apply it to their skin. No surprise. Olive oil is advocated worldwide as a way to add make skin moist and to treat dry skin conditions, including atopic dermatitis. Apparently, just the opposite is true: Olive oil damages the protective stratum corneum (the outer layer of the skin) making redness or rash more likely.

The followings study found that healthy adults who applied olive oil to their skin for periods of four or five weeks developed noticeable irritation:

Effect of Olive and Sunflower Seed Oil on the Adult Skin Barrier: Implications for Neonatal Skin Care
Danby SG, AlEnezi T, Sultan A, Lavender T, Chittock J, Brown K, Cork MJ.

Pediatric Dermatology. 2013 Jan-Feb;30(1):42-50.
doi: 10.1111/j.1525-1470.2012.01865.x. Epub 2012 Sep 20.

If you search on olive oil and skin, you will get 30,000,000 hits, including top-ranked medical sites. Most recommend olive oil for use as a moisturizer and for treating other skin conditions. Especially concerning is the number of sites, recommending olive oil for infant skin care. Some mothers post online about adding olive oil to their babies’ bath water.

Then there are the sites that suggest that coconut oil works even better than olive oil for treating skin conditions. Certainly, anything that improves skin just a little would be better than something that damages the skin.

Furthermore, in this study:

Transcutaneous Absorption of Topically Massaged Oil in Neonates,

Indian Pediatrics. 2005 Oct;42(10):998-1005.
Solanki K1, Matnani M, Kale M, Joshi K, Bavdekar A, Bhave S, Pandit A.

externally applied coconut oil was systemically absorbed, causing poor lipid profiles in the cohort of newborns.
Websites, bloggers, and others: Stop recommending olive oil! In the Pediatric Dermatology study above, which showed that olive oil causes skin irritation, participants applied the olive oil to their forearms, but many  mistakenly put it on their faces, and that might cause serious damage, particularly if it gets into people’s eyes.