Is Olive Oil the Fountain of Youth From Which You Should Literally Drink?
Norma Kamali, ageless at 75, has called olive oil her “favorite beauty food,” and habitually carries a mini bottle with her wherever she goes. Gleaming, golden Jennifer Lopez insisted that it be a key ingredient in her new skincare line, having slathered it on her hair and body since childhood. Gwyneth Paltrow and Beyoncé consume it liberally. Sophia Loren bathes in it, literally, and look at her. Could the fountain of youth be lurking in our kitchen cupboards?
It has been said that if you wait long enough, everything old is new again. In the case of olive oil—which, like coconut oil before it, is suddenly the beauty Windex being called out as a miracle-worker for hair conditioning, skin softening, gut renovating, and even tooth brushing—we’re talking really old. Like, 5,000 years. Pharoahs rubbed it on to soothe and moisturize sunbaked skin, and beauty fanatic Cleopatra included it in her vast self-care repertoire. Homer heralded olive oil as “liquid gold,” and the first-ever cold cream, which was whipped up by Greek physician Galen in the 2ndCentury A.D. and became a hot commodity in ancient Athens, was made from it, blended with beeswax and rose water.
Fast forward a couple of millennia and here we are, tracking the increasing proliferation of niche oils in covetable packaging—Insta stars Brightland and Wonder Valley among them—that are as displayable as they are ingestible. And now, olive oil is being marketed as a beauty product in and of itself. Wellness brand Saint Supply recently launched the Living Elixir, an organic specialty olive oil meant to taken on its own, as a supplement, not drizzled on salad (it even comes with a shot glass). Founder Vicky Vlachonis, an L.A.-based osteopath, says that her goal was to deliver an olive oil with exceptional levels of polyphenols, phytonutrients that have been scientifically proven to have strong anti-inflammatory properties. “The benefits of these natural compounds in the Living Elixir olive oil are linked to better cardiovascular health, immune function, digestion, mental clarity and skin care,” she says.
Extra virgin olive oil also boasts hefty levels of antioxidants, including Vitamin E, which, Vlachonis says, “can slow down or prevent body cell damage caused by free radicals,” as well as squalene, “which works to stimulate healthy collagen connectivity, supporting skin elasticity and delaying the onset of wrinkles.” To ensure that Living Elixir contains the highest levels possible of all this good stuff, she sources her olives from a rare high-phenolic variety grown only in the Olympia region of southern Greece, and really packs them in—each bottle contains the juice of approximately 1,100 handpicked, organic olives.
But why drink it? While cooking with olive oil certainly has its benefits—there’s a reason, after all, that the Mediterranean Diet is consistently rated the healthiest in the world—some of the plant activity is lost in the heating process. Drizzling it on salad or adding it to a smoothie in its raw form is great (Kamali pours hers on popcorn), but Vlachonis believes it’s best to sip it—ideally in the morning, when the gut is just waking up. “The Living Elixir is unique for its delicate aroma and signature peppery kick—a sharp aftertaste at the back of the throat which is the indicator of its high phenolic content. When you feel the spicy kick, you know you’re giving your body the health-boosting essence it deserves.”
As for slathering it on your skin, the jury is out. The molecules in olive oil are large, making them unable to penetrate deeply (though effective at holding moisture in, making Loren’s baths a win). Note that J.Lo’s olive-oil-based skincare took 100 formulations to perfect. Its active blend incorporates olive leaf extract and fermented oil—and she also takes olive oil supplements. Interestingly, studies have shown that patients with severe burns experienced accelerated healing from consuming olive oil, indicating that its doing its best work internally anyway. “I might add a few drops occasionally onto my face at night,” says Vlachonis. “But I know that the real glow starts from within.”
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