The Mediterranean Diet Secret is Out

It looks like an olive a day is really what keeps the doctor away, or the oncologist, at least.

While I've often lauded the virtues of the Mediterranean diet, and cited its many apparent health benefits, I've had to acknowledge that scientists hadn't really put a collective finger on what it was about that diet that makes it so good for us.

But at least where cancer prevention is concerned, now they have. It seems the oleic acid in all that olive oil suppresses cancerous cell growth.

When I talk about the Mediterranean diet, that's "diet" with a small "d." I don't mean some fad or hotly marketed weight-loss program, but rather, just the array of fresh fruits, vegetables, seafood, whole grains, olive oil, nuts, beans, and a little vino that is the traditional fare of Mediterranean folks.

With that sort of fare, you can see easily enough why it would be generally be a pretty healthy way to eat. The Mediterranean diet is strongly associated with extended life span and reduced risks for mortality from any cause, as well as reducing the risks for heart disease and cardiovascular problems, obesity and even breast cancer.

But scientists just didn't know why.

Now a team at Northwestern University says it's the oleic acid in all that olive oil.

Yep. Every time you shake a little extra virgin on your salad or dip a piece of antipasto in it, you're practicing a bit of very specific preventive medicine. It appears that oleic acid suppresses the function of oncogenes, the genes that cause regular cells to mutate and grow into tumors, instead of what they're supposed to be.

About a million women every year are diagnosed with breast cancer, which accounts for about 1.6 percent of all female deaths annually worldwide.

And there's an oncogene called HER-2/neu that is found in about 30 percent of all breast cancer patients. Dr Javier Menendez, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said his team has determined that oleic acid blocks the action of the HER-2/neu oncogene.

In controlled studies of breast cancer cells. Menendez and his team explored just how it is that oleic acid worked on those cells. They were able to determine that oleic acid regulates the HER-2 oncogene, considered the most significant in breast cancer. While important advances in early detection mean that the prognosis for most discovered breast cancers is very good today, breast cancer patients with HER-2/neu tumors suffer from an aggressive form of the disease, and don't have as positive a prognosis.

But the olive oil discovery may offer a double benefit for these women. Menendez' team also found that oleic acid not only suppressed the action of the oncogene, it also improved the effectiveness of a popular breast cancer drug called Herceptin. Even though oleic acid works against the oncogene in a different way than Herceptin, it nevertheless enchanced the drug's own effectiveness.

That's not the only new look into Mediterranean eating lately. While all that work was underway focusing on oleic acid, another recent study of Europeans aged 70 to 90 found that those who stuck most closely to the Mediterranean diet had a 23 percent lower chance of dying during the 10-year period of the study.