Eden Apothecary · Herb Profile
Olea europaea
Pronounced Olive: OL-iv. Olea europaea: OH-lee-uh yoo-roh-PEE-uh. Oleuropein: oh-loo-ROH-pee-in.
Cool and drying: a bitter, astringent leaf that clears fever-heat, relaxes vascular tension to bring down a high, hot blood pressure, and steadies blood sugar, while its warm, moist, sweet fixed oil soothes and gently loosens as a nourishing emollient and laxative.
Culinary olive fruit and olive oil are foods and are considered safe in normal dietary amounts in pregnancy. Concentrated olive leaf extract is a different matter: avoid it. There is no reliable human safety data in pregnancy, oleuropein , and the leaf's blood-pressure- and blood-sugar-lowering actions are not wanted in pregnancy. The Royal Women's Hospital (Herbal Medicines in Pregnancy and Breastfeeding, 2018) advises against olive leaf in amounts greater than those found in food, and drug references note that safety in pregnancy has not been established. Avoid the extract; keep to culinary olive oil.
Culinary olive oil is safe while breastfeeding and is itself a food. Concentrated olive leaf extract should be avoided: there is no safety data during lactation, it is not known whether oleuropein or the leaf's blood-pressure- and blood-sugar-lowering activity passes into milk, and those actions are not wanted in a nursing infant. Standard guidance (Royal Women's Hospital, 2018; drug references) is to avoid amounts greater than food. Prefer dietary olive oil and better-studied alternatives while nursing.
Olive oil is a traditional, food-grade emollient and gentle laxative long used with children, and culinary olive oil is safe. One modern caution: applying olive oil to already-eczematous or very young infant skin may slightly impair the skin barrier, so it is not the first choice for atopic infant skin. Concentrated olive leaf extract has no established pediatric dosing or safety data and should be reserved for older children under professional guidance, at low, short, symptom-specific doses, with attention to its blood-pressure- and blood-sugar-lowering effects.
The leaf lowers blood pressure and blood sugar, so it can cause light-headedness, dizziness, or hypotension, and it can add to the effect of blood-pressure and diabetes medication (see Drug Interactions). Rapid, high-dose use of concentrated extract can provoke a die-off (Herxheimer) reaction, headache, and gastrointestinal upset (nausea, diarrhea) as its antimicrobial action takes hold. The bitter-astringent leaf can chill and loosen a cold, weak digestion. The fixed oil in laxative doses is, predictably, laxative and can loosen the stool. Olive pollen is a well-known respiratory allergen, though the leaf and oil rarely cause allergy. It should not replace prescribed antihypertensive or antidiabetic treatment, and doses should not be stacked on those drugs without monitoring.
Concurrent antihypertensive or antidiabetic drug therapy without supervision and monitoring (additive hypotension and hypoglycemia). Existing hypotension or a tendency to faint. Pregnancy and lactation for concentrated leaf extract (culinary olive and its oil as food are fine; see safety fields). Known olive or olive-pollen allergy. Scheduled surgery: discontinue concentrated extract about two weeks beforehand because of its blood-pressure- and blood-sugar-lowering effects.
No conservation concern. Olea europaea is one of the most widely and anciently cultivated tree crops on earth, grown across the Mediterranean and now California, Australia, and beyond, with individual trees living for centuries to millennia. The leaves are an abundant, renewable by-product of routine pruning and of the olive/oil harvest, so leaf harvest places no pressure on wild stands. Not listed by United Plant Savers (a North American native-plant registry). Prefer leaf and oil from organic or well-managed groves to avoid pesticide residues.
Deeply biblical and emblematic. In the flood narrative the dove returns to Noah with a freshly plucked olive leaf, the sign that the waters had receded and judgment had passed (Genesis 8:11), which makes the olive leaf itself a scriptural emblem of peace and renewed life. Pure beaten olive oil fueled the lamps of the tabernacle menorah (Exodus 27:20; Leviticus 24:2) and was the base of the holy anointing oil (Exodus 30:24-25); the olive is among the seven species of the good land (Deuteronomy 8:8, 'a land of oil olive'). The righteous are 'like a green olive tree in the house of God' (Psalm 52:8), and Paul draws his grafting image from the cultivated and wild olive (Romans 11:17-24); the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane ('oil press') frame the Passion. In the classical world Dioscorides (De Materia Medica) and Pliny (Naturalis Historia) both describe the olive, its leaves, and its oil. Native to the Mediterranean basin and cultivated there since antiquity.
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