How Does Olive Oil Affect Your Hormones?

A Mediterranean holiday, wonderfully fresh food, and what can’t be missing? A good drizzle of olive oil. Over the vegetables, in the salad, on the bread. And after a few days I feel really good. The scientist in me asks straight away: is it the oil, or am I imagining it?

To a surprisingly large extent it is the oil, and the Mediterranean way of eating it belongs to. But there is also a lot of “miracle oil” marketing around olive oil. This article separates the two: what good olive oil can really do, what matters in perimenopause, and how to tell whether you even have the right oil in your hand.

Olive Oil Is More Than a Healthy Fat

That olive oil is healthier than most other cooking oils is well known. The more interesting question is how large the effect is.

The answer comes from one of the largest nutrition studies ever: PREDIMED. Over 7,000 people at high cardiovascular risk were followed for nearly five years. Those who ate a Mediterranean diet and used plenty of extra virgin olive oil had around 31 percent fewer heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular deaths than the low-fat comparison group (Estruch et al., 2018). That is not a small effect, it is a magnitude many medications can only dream of.

For perimenopause this matters especially. As long as estrogen is high, it helps protect the blood vessels. When it drops, cardiovascular risk genuinely rises. Extra virgin olive oil acts exactly there: on the heart, on inflammation, and on blood sugar.

Fig. 1: Four documented effects of extra virgin olive oil (Estruch et al., 2018; Beauchamp et al., 2005; Violi et al., 2015; Jacka et al., 2017).

Oleocanthal: Why Good Olive Oil Scratches the Throat

There is a lovely discovery story behind this. The chemist Gary Beauchamp noticed at a conference in Sicily that fresh olive oil scratches and burns in the throat just like liquid ibuprofen. His team isolated the compound behind it and named it oleocanthal.

The result, published in the journal Nature: oleocanthal inhibits the same inflammatory enzymes (COX-1 and COX-2) as ibuprofen (Beauchamp et al., 2005). Before you throw out the painkillers: the amount in a normal serving of oil is far smaller than a painkiller dose. So olive oil is not a medicine.

What matters for longevity is something else: olive oil can lower silent, chronic inflammation over time. This low-grade inflammation, often called inflammaging, is considered one of the central drivers of aging. Keeping it low over the years slows one of the most important aging processes. A large long-term study from 2024 fits here: people who ate more than seven grams of olive oil per day had a 28 percent lower risk of dying from dementia over 28 years, independent of overall diet quality (Tessier et al., 2024).

Fig. 2: Oleocanthal, the scratchy burn with an ibuprofen-like mechanism (Beauchamp et al., 2005).

What Olive Oil Does to Blood Sugar

One effect that is underestimated, especially in perimenopause, concerns blood sugar. In one study, just 10 grams of extra virgin olive oil (about a tablespoon) with a meal clearly lowered the blood sugar rise afterwards, compared with the same meal without the oil (Violi et al., 2015).

Why this matters: in perimenopause, insulin resistance rises in many women, so the body responds less well to the blood sugar hormone insulin. This encourages cravings, energy dips, and the stubborn weight gain around the middle. A drizzle of good olive oil over the meal is a simple lever that smooths blood sugar a little. How closely blood sugar, insulin, and hormones are linked is something I go into in the article on insulin resistance in perimenopause.

Mood and the Mediterranean Diet

Olive oil rarely comes alone. It is the key building block of a whole way of eating, and that is what makes the difference for mood.

The SMILES trial was the first to test this closely: people with depression who switched to a Mediterranean diet had markedly fewer depressive symptoms after twelve weeks than the comparison group, with 32 percent achieving full remission versus 8 percent (Jacka et al., 2017). In women around menopause, cross-sectional data suggest that more olive oil goes along with fewer psychological complaints (Vetrani et al., 2022). The likely mechanism runs through less inflammation and a healthier gut, which in turn helps steer mood.

Put in context: it is the whole diet that works, not the oil alone. Olive oil is the most important building block of it.

Why You Feel So Good in Olive Oil Countries

Back to the opening question. The good feeling on a Mediterranean holiday does not come out of a bottle. It comes from the whole package. Lots of vegetables and fish, fresh ingredients instead of ultra-processed ones. Plus sun, movement, shared meals, and a slower pace.

In this picture, olive oil is the thread that connects almost everything, and one of the few building blocks you can take home one to one. That is what makes it so practical.

What Matters for Quality

And now the point that decides almost everything and that most people overlook: not every olive oil can do what is described here. The valuable polyphenols, including oleocanthal, are found mainly in extra virgin olive oil, cold-pressed and as fresh as possible. Refined oil, or oil sold as “mild,” has lost most of them.

How to recognize good oil:

• The burn in the throat. A good, polyphenol-rich oil scratches and burns slightly at the back of the throat and tastes bitter. This scratch is not a flaw, it is the oleocanthal. Mild, “smooth” oil is usually low in polyphenols.
• Extra virgin olive oil, not just “olive oil” or “mild.”
• Dark bottle, harvest date. Light and time destroy the polyphenols. A harvest date on the bottle is a good sign, and the fresher the better.
• Store cool and dark, not next to the stove.

A word on adulteration: the olive oil market is notorious for blending and label fraud. The scratchy burn is your best own test, and no label can fake it.

Fig. 3: Four signs of a good, polyphenol-rich olive oil.

What You Can Do

• Use it generously, raw. Over the finished dish, in salad, for dipping. That preserves the most polyphenols.
• Replace worse fats. Using extra virgin olive oil instead of margarine or refined vegetable oils brings the most.
• Watch for the burn. On your next purchase, deliberately go for bitter and scratchy, not mild.
• Use it with meals. A drizzle over the carb-rich meal smooths blood sugar.
• Buy fresh, store cool. Better small bottles with a harvest date more often than the cheap canister that sits open for a year.

The Bottom Line

Olive oil does not regulate hormones, and it is not a miracle oil. But it is one of the best-documented single building blocks of a healthy diet, and it supports several areas that need support in perimenopause: the heart, silent inflammation, blood sugar, and through the Mediterranean diet also mood.

You don’t get the Mediterranean feeling out of a bottle, but out of the whole lifestyle. Still, a good, scratchy extra virgin olive oil is the part of it you can bring into your everyday life most easily. As long as it is the right one.

Birgit

If you want to find out which nutrition levers make the biggest difference for you, my coaching for perimenopause provides the right framework, or you can start with a free initial consultation.