Could Olive Oil Improve Your Skin and Hair?

John Horton:

Hello, and welcome to another Health Essentials Podcast. I'm John Horton, your host.

A splash of olive oil starts countless recipes, but could it also be the secret ingredient for better skin and hair? The ancient Egyptians thought so. Ditto for the ancient Greeks and the Romans. They used olive oil as a cleanser, moisturizer, conditioner and sunscreen. They even drizzled it on to treat wounds. Were our ancestors onto something? We're going to talk about that today with dermatologist Amy Kassouf. She's one of the many experts at Cleveland Clinic who pop into our weekly podcast to talk about fascinating health topics.

So with that, let's find out whether we should keep a second bottle of olive oil on hand so we're covered for both cooking and beauty routines. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Kassouf. I think we've cooked up an interesting topic to chat about with you today.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

This is interesting on lots of levels. Thank you for having me.

John Horton:

Well, we always love it when you can make some time for us. So you're here today to talk about olive oil, and I think we all know it shows up in a lot of recipes, but it also has a longstanding reputation as a beauty remedy. How did it become associated with skin care, hair care and even medicinal uses?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

So I think it goes way back to Ancient Egypt and certainly through all of our favorite countries in Greece and Italy, and as a sort of naturally available and very tolerated product, I think it's been used in everything.

John Horton:

Yeah. Well, and I've read that Cleopatra used it, and if you're going to have a marketing person, that's pretty good.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

That's pretty good. Something to think about next time you visit the Museum of Natural History. Yeah.

John Horton:

So when people say olive oil is good for your skin or hair, what does that actually mean from a health or a dermatology perspective?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

So I think our skin is our biggest organ.

John Horton:

That fact always blows my mind because you just don't think of skin as an organ.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Yes. Yes. It's our biggest organ, and it has a very important function that we don't even think about. It is our barrier between us and the rest of the world. And that very outermost layer has to provide most of that function. And that function usually comes from lipids. And the lipids are the things that prevent water-based molecules from entering our system. And a lot of times, through age, through sun damage, through just normal living, our skin takes a beating, and it has trouble keeping up with that barrier function and creating those lipids or oils that it needs to be a good barrier.

John Horton:

Yeah. And olive oil does … I mean, anyone who's used it knows, I mean, it does have that little greasy, oily feel to it. I know it has some fats. I take it that's all stuff that kind of works with the skin to give it a boost.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

It's got some natural antioxidants, which are anti-inflammatory, but the biggest thing is the lipid part of it. And you can use it without compounding it with preservatives and other chemicals to make it smell better or penetrate better or anything. It can be used straight out of the culinary bottle.

John Horton:

Yeah. But when we look at this, I know there's a lot of potential benefits to it, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be the right thing for everyone, right?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Right. So patients who are making plenty of their own lipid may not need any extra barrier repair, barrier lipid, that kind of thing. And in fact, too much oil, obviously, is associated with acne and seborrheic dermatitis and other kinds of skin conditions that we don't want to perpetuate.

John Horton:

All right. Well, we'll get into that a little bit more as we start kind of breaking this all down. So let's kind of start with taking a closer look at some of the beauty magic that's connected to olive oil, starting with what specifically it can do for your skin to maybe improve its appearance or just make it function better.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Well, I think those are the biggest things people are looking for. They want it to look more hydrated, and the olive oil's going to seal in some of the moisture into your skin. It's not going to irritate it because it doesn't have a lot of preservatives in it. It doesn't have a strong fragrance that could irritate your skin either. So I think it's easy to use. I think it's not got a lot of side effects.

John Horton:

Yeah. What about as far as … I've seen things where people say it can actually reduce wrinkles because everybody's looking for ways to erase a few lines of time here. Might it help with that?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

I think if you're hydrated, you're not going to look so dried out and wrinkly. So if you put a good barrier on and your skin stays hydrated and it's protected against the environment, you definitely look like you have fewer wrinkles.

John Horton:

OK. You want to be the grape, not the raisin, right?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Exactly. That's a great analogy. I like that. I'm going to use that with my patients.

John Horton:

Well, and you can see that where, I mean, because I know a lot of times, where you're outside a lot, you're whatever, and your arms will just start getting that little white flakiness to it or that little alligator skin. Apparently I just need to go to the kitchen.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Yeah, absolutely. I would do that.

John Horton:

All right. Well, next time I'm cooking, maybe we'll throw a little on.

I've also seen some things where olive oil could be used as a makeup remover. Is that a potential use?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

So a lot of the makeups that are waterproof will dissolve in a lipid or a fat like olive oil. Now, you do have the secondary issue of getting that off. If you're using it for a mascara remover or something of that nature, then you have to use something else to maybe not be quite so oily afterwards, but it does help. I've used it.

John Horton:

Yeah. Wow. Do you have to be careful using it near your eyes? I don't know what olive oil would feel like in your eyes, but I can't imagine it would feel good.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

It's not good in your eyes. You do have to be careful, obviously. But if you close your eyes and you're gentle with it, and then you use a little bit of something foaming afterwards to get that extra lipid layer off, you're OK.

John Horton:

Now, what about wound care? Because that kind of blew my mind, too, when you look at that and just go, if you rub a little olive oil on your skin, it might help a cut heal up or something like that. That seems almost sci-fi in its powers.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

I have to say I have not used it for wound care. I'm not opposed to it. We do like some kind of lipid barrier on wounds so that those skin cells can scoot across the top a little bit easier, but I'm not sure that every olive oil is as pure as I would like it. And since there's not a lot of control over that, I'm a little hesitant with that one.

John Horton:

It sounds like there are probably better options in a medicine cabinet that you can go to take care of that.

All right. Now, what about the negatives? And you kind of touched on this a little bit. If you are putting this oil on your skin, it can potentially cause issues, too, correct?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

It can be too much. It can be. So if you're already kind of oily, you're worried about acne, that might be an issue where it makes the dead skin cells more sticky and more clogging the pores kinds of thing. There are some yeasts on the skin that may feed on that. So if you're using it on your scalp or deep in the hair follicles, you still need to get it washed off every once in a while so the yeast doesn't build up.

John Horton:

Yeah. I even read where it can kind of darken spots on your skin potentially, or is this an internet myth? Because sometimes those are out there.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Yeah. All the olive oils do have different colors to them, right? They get lighter yellow to darker green. And some of the dark spots that we have are seborrheic keratosis or the lentigos, and they have a different texture to them, so they will pick up on pigments in products. So that's the only thing I would think that would darken them.

We see a whole lot of issues with self-tanners. We see issues with … I saw a gentleman the other day who kind of scared me for a minute because he was using a purple shampoo, and he had these purple spots in his scalp that I couldn't explain until we talked a little bit, and it turned out his purple shampoo was getting absorbed into his seborrheic keratosis.

So weird things happen, and I think it's more related to the actual pigmentation of product.

John Horton:

OK. Well, that makes a little bit of sense.

And then one final thing which I've read, and it said that maybe if you have olive oil on your skin, it may make you more prone to sunburn. I mean, it seems like a baking issue there, but is that what's kind of happening?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

So any lipid … so you noted when your skin's kind of dry, it gets those little flaky surface white scales, and those little white scales actually do reflect the sun. And if you put a moisturizer on that, more sun will get in, and there's no SPF in olive oil. So there is an ability to penetrate if you go out in the sun with just the olive oil on. So I think it is true, but it's not that it's enhancing it; it's just allowing the penetration of the sun.

John Horton:

I'm guessing if you buy an olive oil with an SPF on it, that's probably something you want to just leave on the shelf. Just let that one go.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

That's not a cooking grade olive oil.

John Horton:

All right. Well, I think we've kind of tackled a lot of the skin issues there, so let's kind of move to hair care.

OK, can olive oil actually improve the health or appearance of your hair?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

So one thing that people don't think about is the hair grows from the follicle in the scalp, and all the stuff out here is dead. This is all keratin. This all doesn't have a blood supply to circulate or anything else like that. And we do all kinds of things to this. We dye it, we shampoo it gets into everything, and it dries it out, and it has no way of recovering its own oils, its own health. And so a little bit of oil on the tips throughout the shaft can calm it down, can make it more weather-resistant, can make it feel shinier and better. Now, it can make it greasy if you overdo it, obviously, but probably better to do this part of it than the actual hair follicle in the scalp.

John Horton:

So your best thing would be to put a little olive oil down at the tips or a little bit at the end, and just will it work its way up, kind of just absorb into the hair and kind of move towards your scalp?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

So it always surprises me how much moves around our face, moves around our scalp. We touch our eyes, we touch everything else. So it does move a little bit. I don't think it wicks up like it would like a candlewick or anything like that, but I do think we move it around, and we brush it, and it does get into all the areas that it needs to.

John Horton:

Yeah. Now, is that kind of also how it then reduces frizz? You kind of get a little bit of that oils in there and it just makes hair a little less frizzy?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

So again, if I go back to those little white flaky things that your dry skin, your hair has a cuticle that has the little white flaky things or whatever pigment it is. And then, you put that oil on, and it smooths it out, and lays it down, and then it doesn't get so frizzy.

John Horton:

I got to say, my dry skin is really coming in handy for this conversation. So it's a good thing that I don't moisturize you nearly as much as I should.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

You're just observant. I like that.

John Horton:

Now, I also saw where, like hair slugging, which, I got to be honest with you, I don't even know what that means, but it seems like it's a beauty thing people do. How is olive oil? What is that, and how is olive oil used in that way?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Oh, that's an interesting one. I have mixed feelings about that.

John Horton:

All right. Well, this is where we like to get this stuff out.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Yeah. So basically it's putting some kind of lipid all over your scalp and letting it soak in, maybe with a cap on or something like that, for an extended period of time, and then trying to get it out afterward once it's soaked in for some timeframe. The olive oil, I think, is easier to get out because if you use Vaseline® or you use some of these thicker, richer ointments, they're very, very hard to get out. If you've ever tried to do that — and this probably won't make the podcast, but anyways — it is … some people have tried when they've had lice in their hair and they've tried to suffocate the lice, you can put a whole lot of lipid in there and put it in a cap and suffocate those lice and then comb them out and try to wash it out.

It takes a lot of washing to get that out. And then, by that point, you've probably negated the benefit that you had by having that lipid around the hair once you've had to wash it enough to get it out to be stylable again. So a little bit of olive oil, it's easier to work with. You can kind of pseudo-slug it because it's not quite so thick, and I think it's helpful that way, just like a leave-in conditioner.

John Horton:

So that's where you kind of put it in at night and just kind of let it sit and then those oils kind of work their magic over the night and hopefully could just kind of refresh your hair a little bit.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Yeah. Yep, exactly.

John Horton:

All right. Another thing: Can olive oil help your hair grow? I know everybody's looking for a secret, so is this the key to longer, more luxurious locks?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

I've never seen a good study on that. So I don't think I'll answer that one.

John Horton:

Well, it sounds like, like I said, you go looking, researching the stuff online, and we see a bunch of stuff and the questions people ask, it sounds like if you're looking for hair growth, there are definitely some better things, which I know we've covered on this podcast.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Now, maybe prevent breakage so it feels fuller, but I don't think it actually makes it grow.

John Horton:

OK. I got to say, I'm still like … this whole notion that your hair is dead is a little creepy. I always think of it as being a lie, but that the ends are dead. It's a little unsettling, I got to be honest.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

I think that makes all of this very interesting.

John Horton:

Yeah. All right. So obviously, there's a lot of valid reasons to use olive oil, kind of scientific reasons, and we know why it kind of helps out with your skin and your hair. How does olive oil compare with dermatologist or stylist-recommended products designed specifically for skin and hair?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

I like the simplicity of it, especially for my sensitive skin patients because we don't have to put a lot of preservatives in there. We don't have to put a lot of fragrances or emulsifiers and other chemicals in there that some people are sensitive to. So that part is really good.

If you're using it as a moisturizer — I like to moisturize right out of the shower when you're still a little damp and hydrated and you put it on. You may want to wash your towels a little more often if you're patting dry after putting some olive oil on your skin. So there's a little bit of a downside to that, but I think I like the simplicity of it very much because it's very straightforward.

If you have a particular problem or you need some kind of intervention, then there's a lot of products designed for that. I have oils that you can get by prescription that have a cortisone in them. The hair salons have special products for even the white hair by my patient with the purple shampoo. There's all kinds of things to try to alter your hair, alter what it does — make it more curly, less curly, straighter, less frizzy, heat-resistant. There's all kinds of neat things that they do, and I absolutely refer to my professionals for that because this is dead and it needs some intervention. But I think for my sensitive patients, especially, or for your own simple intervention, I like the simplicity of the olive oil.

John Horton:

Yeah, that's really neat because a lot of times when you hear about these sort of things, these kinds of natural remedies, a lot of times, there's a lot of real skepticism to them, but it really seems like olive oil is something that can be a benefit to people. And it's nice to be able to move away from products that have, like I said, some of those added scents, and it's just a lot of gunk in there, the chemicals, whatever. So just go 100% natural and let it do its thing.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

And olive oil, you can do that with. My patients come in, and they all want to be 100% natural. And my one warning is: Remember that poison ivy is a 100% natural — so just because it's natural doesn't mean there's no risk with it, but olive oil is pretty much no risk.

John Horton:

Well, so if someone's listening to this and they're like, "You know what? I'm going to go to the kitchen, I'm going to get the bottle and give this a try." What's the smartest way to start experimenting with this and trying it out so that you don't overdo it?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

So with any new product, I like people to do their own little patch test. So find a small area kind of out of the way, whether it's the back of your neck or the tips of your hair or something simple, and use it for a few days and see what happens and make sure there is no adverse reaction to it, and then get a little braver with it. If you're doing well with it and you want to use it a little bigger area, you can always progress that way. And then, if something does happen, you don't have a huge reaction to deal with.

John Horton:

It also sounds like you really want to use just a touch of olive oil, too. This isn't, you're pouring it on like you do shampoo, like a big old [inaudible 00:18:36].

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Oh, a little goes a long way.

John Horton:

And I think that's especially on your skin because you don't want to gunk things up. And it sounds like also with your hair because I would imagine you just get a greasy or you're in danger of getting just that greasy hair look if you just have too much in.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Yes, absolutely. Excuse me. And olive oil, if it doesn't smell good, don't use it. I mean, all of our culinary oils can go rancid, especially when they're sitting in a warm environment. So if it doesn't smell good, don't use it.

John Horton:

Yeah. Is it better just to put a little bit in your hands and kind of rub it in? I mean, are there spray bottles? I mean, is it good to kind of do like that? I mean, what's the best way to apply?

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

That's kind of a personal preference. I do actually have a … you can buy a special olive oil spritzer that I use in the kitchen instead of the [inaudible 00:19:26].

John Horton:

My wife has one, too. That's the only reason I know it.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Yeah. And why not? Although I have to replace them fairly often because every once in a while, they get all gunked up.

John Horton:

Yeah. Which I guess is a sign of what overdoing it, what it would do to your skin, too, and everything. Like you said, a little goes a long way, and too much can gunk things up.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

Very relatable way to put it.

John Horton:

Yeah. All right. So bottom line, it sounds like it might be worth putting a bottle of olive oil on the bathroom sink counter.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

As long as it's not too warm for too long and it's small enough, I think that's reasonable.

John Horton:

All right. Well, we'll put it on the next shopping list when we go to the store and maybe have one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

I always have some available.

John Horton:

All right. Well, Dr. Kassouf, I really appreciate your time today. And I guess that you made this a lot of fun to talk about.

Dr. Amy Kassouf:

It's a pleasure.

John Horton:

Could olive oil be the secret sauce you need for better skin and hair? Maybe, but don't expect miracles. While it may be a helpful ingredient, don't base your whole beauty recipe on it.

If you liked what you heard today, please hit the subscribe button and leave a comment to share your thoughts. Until next time, be well.

Speaker 3:

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