How to Make Olive Leaf Extract
- Rachel Decorte
- Jun 21, 2016
- 3 min read
Coming from a metropolitan city like Sydney meant that whenever I found myself feeling a little run down and under the weather, it was easy for me to walk into my local health food store and pick up my usual necessities.
This year, when I experienced my first European winter and found myself face first in a box of tissue, I thought, if only I could get my hands on some olive leaf extract I’d be powering through this cold…. As soon as the words left my mouth I realised how silly that statement was…. “Rachel!!! You are living in the land of olives…the town is named after the fruit!! Figure it out!!!”
After scanning the internet like a mad women I found some interesting facts and tutorial that left me itching to try.
For those of you that are not familiar with olive leaf extract, it is a potent antioxidant almost twice as powerful as green tea extract and five times more powerful than vitamin C alone. A growing band of research has suggested that olive leaf extract may aid in reducing blood pressure, increases energy, warding off colds and viruses, improving sleep and even preventing the occurrence of cold sores. There is also a substantial amount of evidence suggesting that taking olive leaf extract may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease making this little fruit an all-purpose life-changer. With so much hype and research surrounding the Mediterranean diet, it’s not crazy to think that olives and olive leaf may be immensely contributing to these statistics.
Now enough about that! How do we make the darn stuff…
WHAT YOU'LL NEED
40% grade alcohol like vodka
Fresh olive leaves (chopped or roughly blended)
A glass jar with secure lid
Muslin cloth
Small amber bottle with dropper
METHOD
Firstly, weigh your leaves in grams to get an idea of how much alcohol solution you’ll need to make your extract. Whatever amount you have in grams, multiply the number by 3 to work out how many mls. you’ll need of Vodka or 40% alcohol solution. For example if I use 100g of fresh leaves, I will need to have at least 200ml to 300ml of Vodka available. NB: if you can only find dry leaves, you’ll need to add more alcohol as dry leaves tend to absorbs more liquid.
Chop or blend fresh leaves into a mulch and tip into the glass jar.
Completely cover the leaves with your alcohol solutions making sure the leaves are completely submerged.
Seal the glass jar tightly with a lid and place somewhere away from direct sunlight at roughly room temperature.
Shake the jar at least once a day to make sure the leaves are evenly covered.
The tincture should be at a decent strength after 2 weeks and can be filtered and bottled when ready.
DOSAGE
For general wellbeing: take 1/2 teaspoon, twice a day in a little water
For common colds: take 1 teaspoon, twice daily
Caution: Although it is possible to evaporate alcohol in boiling water (like in a cup of tea), I’d still avoid using olive leaf extract in pregnancy.
And that’s it!! Never to be reliant on a health food store again!! Well, not quite… I can’t get my hands on coconut oil for the life of me!! But never the less I’m completely stoked with the outcome of my first extract. Its triggered a slight obsession with trying to experiment with other herbs from the gardening including a wild chamomile sleepy tonic, digestive aid using mint, ginger and fennel and even my own mosquito spray… but I’ll have to leave those for another time ;)
REFERENCES
Body+Soul – Super Supplements give you a boost
Hoffman, R., Recommends, B.D.H., Show, W.R., Index, P., Index, R. and Center, H., 2010. Olive leaf extract. Viitattu, 5, p.2010.
Khayyal, M.T., El-Ghazaly, M.A., Abdallah, D.M., Nassar, N.N., Okpanyi, S.N. and Kreuter, M.H., 2002, ‘Blood Pressure Lowering Effect of an Olive Leaf Extract {Olea europaed) in L-NAME Induced Hypertension in Rats’ Arzneimittelforschung, 52(11), pp.797-802.
Olive Leaf Extract – Extract of Olive Leaf
Poudyal, H., Campbell, F. and Brown, L., 2010. Olive leaf extract attenuates cardiac, hepatic, and metabolic changes in high carbohydrate–, high fat–fed rats. The journal of nutrition, 140(5), pp.946-953.
Sudjana, A.N., D’Orazio, C., Ryan, V., Rasool, N., Ng, J., Islam, N., Riley, T.V. and Hammer, K.A., 2009. Antimicrobial activity of commercial Olea europaea (olive) leaf extract. International journal of antimicrobial agents, 33(5), pp.461-463.
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