This is Starwest's nitrogen-flushed double wall silverfoil pack.

Used as an infusion, decoction, extract and tincture.

Olive leaves have always had a reputation as a health-enhancer.

Grieve's classic 'A Modern Herbal': 'The leaves are astringent and antiseptic. Internally, a decoction of 2 handsful boiled in a quart of water until reduced to half a pint has been used in the Levant in obstinate fevers. Both leaves and bark have valuable febrifugal qualities.'

Modern research is centered on the olive leaf’s powerful antibiotic, antiviral and antifungal properties, which support the immune system and yet do not harm beneficial bacteria.

Olive leaf contains oleuropein and several types of flavonoids, including rutin, apigenin, luteolin.

Oleuropein has been experimentally shown to decrease blood pressure and dilate the arteries surrounding the heart.

Oleuropein inhibits the unhealthy oxidation of the 'bad' LDL cholesterol. LDL oxidation is a precursor to hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis). Mediterranean peoples, who eat plenty of olive products, have a lower rate of atherosclerosis than people who don't.

Oleuropein is converted in brine into elenolic acid, which has been clinically shown to have antibacterial actions against several species of human-infecting bacteria.

http://www.alphazee.com/olive-leaf/olea.html:

James R. Privitera, M.D.:

'And the dove came in to him in the evening, and lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off. So Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.' (Genesis 8 : 11)

In 1854, the Pharmaceutical Journal carried a report by one Daniel Hanbury and contained the following simple healing recipe:

Boil a handful of leaves in a quart of water down to half its original volume. Then administer the liquid in the amount of a wineglass every 3 or 4 hours until the fever is cured.

Decades later, scientists isolated a bitter substance from the leaf and named it oleuropein. It was found to be one ingredient in a compound produced by the olive tree that makes it particularly robust and resistant against insect and bacterial damage. From a technical angle, oleuropein is an iridoid, a structural class of chemical compounds found in plants. It is present in olive oil, throughout the olive tree, and is, in fact, the bitter material that is eliminated from the olives when they are cured.

In 1962, an Italian researcher reported that oleuropein lowered blood pressure in animals. This triggered a flurry of scientific interest in the olive leaf.

Other European researchers confirmed this interesting finding. In addition, they found it could also increase blood flow in the coronary arteries, relieve arrhythmias, and prevent intestinal muscle spasms.

Around this time, a Dutch researcher determined the active ingredient in oleuropein to be a substance he called elenolic acid. It was found to have a powerful anti-bacterial effect.

By the late 1960's, research by scientists at Upjohn, a major American pharmaceutical company, showed that elenolic acid also inhibited the growth of viruses. In fact, it stopped every virus that it was tested against. Among others, the substance was found to counteract a variety of viruses associated with the common cold of humans.

Moreover, a number of laboratory experiments at this time with calcium elenolate, a salt of elenolic acid, demonstrated a strong effect against not just viruses, but bacteria and parasitic protozoans as well.

For the record, the researchers at Upjohn found calcium elenolate effective in test tube experiments against the following viruses: herpes, vaccinia, pseudorabies, Newcastle, Coxsacloe A 21, encepthlomyocarditis, polio 1, 2, and 3, vesicular stomititus, sindbis, reovirus, Moloney Murine leukemia, Rauscher Murine leukemia, Moloney sarcoma, and many influenza and parainfluenza types.

They found it effective against these bacteria and parasitic protozoans: lactobacillus plantarum W50, brevis 50, pediococcus cerevisiae 39, leuconostoc mesenteroides 42, staphylococcus aureus, bacillus subtilis, enterobacteraerogenes NRRL B-199, E. cloacae NRRL B-414, E. coli, salamonella tyhimurium, pseudomonas fluorescens, P. solanacearum, P. lachrymans, erwinia carotovora, E. tracheiphila, xanthomonas vesicatoria, corynesbacterium Michiganese, plasmodium falciparum, virax and malariae.

The researchers credit a number of unique properties possessed by the olive leaf compound for the broad killing power:

An ability to interfere with critical amino acid production essential for viruses.

An ability to contain viral infection and/or spread by inactivating viruses or by preventing virus shedding, budding or assembly at the cell membrane.

The ability to directly penetrate infected cells and stop viral replication.

In the case of retroviruses, it is able to neutralize the production of reverse transcriptase and protease. These enzymes are essential for a retrovirus, such as HIV, to alter the RNA of a healthy cell.

It can stimulate phagocytosis, an immune system response in which cells ingest harmful microorganisms and foreign matter.

The research suggests that this may be a 'true anti-viral' compound because it appears to selectively block an entire virus-specific system in the infected host. It thus appears to offer healing effects not addressed by pharmaceutical antibiotics.