drink olive oil for skin tear prevention

[JKDON]

At our last DON conference there was one facility that was piloting a skin tear prevention practice of having high risk residents drink 1tsp of olive oil daily (I believe). They saw a significant decrease in skin tears, sheering, breakdown all together. I'm not sure how many got on the bandwagon, but several have reported similar results. We've not implemented this yet. But have any of you heard of such a thing? Not sure where the idea came from but no literature yet to be found. What do you think?

[Gompers, BSN, RN]

It wasn't olive oil, but cod liver oil capsules that helped my aunt. She spent a couple of years on a horrible NO FAT diet. I mean, she really refused to eat anything with a speck of fat in it. Her hair was falling out, and what she had left looked like straw. Her skin was dry, cracked, and bleeding. So she started taking a couple of the cod liver oil capsules a day and had great results - hair and skin improved within a week or so.

Me, heck, I'd have taken a tablespoon of margarine on my veggies rather than taking the pills!!! She said they did give her the worst tasting reflux. I think olive oil would be much more pleasant.

[gwenith, BSN, RN]

There is evidence of the role of Omega 3's in production of eye tears (that is the watery stuff - geez English has some pitfalls:chuckle)

There is also considerable research proving that no fat diets are detrimental (look up the results for the Lyons heart disease diet study). We have known for years that fat is neccessary for skin and hair production but this is the first I have seen where we are actively adding it to diets.

I wonder how flaxseed oil which is rich in Omega 3 and 9 would be?