I shared this story about olive oil with Lila Hinz, the president of our company, and she wanted me to share it in Mountain Bike Action, so I’m sharing it here. —John Ker
One day, about 12 years ago, I was changing the pedals on a mountain bike when I smashed my knuckles into the chainring.
I quickly wrapped a paper towel around my hand to keep the blood from dripping on the floor. After about 20 minutes, I checked and found that the bleeding had stopped. I was thinking about washing out the cut when I remembered the story of the Good Samaritan in the Bible who bandaged a man’s wounds and “poured in oil and wine.” (Luke 10: 25-37) I knew that the Bible was talking about olive oil, and that got me to think that olive oil might be a good thing to use to clean the dirt out of the chainring cut on my hand
I rubbed some olive oil into the cut, and the pain completely disappeared in less than five seconds. All the pain was gone. I think that was the first time in my life that I had ever put anything on a cut that made the pain go away instead of making it hurt worse. I left the cut uncovered so I could watch it and see if I needed to do something different.
Over the next hour or so, the redness around the cut disappeared, and the cut kept looking better. Every time I washed and dried my hands that day, I put another drop of olive oil in the cut, and I saw that the cut continued to look like it was getting better.
The next morning, I washed up, put another drop of olive oil in the cut and forgot about it
A few days later, I was thinking about going for a ride, when I remembered the cut on my hand, and I wanted to see if I could safely pull a pair of gloves over the cut without ripping it open again. To my utter astonishment, I saw that the cut had healed up without a single sign that there had ever been a cut there. I was amazed. It was one of the worst cuts I had ever had, and yet there was no sign that I had ever had a cut there.
I immediately went to my computer and Googled “olive oil, cuts” and found an article that said that olive oil “prevents the growth of bacteria, viruses, and funguses” and “heals wounds without a scar in two days.” I don’t recall now where that article appeared, but I think it was in England because of the British spelling of some of the words.
After my experience, I started telling my friends about putting olive oil on cuts. One friend was Steve Barton, who was the father of two MBA test riders (Essence and Jag Barton). It wasn’t too long after I discovered how well olive oil worked at healing wounds that Steve had a really bad crash on his mountain bike, riding down from the ridge above Deer Valley, Utah, in 2016. Steve hit his knee on a rock at high speed. As Steve described it, the rock “filleted” his knee wide open. Steve had to ride down the mountain with the wound and get a doctor to treat it. Steve told me that the surgeon had to use about 120 stitches to close up the wound on his knee.
A few days later, another doctor took the bandages off. After that, Steve started putting olive oil on the sutures, remembering how I told him that the olive oil takes away the pain, speeds the healing and prevents infections. Steve told me he put olive oil on his knee four or five times per day after that, doing so for the next several months. The first time he went to a doctor after he had started putting olive oil on the stitches, the doctor was amazed at how well his knee was healing up and wanted to know what Steve had been doing to his knee.
Steve says the woman doctor freaked out when he said that he had been putting olive oil on the wound, telling him he could get an infection by doing that. Steve started seeing a different doctor after that, and Steve kept putting olive oil on his knee, four or five times a day, for a total of seven months.
Above: Here’s how Steve Barton’s knee looked after he’d been putting olive oil on the stitches for about 8 to 10 weeks. (Photo by Steve Barton)
Steve’s physical therapists said they said they had never seen a wound heal that well before in their lives. They asked him him to bring in the bottle of olive oil that he was using so they could buy the same kind for themselves.
Here’s how Steve Barton’s knee looked in 2022, six years after the crash that needed about 120 stitches to close the wound. Steve told us that he put olive oil on his knee four to five times per day for seven months after his knee injury. (Photo courtesy of Steve Barton)
Here’s how Steve Barton’s knee looks now. It doesn’t appear to have much scarring at all now. If anyone wants to see how bad Steve Barton’s knee looked before he started putting olive oil on the wounds, send an email to [email protected]. His knee looked so gross that we can’t show the photos here. (Photo by Steve Barton)
Steve told me that it was “purO3” ozonated olive oil, which he bought from Amazon, that he put on his knee.
Here’s the ozonated olive oil that Steve Barton used on his knee after the doctor stitched up his wounds. (Photo by Steve Barton)
I later did my own research on “olive oil, wound treatment” and discovered that ozonated olive oil has been found by researchers to be very effective for treating diabetic foot ulcers. People should probably check with their doctors before trying it. I’ve never tried the ozonated olive oil. I just use the Great Value brand of extra-virgin olive oil that I buy at Walmart and use in my kitchen. That’s the kind that I recommend to my friends if they ask me about it.
I had another friend who had diabetes, and he kept getting diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs). I told him about olive oil, which has been found to be one of the best treatments for diabetic foot ulcers. He tried it and told me it worked so much better than the medicine his doctor used that my friend quit letting the doctor put the regular medicine on his diabetic foot ulcers, because the doctor’s medicine kept giving my friend more infections.
A couple of years after I first tried putting olive oil on my own cuts, I hurt one of my knees another way. I didn’t break the skin, but my knee was hurting for a couple of weeks. I wondered if olive oil might be able to get rid of other kinds of pain besides the pain from open wounds. To find out, I rubbed a little olive oil on my aching knee one night, put on pajamas, and went to bed.
When I woke up the next morning, my knee pain was 95 per cent gone. I rubbed a little more olive oil on the knee that morning, and the pain disappeared for good.
This is the kind of olive oil I buy at Walmart. It might be better to buy the smaller bottles rather than the largest bottles, because the olive oil can lose its effectiveness as it ages.
A few months later, I was photographing one of the stages of the Tour of California, and I talked to one of the European road cycling teams in the pits and learned that at the end of each day of racing, the riders’ legs would get massaged with olive oil. I think it took away their cramps. I later tried it on my own legs when I got cramps, and my cramps would disappear in less than a minute. I later found that I could apply olive oil to my legs to prevent cramps, and it worked for that, too.
Olive oil can be lose its effectiveness if it’s exposed to sunlight and heat, but I keep a few ounces in a bottle, out of the sun, in the back of my car in case I need it.
I tried using olive oil as a skin moisturizer, and I found that it kept me from getting sunburned when I forgot to put on my sunscreen that day. I did some more research using Google, and I found that olive oil (and coconut oil, too) has an SPF factor of about 8, which means it takes about eight times longer to get a sunburn with olive oil on your skin than it would if you put nothing on your skin. As a result, I usually put some olive oil on my face and other exposed skin if I’m going out for a ride or a photo shoot. One time I forgot to put any olive oil on, and I got sunburnt. I put some olive oil on my sunburned skin, and it instantly took away all the pain of my sunburn. My skin didn’t peel at all in the following week, either, which also surprised me. I’ve also read that olive oil can boost the Vitamin D production from the sunlight that reaches our skin, which can reportedly help fight cancer, too.
I once used some olive oil on a squeaky door hinge in my home. It completely stopped the squeaking, and the squeaking hasn’t returned over the course of several years. Out of curiosity, I asked Google if olive oil can be used as a chain lube on a bike, and I read there that it can be used as a chain lube in emergencies, but it’s not recommended for such use because olive oil attracts dirt and degrades over time, which reportedly can cause drivetrain problems later. If someone uses olive oil as a chain lube in an emergency, it’s probably best to clean the chain afterwards and use conventional chain lube after that.
I Googled “olive oil, cuts” today and found a report titled, “Anti-Inflammatory and Restorative Effects of Olives in Topical Application,” that says:”A wide range of studies has shown that olive oil is effective in pain relief and contains antioxidants that can slowly reduce the processes that cause pain in the body.Pure olive oil contains a natural chemical that acts as a painkiller. This substance, which is called oleocanthal [60], can have an analgesic effect by a mechanism similar to ibuprofen, which suppresses the production of prostaglandins [61–65], so it can relieve wound pain. It is important to note that several studies [4, 6, 27] have shown that olive oil has no side effects for consumers. . . .
“According to the results of many studies, it seems that olive is a natural and safe substance that contains antioxidants, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and antiviral properties, and its use in wound healing or speeding up its process is recommended. . . .
“According to the above studies, olive and its products can be used by different methods to heal wounds and improve damage to the skin and mucous tissues or accelerate the wound healing process. The use of olive is safe, and access to it is easier and cheaper for most people with different education levels and cultures. It also, in addition to conventional treatments, increases the range of choice for people and minimizes the side effects of chemical treatments.”
Here’s the link to the study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8257351/#:~:text=Pure%20olive%20oil%20contains%20a,up%20its%20process%20is%20recommended.
I would encourage our readers and the top bike teams to do their own research into this topic. I’ve been recommending it to my friends for over ten years.
Here’s a photo of Steve Barton, who has been using olive oil on his cuts since 2016:
Steve Barton. (Photo courtesy of Steve Barton)
Here’s a photo of Steve Barton with his daughter Essence in 2021. (Photo courtesy of Steve Barton)
There’s one other thing that I should probably share. I used to be an atheist, and I started reading the Bible in the late 1980s so I could argue against it and put an end to religion. My plan backfired, and I became a believer. It was over 25 years later, when I was preparing to teach a Sunday school class that I happened to read the story of the Good Samaritan in the Book of Luke, and decided that if olive oil was used to treat wounds in the Bible, it was probably safe to use today, and that was how I happened to put olive oil in the cut on my hand somewhere around 12 years ago. I don’t expect everybody else to read the Bible, though. I was trying to put an end to religions when I started reading the Bible. I never imagined that I’d become a Christian instead.