Emu oil and digestive health

Almost half the Australian population suffer digestive problems, according to the Gut Foundation Australia. If you’re looking for a way to relieve uncomfortable symptoms and improve your overall digestive health, emu oil may hold the key.

Research at the University of Adelaide has suggested that emu oil may be helpful in treating a variety of common bowel and digestive diseases. Not only did the laboratory experiments conducted by Suzanne Mashtoub Abimosleh as a Ph.D. student confirm that emu oil has powerful natural anti-inflammatory properties, but it was also found to repair damage in the bowel.

The researchers discovered that emu oil stimulates the growth of “crypts” – the part of the intestine that produces food-absorbing “villi”. Longer crypts and villi lead to a healthier bowel that absorbs food more effectively.

Specifically, emu oil was found to:

repair damage in the intestines caused by ulcerative colitis

significantly decrease acute inflammation associated with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID)-induced gastrointestinal disease

decrease acute inflammation and promote the repair of intestines damaged by chemotherapy (a condition known as mucositis)

These findings confirmed the results of another study conducted at the University of Adelaide that found emu oil decreased acute inflammation in rats suffering from mucositis.

Based on these results, Ms Abimosleh (now Dr Mashtoub) and her colleagues believe that emu oil could also be helpful in treating other digestive disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and Crohn’s disease by reducing inflammation, promoting repair in the intestines and preventing further damage.

Current treatments for digestive disorders only work for some patients and there are no effective treatment options at all for the painful ulcers associated with mucositis, so these findings bring hope to sufferers.

The University of Adelaide researchers plan to conduct clinical trials to confirm the beneficial effects of emu oil in treating bowel diseases and to determine exact dosages. But with pure emu oil capsules already available to the public, many patients who haven’t responded to existing treatments aren’t waiting for the study results to start taking them. With its proven anti-inflammatory properties, emu oil could be beneficial in alleviating the symptoms of a wide range of digestive disorders.