Should we all be taking coconut oil as a preventative?
It has long been established that essential fatty acids are fundamental to brain health, but the focus has generally been on Omega 3 fish oils.
What I was not expecting to see however, was Coconut Oil reversing Alzheimer’s disease. And the implications are that many brain injuries and illnesses could potentially be halted or reversed by this fuel filled food.
If you are concerned about age related memory loss, have Alzheimer’s or dementia in your family or even if you suffer from type 1 or type 2 Diabetes, I encourage you to watch Dr Mary Newport’s interview, and follow her coconut oil consumption recommendations.
Research shows that insulin resistance may be preventing brain cells from receiving the glucose they need to survive, resulting in cell death over years or decades with the gradual onset of Alzheimer’s and other brain disorders.
In case of starvation however, where no glucose is available, there is an alternative. Our brain cells can also thrive on ‘ketone bodies’, substances converted from medium chain fatty acids by the liver. These ketone bodies are an alternative fuel available to the brain cells, independent of glucose, insulin and insulin receptors.
So if we can provide sufficient ketone bodies, we should be able to prevent cell death due to fuel starvation. And this is what the studies are showing. 60% of Coconut Oil comprises the necessary oils for ketone production. Insulin plays no part in the ketone metabolism.
A war, waged by the food industry, against medium and long chain fats as long ago as the 1950s has left many with the impression to this day that these are somehow harmful and damaging, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Short, medium and long chain (poly-unsaturated, mono-unsaturated and saturated fats) are ALL vital, healthy nutrients! But some are more delicate than others. All of them become unhealthy when damaged by excessive heat, light or hydrogenation.
Hydrogenation is an industrial process of forcing hydrogen gas through liquid oils like sunflower, safflower or olive oils, to stiffen them up and turn them into ‘spreads’ while giving them a longer shelf life.
All fats and oils have their own properties and should be handled accordingly. It is only safe for example to cook with saturated fats, such as coconut and lard, because unsaturated fats like sunflower, safflower and to an extent olive oils are damaged by the heat and converted to trans-fats which our bodies cannot identify and which are carcinogenic.
Ironically it was the food industry’s marketing push for newly invented, hydrogenated (and carcinogenic) oils like shortening and margarines, that targeted lard and coconut oil as the enemy, suggesting negative cardiovascular health implications. The reality was that these stable fats were their commercial competition.
We simply have to get back to food as nature intended!
The recommendation is to take 2 – 4 tablespoons of raw organic coconut oil per day. It is a spread when cool, but an oil at body temperature, and will mix with many foods. There are plenty of recipes online.
One good coconut oil I use is Biona raw virgin organic coconut oil.