It's amazing how coconut oil has recently been acknowledged for the healthy oil that it is after having been vilified for decades as a heart attack oil. Now it's been discovered to boost even brain health.
Defaming coconut oil saturated fat was part of the 1950s creation of low and no fat foods, margarine, and hydrogenated trans-fatty cooking and salad oils, which have recently been proven as actually detrimental to overall health.
The different types of triglycerides in fatsHigh triglyceride blood readings are red flags for obesity, diabetes, and heart health issues. Most dietary fats contain long chain triglycerides (LCT), which are not easily metabolized and can be stored as fatty deposits in one's body.
Long chain triglycerides contain chains with 14 to 18 carbon atoms. But coconut oil contains medium chain triglycerides (MCT) with shorter chains of 5 to 12 carbon atoms, which are easily metabolized by the liver to produce ketone bodies that can replace glucose as metabolic fuel.
As we age, the brain's ability to metabolize glucose for energy wanes, especially for those who have a metabolic disorder or insulin resistance. But MCT-created ketones can be used as cellular fuel in the brain when glucose is not available.
Study: Coconut oil improves cognitive abilityAs far back as 2004, a study published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging determined that coconut oil MCTs improved cognitive function among older folks with memory problems and even Alzheimer's disease.
They took 20 subjects and randomly fed them coconut oil or placebos on different days. Some of the Alzheimer's group demonstrated improved scoring on a special Alzheimer's cognitive rating scale, and all of them demonstrated better paragraph recall shortly after taking each dose of coconut oil.
This wasn't a long term study. They got immediate positive cognitive and memory results from single doses of coconut oil compared to placebos.
So why wasn't this publicized by the mainstream media (MSM) and reported to medical practitioners everywhere? Maybe because Big Pharma was trying to synthesize and patent a ketone body producing pharmaceutical for the increasing Alzheimer's disease market.
A dramatic true story confirming coconut oil's efficacyAround 2009-10, MD Mary Newport's husband had deteriorated from Alzheimer's so badly he couldn't draw a simple illustration of a clock or perform daily functions without being micromanaged.
Since the Alzheimer's drug developed in 2004 was not effective, Dr. Newport tried to get him into a trial for a new Alzheimer's drug. But he was so bad off he didn't qualify.
After discovering that this new drug was a synthetic version of MCTs for creating ketone bodies and improving brain function, she researched and realized that palm and coconut oils also contained MCTs.
After feeding her husband coconut oil, he started making a remarkable comeback from almost total dementia to being able to start and finish tasks and remember people and events.
Dr. Newport observed that only two doses spaced eight hours apart were sufficient, while the pharmaceutical version required doses every three hours .
If Mary would have enrolled her husband into that 2009-10 Alzheimer's drug trial, she could have lost him completely.
Newport's success without side effects places coconut oil as the dementia food medicine of choice over expensive and harmful pharmaceuticals. Because they went viral on the internet with their experience, several others experiencing Alzheimer's or memory problems have benefited from coconut oil.
