The Coconut Oil Miracle...Really?

I was standing in line at the health food store a few years ago when a book caught my eye.  It was titled, "The Coconut Oil Miracle" by Bruce Fife, C.N., N.D.   It caught my eye because I thought, “What in the world could be so miraculous about coconut oil?"  I picked it up, read a page in line and bought it.  As it turned out, I finished the book in a few days – it was amazing to read about how this oil could heal the body.

One of the most interesting facts about this oil is what it’s made of.  If you look at the nutrition facts, you’ll see that it is a saturated fat.  We have always been taught that saturated fats are bad.  Turns out that there are all different sorts of saturated fats, but if you were generalize them, you could put them into three categories:  Short chain fatty acids, medium-chains, and long chains. 

Coconut oil is made up of mostly medium chain fatty acids which do not get stored by the body as fat.  Medium chain fatty acids get converted directly into energy.  This is why if I absolutely must fry something, I always use coconut oil – just make sure you don’t burn it.  If your oil starts to smoke (and this is good advice for any oil) throw it away and start over.  If you use oil that has smoked, you are basically drowning your food in a toxic soup made up of free radicals.

I also use the same coconut oil I fry with to moisturize my body – 100 percent pure, unrefined coconut oil.  If you don’t like the taste and smell of coconuts, then buy the refined coconut oil which has been stripped of the smell and taste, but all the health benefits remain.  In the jar, this oil is useless and consists of the usual triglycerides found in all other oils.  However, once applied to the body, it is broken down into monoglycerides and becomes a powerful antimicrobial that is quite destructive to bad bacteria, but isn’t harmful to the beneficial bacteria in our bodies.  For example, the hand sanitizers that we all use are mostly made up of alcohol.  The alcohol kills everything on our hands including the beneficial bacteria leaving our hands without our natural defenses.  Using coconut oil instead, boosts the good bacteria on your skin and kills the bad, all while acting as a great moisturizer! 

If you google the health effects of coconut oil, you’ll read about HIV patients using coconut oil instead of medication to keep their viral load down or eliminate it all together.  Apparently, the lauric acid in coconut oil breaks through the once impenetrable protective shell of the HIV virus and destroys it.

I use it, my kids use it, and everyone I know gets a copy of the book and a jar of coconut oil for their birthday.  In an attempt to peak your interest, I have posted some of the viruses and bacteria, noted in the book below, that are killed by the lauric acid found in coconut oil – and not in crazy amounts. Along with a healthy lifestyle, replacing your current cooking oil and adding it to recipes, along with using it on your skin, may be all it takes to see the health effects.

VIRUSES                                           BACTERIA

HIV                                                     Listeria Monocytogenes

Measles                                              Helicobacter Pyloria                                   

Herpes                                               Chlamydia Pneumoniae                            

Sarcoma                                             Staphylococcus Aureus

Syncytial                                            Streptococcus Agalactiae

Human Lymphotropic                    Groups A, B, F, and G Streptococci

Vesicular stomatitis                         Gram-positive organisms  

Visna                                                  Gram-negative organisms

Cytomegalovirus

Epestein Barr

Influenza

Leukemia

Pneumonovirus

Hepatitis C  

For more information, you can visit the author's website at http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/

Thanks for reading!