Anti-Microbal / Anti-Pathogenic action :

Lauric acid is a medium chain fatty acid which is abundant in coconut oil, and considered responsible for many of its health benefits. Coconut oil is about 50% lauric acid. The only other abundant source found in nature is in human breast milk.

The medium-chain fats in coconut oil are similar to fats in mother's milk and have similar nutriceutical effects.

Lauric acid converts into monolaurin in the body. Monolaurin is the wide spectrum antiviral, antibacterial, and antiprotozoal monoglyceride used by the human body to destroy lipid-coated viruses such as HIV, herpes, cytomegalovirus, influenza, various pathogenic bacteria, including listeria monocytogenes and helicobacter pylori, and protozoa such as giardia lamblia.

Capric and Caprillic acids, which comprise another 10% of coconut oil fat content, are also super fatty acids with strong anti-microbial properties

A fat that causes weight loss??
Another incredible fact about coconut oil is that even though it is a fat, it actually promotes weight loss!! The reason is again because of the healthy medium chain fatty acids. These fatty acids do not circulate in the bloodstream like other fats, but are sent directly to the liver where they are immediately converted into energy, just like carbohydrates. So the body uses the fat in coconut oil to produce energy, rather than be stored as body fat.

Medium chain fatty acids found in coconut oil also speed up the body's metabolism burning more calories and promoting weight loss. The weight-loss effects of coconut oil have clearly been demonstrated by many researchers.

Coconut oil can quite literally be called a low-fat fat. You can lose unwanted body fat by eating more saturated fat (in the form of coconut oil) and less polyunsaturated fat (processed vegetable oils).

In the l940s, farmers attempted to use cheap coconut oil for fattening their animals, but they found that it made them lean, active and hungry. For a few years, an antithyroid drug was found to make the livestock get fat while eating less food, but then it was found to be a strong carcinogen, and it also probably produced hypothyroidism in the people who ate the meat.

By the late l940s, it was found that the same antithyroid effect, causing animals to get fat without eating much food, could be achieved by using soy beans and corn as feed.

G. W. Crile and his wife found that the metabolic rate of people in Yucatan, where coconut is a staple food, averaged 25% higher than that of people in the United States.

In a hot climate, the adaptive tendency is to have a lower metabolic rate, so it is clear that some factor is more than offsetting this expected effect of high environmental temperatures. The people there are lean, and recently it has been observed that the women there have none of the symptoms we commonly associate with the menopause.

Cholesterol normalizing action

Coconut-eating cultures in the tropics have consistently lower cholesterol than people in the U.S. Everyone that I know who uses coconut oil regularly happens to have cholesterol levels of about 160, while eating mainly cholesterol rich foods (eggs, milk, cheese, meat, shellfish). I encourage people to eat sweet fruits, rather than starches, if they want to increase their production of cholesterol, since fructose has that effect.

Since the l930s, it has been clearly established that suppression of the thyroid raises serum cholesterol (while increasing mortality from infections, cancer, and heart disease), while restoring the thyroid hormone brings cholesterol down to normal.

Progesterone and its precursor, pregnenolone, have a generalized protective function: antioxidant, anti-seizure, antitoxin, anti-spasm, anti-clot, anticancer, pro-memory, pro-myelination, pro-attention, etc. Any interference with the formation of cholesterol will interfere with all of these exceedingly important protective functions.

As far as the evidence goes, it suggests that coconut oil, added regularly to a balanced diet, lowers cholesterol to normal by promoting its conversion into pregnenolone.

The cholesterol-lowering fiasco for a long time centered on the ability of unsaturated oils to slightly lower serum cholesterol. For years, the mechanism of that action wasn't known, which should have suggested caution. Now, it seems that the effect is just one more toxic action, in which the liver defensively retains its cholesterol, rather than releasing it into the blood.

Large scale human studies have provided overwhelming evidence that whenever drugs, including the unsaturated oils, were used to lower serum cholesterol, mortality increased, from a variety of causes including accidents, but mainly from cancer.

Anti-Aging effects

In the l960s, Hartroft and Porta gave an elegant argument for decreasing the ratio of unsaturated oil to saturated oil in the diet (and thus in the tissues). They showed that the "age pigment" is produced in proportion to the ratio of oxidants to antioxidants, multiplied by the ratio of unsaturated oils to saturated oils.

More recently, a variety of studies have demonstrated that ultraviolet light induces peroxidation in unsaturated fats, but not saturated fats, and that this occurs in the skin as well as in the lab.

General aging, and especially aging of the brain, is increasingly seen as being closely associated with lipid peroxidation.

Rabbit experiments, and studies of humans, showed that the amount of unsaturated oil in the diet strongly affects the rate at which aged, wrinkled skin develops.

The unsaturated fat in the skin is a major target for the aging and carcinogenic effects of ultraviolet light, though not necessarily the only one.

Brain development :           Brain tissue is very rich in complex forms of fats.

The experiment (around 1978) in which pregnant mice were given diets containing either coconut oil or unsaturated oil showed that brain development was superior in the young mice whose mothers ate coconut oil.

Various fractions of coconut oil are coming into use as "drugs," meaning that they are advertised as treatments for diseases. Butyric acid is used to treat cancer, lauric and myristic acids to treat virus infections, and mixtures of medium-chain fats are sold for weight loss.

When people become interested in coconut oil as a "health food," the huge seed-oil industry--operating through their shills--are going to attack it as an "unproved drug."

Many people see coconut oil in its hard, white state, and--as a result of their training watching television or going to medical school--associate it with the cholesterol-rich plaques in blood vessels. Those lesions in blood vessels are caused mostly by lipid oxidation of unsaturated fats, and relate to stress, because adrenaline liberates fats from storage, and the lining of blood vessels is exposed to high concentrations of the blood-borne material.

In the body, incidentally, the oil can't exist as a solid, since it liquefies at 24 degrees Celsius – well below body temperature

TFAs --The Real Cause for Concern

In fact, the real problem fats in our diets are the trans fatty acids, mentioned above as a by-product of hydrogenating fats. Here are just a few of their adverse effects: lower the "good" HDL cholesterol and raise the "bad" LDL cholesterol while raising total serum cholesterol levels; increase blood insulin levels in humans in response to glucose load, increasing risk for diabetes; affect immune response by lowering efficiency of B cell response and increasing proliferation of T cells; interfere with utilization of essential omega-3 fatty acids; and escalate adverse effects of essential fatty acid deficiency.

You get these effects, and more, every time you consume hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil, which is present in most processed food, including margarine, potato chips, baked goods, etc.

For Further Reading: Interview of Mary Enig

Why are We Misinformed?

In one word: economics. Beginning with a flawed study four decades ago, continuing through the 1950s, intensifying in the 1980s, and again in the 1990s, the misinformation about coconut oil has been promulgated by such economically motivated organizations as the American Soybean Association (ASA), the Corn Products Company (CPC International) and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). They are aided by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), many of whose key personnel are recruited from and return to the vegetable oil industry. Previously, coconut oil was widely used in baked goods and fried goods until their publicity campaigns, based on erroneous information, totally discredited coconut oil and caused its nearly complete elimination from the American diet.

Finally, after years of denial, The FDA and CSPI are finally talking about the harmful effects of trans fatty acids, evidence of which has been accumulating since the 1950s. Nonetheless, they continue to disparage coconut oil and take no effective action to limit TFAs, which already have been banned in some European countries. TFAs will finally be listed on food labels, starting in 2006 — why has it taken them so long! TFA dangers have been known for decades and continue to cause disease! News items coming from the USDA and FDA still lump TFAs with saturated fats, which are natural and do contain nutrients vital for our bodies. The current FDA Consumer1s Guide to Fats was last updated in 1999 and consistently warns against (all) saturated fats, while failing to mention any harmful effects of trans fatty acids.

How effective is this brainwashing? Many of you will not believe the facts on these pages and will continue to avoid coconut oil and coconut milk out of health concerns. Despite the proven benefits. We invite you to investigate further.

The ability of some of the medium chain saturated fatty acids in coconut oil to inhibit the liver's formation of fat very likely synergizes with the pro-thyroid effect, in allowing energy to be used, rather than stored.

When fat isn't formed from carbohydrate, the sugar is available for use, or for
storage as glycogen. Therefore, shifting from unsaturated fats in foods to coconut oil involves several anti-stress processes, reducing our need for the adrenal hormones. Decreased blood sugar is a basic signal for the release of adrenal hormones.