Coconut Oil-Long

[Guest guest]

Hi, I'm new to the list (actually I followed Penny

over from the Hormone list because her suggestions

work!)

 

Here's an article by Raymond Peat regarding Coconut

Oil. I have found organic coconut (semi refined) at

the Health food store.

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Coconut Oil

 

I have already discussed the many toxic effects of

the unsaturated oils, and I have frequently mentioned

that coconut oil doesn't have those toxic effects,

though it does contain a small amount of the

unsaturated oils. Many people have asked me to write

something on coconut oil. I thought I might write a

small book on it, but I realize that there are no

suitable channels for distributing such a book--if the

seed-oil industry can eliminate major corporate food

products that have used coconut oil for a hundred

years, they certainly have the power to prevent

dealers from selling a book that would affect their

market more seriously. For the present, I will just

outline some of the virtues of coconut oil.

 

The unsaturated oils in some cooked foods become

rancid in just a few hours, even at refrigerator

temperatures, and are responsible for the stale taste

of left-over foods. (Eating slightly stale food isn't

particularly harmful, since the same oils, even when

eaten absolutely fresh, will oxidize at a much higher

rate once they are in the body, where they are heated

and thoroughly mixed with an abundance of oxygen.)

Coconut oil that has been kept at room temperature for

a year has been tested for rancidity, and showed no

evidence of it. Since we would expect the small

percentage of unsaturated oils naturally contained in

coconut oil to become rancid, it seems that the other

(saturated) oils have an antioxidative effect: I

suspect that the dilution keeps the unstable

unsaturated fat molecules spatially separated from

each other, so they can't interact in the destructive

chain reactions that occur in other oils. To

interrupt chain-reactions of oxidation is one of the

functions of antioxidants, and it is possible that a

sufficient quantity of coconut oil in the body has

this function. It is well established that dietary

coconut oil reduces our need for vitamin E, but I

think its antioxidant role is more general than that,

and that it has both direct and indirect antioxidant

activities.

 

Coconut oil is unusually rich in short and medium

chain fatty acids. Shorter chain length allows fatty

acids to be metabolized without use of the carnitine

transport system. Mildronate, which I discussed in an

article on adaptogens, protects cells against stress

partly by opposing the action of carnitine, and

comparative studies showed that added carnitine had

the opposite effect, promoting the oxidation of

unsaturated fats during stress, and increasing

oxidative damage to cells. I suspect that a degree of

saturation of the oxidative apparatus by short-chain

fatty acids has a similar effect--that is, that these

very soluble and mobile short-chain saturated fats

have priority for oxidation, because they don't

require carnitine transport into the mitochondrion,

and that this will tend to inhibit oxidation of the

unstable, peroxidizable unsaturated fatty acids.

 

When Albert Schweitzer operated his clinic in

tropical Africa, he said it was many years before he

saw any cases of cancer, and he believed that the

appearance of cancer was caused by the change to the

European type of diet. In the l920s, German

researchers showed that mice on a fat-free diet were

practically free of cancer. Since then, many studies

have demonstrated a very close association between

consumption of unsaturated oils and the incidence of

cancer.

 

Heart damage is easily produced in animals by feeding

them linoleic acid; this " essential " fatty acid turned

out to be the heart toxin in rape-seed oil. The

addition of saturated fat to the experimental

heart-toxic oil-rich diet protects against the damage

to heart cells.

Immunosuppression was observed in patients who were

being " nourished " by intravenous emulsions of

" essential fatty acids, " and as a result coconut oil

is used as the basis for intravenous fat feeding,

except in organ-transplant patients. For those

patients, emulsions of unsaturated oils are used

specifically for their immunosuppressive effects.

 

General aging, and especially aging of the brain, is

increasingly seen as being closely associated with

lipid peroxidation.

Several years ago I met an old couple, who were only a

few years apart in age, but the wife looked many years

younger than her doddering old husband. She was from

the Philippines, and she remarked that she always had

to cook two meals at the same time, because her

husband couldn't adapt to her traditional food. Three

times every day, she still prepared her food in

coconut oil. Her apparent youth increased my interest

in the effects of coconut oil.

 

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 vitro. 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.

 

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.

 

Later, an animal experiment fed diets that were low

or high in total fat, and in different groups the fat

was provided by pure coconut oil, or a pure

unsaturated oil, or by various mixtures of the two

oils. At the end of their lives, the animals' obesity

increased directly in proportion to the ratio of

unsaturated oil to coconut oil in their diet, and was

not related to the total amount of fat they had

consumed. That is, animals which ate just a little

pure unsaturated oil were fat, and animals which ate a

lot of coconut oil were lean.

 

In the l930s, animals on a diet lacking the

unsaturated fatty acids were found to be

" hypermetabolic. " Eating a " normal " diet, these

animals were malnourished, and their skin condition

was said to be caused by a " deficiency of essential

fatty acids. " But other researchers who were studying

vitamin B6 recognized the condition as a deficiency of

that vitamin. They were able to cause the condition

by feeding a fat-free diet, and to cure the condition

by feeding a single B vitamin. The hypermetabolic

animals simply needed a better diet than the " normal, "

fat-fed, cancer-prone animals did.

 

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.

 

By l950, then, it was established that unsaturated

fats suppress the metabolic rate, apparently creating

hypothyroidism. Over the next few decades, the exact

mechanisms of that metabolic damage were studied.

Unsaturated fats damage the mitochondria, partly by

suppressing the repiratory enzyme, and partly by

causing generalized oxidative damage. The more

unsaturated the oils are, the more specifically they

suppress tissue response to thyroid hormone, and

transport of the hormone on the thyroid transport

protein.

 

Plants evolved a variety of toxins designed to

protect themselves from " predators, " such as grazing

animals. Seeds contain a variety of toxins, that seem

to be specific for mammalian enzymes, and the seed

oils themselves function to block proteolytic

digestive enzymes in the stomach. The thyroid hormone

is formed in the gland by the action of a proteolytic

enzyme, and the unsaturated oils also inhibit that

enzyme. Similar proteolytic enzymes involved in clot

removal and phagocytosis appear to be similarly

inhibited by these oils.

 

Just as metabolism is " activated " by consumption of

coconut oil, which prevents the inhibiting effect of

unsaturated oils, other inhibited processes, such as

clot removal and phagocytosis, will probably tend to

be restored by continuing use of coconut oil.

 

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. Because coconut oil supports thyroid function,

and thyroid governs brain development, including

myelination, the result might simply reflect the

difference between normal and hypothyroid individuals.

However, in 1980, experimenters demonstrated that

young rats fed milk containing soy oil incorporated

the oil directly into their brain cells, and had

structurally abnormal brain cells as a result.

 

Lipid peroxidation occurs during seizures, and

antioxidants such as vitamin E have some anti-seizure

activity. Currently, lipid peroxidation is being found

to be involved in the nerve cell degeneration of

Alzheimer's disease.

 

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. Purification undoubtedly increases

certain effects, and results in profitable products,

but in the absence of more precise knowledge, I think

the whole natural product, used as a regular food, is

the best way to protect health. The shorter-chain

fatty acids have strong, unpleasant odors; for a

couple of days after I ate a small amount of a

medium-chain triglyceride mixture, my skin oil emitted

a rank, goaty smell. Some people don't seem to have

that reaction, and the benefits might outweigh the

stink, but these things just haven't been in use long

enough to know whether they are safe.

 

We have to remember that the arguments made for

aspartame, monosodium glutamate, aspartic acid, and

tryptophan--that they are like the amino acids that

make up natural proteins--are dangerously false. In

the case of amino acids, balance is everything.

Aspartic and glutamic acids promote seizures and cause

brain damage, and are intimately involved in the

process of stress-induced brain aging, and tryptophan

by itself is carcinogenic. Treating any complex

natural product as the drug industry does, as a raw

material to be fractionated in the search for " drug "

products, is risky, because the relevant knowledge

isn't sought in the search for an association between

a single chemical and a single disease.

While the toxic unsaturated paint-stock oils,

especially safflower, soy, corn and linseed (flaxseed)

oils, have been sold to the public precisely for their

drug effects, all of their claimed benefits were

false. 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. "

 

While components of coconut oil have been found to

have remarkable physiological effects (as

antihistamines, antiinfectives/antiseptics, promoters

of immunity, glucocorticoid antagonist, nontoxic

anticancer agents, for example), I think it is

important to avoid making any such claims for the

natural coconut oil, because it very easily could be

banned from the import market as a " new drug " which

isn't " approved by the FDA. " We have already seen how

money and propaganda from the soy oil industry

eliminated long-established products from the U.S.

market. I saw people lose weight stably when they had

the habit of eating large amounts of tortilla chips

fried in coconut oil, but those chips disappeared when

their producers were pressured into switching to other

oils, in spite of the short shelf life that resulted

in the need to add large amounts of preservatives.

Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers, potato chip producers,

and movie theater popcorn makers have experienced

similar pressures.

 

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.

 

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. In this

situation, however, thyroid isn't suppressing the

synthesis of cholesterol, but rather is promoting its

use to form hormones and bile salts. When the thyroid

is functioning properly, the amount of cholesterol in

the blood entering the ovary governs the amount of

progesterone being produced by the ovary, and the same

situation exists in all steroid-forming tissues, such

as the adrenal glands and the brain. Progesterone and

its precursor, pregnenolone, have a generalized

protective function: antioxidant, anti-seizure,

antitoxin, anti-spasm, anti-clot, anti-cancer,

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 coconut family contains steroids

that resemble pregnenolone, but these are probably

mostly removed when the fresh oil is washed with water

to remove the enzymes which would digest the oil.)

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.

 

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

peroxidation 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 76 degrees.

(Incidentally, the viscosity of complex materials

isn't a simple matter of averaging the viscosity of

its component materials; cholesterol and saturated

fats sometimes lower the viscosity of cell

components.)

 

Most of the images and metaphors relating to coconut

oil and cholesterol that circulate in our culture are

false and misleading. I offer a counter-image, which

is metaphorical, but it is true in that it relates to

lipid peroxidation, which is profoundly important in

our bodies. After a bottle of safflower oil has been

opened a few times, a few drops that get smeared onto

the outside of the bottle begin to get very sticky,

and hard to wash off. This property is why it is a

valued base for paints and varnishes, but this varnish

is chemically closely related to the age pigment that

forms " liver spots " on the skin, and similar lesions

in the brain, heart, blood vessels, lenses of the

eyes, etc. The image of " hard, white saturated

coconut oil " isn't relevant to the oil's biological

action, but the image of " sticky varnish-like easily

oxidized unsaturated seed oils " is highly relevant to

their toxicity.

 

The ability of some of the medium chain saturated

fatty acids 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. Unsaturated oil tends to lower the

blood sugar in at least three basic ways. It damages

mitochondria, causing respiration to be uncoupled from

energy production, meaning that fuel is burned without

useful effect. It suppresses the activity of the

respiratory enzyme (directly, and through its

anti-thyroid actions), decreasing the respiratory

production of energy. And it tends to direct

carbohydrate into fat production, making both stress

and obesity more probable. For those of us who use

coconut oil consistently, one of the most noticeable

changes is the ability to go for several hours without

eating, and to feel hungry without having symptoms of

hypoglycemia.

 

One of the stylish ways to promote the use of

unsaturated oils is to refer to their presence in

" cell membranes, " and to claim that they are essential

for maintaining " membrane fluidity. " As I have

mentioned above, it is the ability of the unsaturated

fats, and their breakdown products, to interfere with

enzymes and transport proteins, which accounts for

many of their toxic effects, so they definitely don't

just harmlessly form " membranes. " They probably bind

to all proteins, and disrupt some of them, but for

some reason their affinity for proteolytic and

respiration-related enzymes is particularly obvious.

(I think the chemistry of this association is going to

give us some important insights into the nature of

organisms.

 

Metchnikof's model that I have discussed elsewhere

might give us a picture of how those factors relate in

growth, physiology, and aging.) Unsaturated fats are

slightly more water-soluble than fully saturated fats,

and so they do have a greater tendency to concentrate

at interfaces between water and fats or proteins, but

there are relatively few places where these interfaces

can be usefully and harmlessly occupied by unsaturated

fats, and at a certain point, an excess becomes

harmful. We don't want " membranes " forming where

there shouldn't be membranes. The fluidity or

viscosity of cell surfaces is an extremely complex

subject, and the degree of viscosity has to be

appropriate for the function of the cell.

Interestingly, in some cells, such as the cells that

line the air sacs of the lungs, cholesterol and one of

the saturated fatty acids found in coconut oil can

increase the fluidity of the cell surface.

 

In many cases, stressful conditions create structural

disorder in cells. These influences have been called

" chaotropic, " or chaos-producing. In red blood cells,

which have sometimes been wrongly described as

" hemoglobin enclosed in a cell membrane, " it has been

known for a long time that lipid peroxidation of

unsaturated fats weakens the cellular structure,

causing the cells to be destroyed prematurely. Lipid

peroxidation products are known to be " chaotropic, "

lowering the rigidity of regions of cells considered

to be membranes. But the red blood cell is actually

more like a sponge in structure, consisting of a

" skeleton " of proteins, which (if not damaged by

oxidation) can hold its shape, even when the

hemoglobin has been removed. Oxidants damage the

protein structure, and it is this structural damage

which in turn increases the " fluidity " of the

associated fats.

 

So, it is probably true that in many cases the liquid

unsaturated oils do increase " membrane fluidity, " but

it is now clear that in at least some of those cases

the " fluidity " corresponds to the chaos of a damaged

cell protein structure. (N. V. Gorbunov, " Effect of

structural modification of membrane proteins on

lipid-protein interactions in the human erythrocyte

membrane, " Bull. Exp. Biol. & Med. 116(11), 1364-67.

1993.

 

Although I had stopped using the unsaturated seed

oils years ago, and supposed that I wasn't heavily

saturated with toxic unsaturated fat, when I first

used coconut oil I saw an immediate response, that

convinced me my metabolism was chronically inhibited

by something that was easily alleviated by " dilution "

or molecular competition. I had put a tablespoonful

of coconut oil on some rice I had for supper, and half

an hour later while I was reading, I noticed I was

breathing more deeply than normal. I saw that my skin

was pink, and I found that my pulse was faster than

normal--about 98, I think. After an hour or two, my

pulse and breathing returned to normal. Every day for

a couple of weeks I noticed the same response while I

was digesting a small amount of coconut oil, but

gradually it didn't happen any more, and I increased

my daily consumption of the oil to about an ounce. I

kept eating the same foods as before (including a

quart of ice cream every day), except that I added

about 200 or 250 calories per day as coconut oil.

Apparently the metabolic surges that happened at first

were an indication that my body was compensating for

an anti-thyroid substance by producing more thyroid

hormone; when the coconut oil relieved the inhibition,

I experienced a moment of slight hyperthyroidism, but

after a time the inhibitor became less effective, and

my body adjusted by producing slightly less thyroid

hormone. But over the next few months, I saw that my

weight was slowly and consistently decreasing. It had

been steady at 185 pounds for 25 years, but over a

period of six months it dropped to about 175 pounds.

I found that eating more coconut oil lowered my weight

another few pounds, and eating less caused it to

increase.

 

The anti-obesity effect of coconut oil is clear in

all of the animal studies, and in my friends who eat

it regularly. It is now hard to get it in health food

stores, since Hain stopped selling it. The Spectrum

product looks and feels a little different to me, and

I suppose the particular type of tree, region, and

method of preparation can account for variations in

the consistency and composition of the product. The

unmodified natural oil is called " 76 degree melt, "

since that is its natural melting temperature. One

bottle from a health food store was labeled " natural

coconut oil, 92% unsaturated oil, " and it had the

greasy consistency of old lard. I suspect that

someone had confused palm oil (or something worse)

with coconut oil, because it should be about 96%

saturated fatty acids.

 

 

Copyright 1996 Raymond Peat

 

 

 

 

 

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