The Coconut Oil Miracle (9 page)

Another major cause of arterial injury that can lead to atherosclerosis is free radicals. These renegade molecules, found in tobacco smoke, polluted air, and many substances in our food and environment, can cause damage to cells and tissues wherever they are allowed to roam. A number of substances in our foods and environment can cause the formation of destructive free radicals.

Probably the most dangerous dietary substances to the heart and arteries are oxidized lipids (fats). When fats go rancid, they oxidize. During this process free radicals are formed. It is interesting to note that only oxidized fats and oxidized cholesterol are found in arterial plaque. Nonoxidized fats and cholesterol do not accumulate in
plaque. Only those fats that have been damaged by oxidation are harmful to the heart and arteries.

Oxidized fats are abundant in our modern diet. Processed vegetable oils are particularly bad. These refined oils have been stripped of the natural antioxidants that protect them from oxidation and free-radical generation. As a result, these oils can begin to oxidize and form free radicals while they are still being processed and bottled. When you buy them at the store they already contain dangerous free radicals. If you or a restaurant use them in cooking, the heat greatly accelerates oxidation and free-radical formation. When these damaged oils are consumed they release a horde of very chemically active free radicals into the bloodstream that attack the lining of the arteries, causing inflammation and injury.

Another major source of free radicals is tobacco smoke. When smoke is inhaled free radicals enter the lungs and are absorbed into the bloodstream where they can attack the arteries. This is why smoking is one of the strongest risk factors for heart disease. Polluted air has a similar effect.

The only way to stop a free radical is with an antioxidant. Antioxidants are molecules that neutralize free radicals and render them harmless. Numerous studies have shown that diets high in fruits and vegetables rich in antioxidants (most notably vitamins A, C, E, and beta-carotene) reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. If antioxidants are readily available in the bloodstream they can protect the arteries from free-radical injury and reduce the risk of heart disease.

We can get antioxidants from fresh fruits and vegetables, but most people don’t eat enough of these to provide significant protection. Antioxidant supplements can help. Another way to fight free radicals
is with coconut oil. Unlike other vegetable oils, coconut oil is chemically very stable and is not oxidized easily. In fact it is so resistant to free radical attack that it acts as an antioxidant helping to prevent the oxidation of other oils. Coconut oil can help protect the heart and arteries from free-radical induced injury and, therefore, helps reduce the risk of heart disease.

One of the biggest tragedies of our time concerning diet and health is the mistaken belief that coconut oil is a dietary villain that causes heart disease. Ironically, it may be one of best things you can eat to help protect you from heart disease. Instead of being the villain it is often made out to be, it is, in reality, a saint. By eating coconut oil you can reduce your chances of suffering a heart attack!

As you have seen, coconut oil does not have a negative effect on blood cholesterol or triglyceride levels, nor does it promote platelet stickiness (excessive blood-clot formation). Studies show that coconut oil consumption has many factors associated with a reduced risk of heart disease in comparision to other dietary oils; namely, lower body fat deposition, higher survival rate, reduced tendency to form blood clots, fewer uncontrolled free radicals in cells, lower levels of liver cholesterol, higher antioxidant reserves in cells, and lower incidence of heart disease in population studies.

Coconut oil protects the heart and arteries from injury caused by bacteria, viruses, and free radicals. By removing the cause of arterial injury, coconut oil prevents further damage and allows the arterial
walls to heal, thus not only reducing the risk of heart disease but actually promoting healing.

Coconut oil also seems to have a direct effect on the heart itself. I believe that it may help regulate heart function. For example, Maria, a heart disease patient, was told by her cardiologist that she had only five years to live. One of her symptoms was an accelerated irregular heartbeat. She suffered so severely from arrhythmia that her doctor insisted she have a pacemaker implanted in her chest. She refused. She tried many natural methods but her symptoms persisted and worsened. I told her about coconut oil and she began taking it like a dietary supplement—4 tablespoons a day. The very first day she reported that her arrhythmia decreased by about 50 percent. She reported that it was the calmest her heart had been in years. Nothing she had ever tried before had worked this well. She continues to take coconut oil and her heart is functioning more normally now. It appears that her heart likes coconut oil.

While I was overjoyed to hear of Maria’s success, it really wasn’t a surprise. People who are familiar with coconut have learned that it helps the heart. As they say in Jamaica, “Coconut is a health tonic, good for the heart.” It’s been several years now and Maria is still using coconut oil and has long outlived her doctor’s prediction of suffering a fatal heart attack.

From this evidence alone, coconut oil should be viewed as heart healthy, or at least benign, as far as heart disease is concerned. Coconut oil, however, is not simply a benign bystander but has the potential to be a very important player in the battle against heart disease. The evidence is so remarkable that coconut oil may soon become a powerful new weapon in the fight against heart disease.

Unlike the standard treatments for heart disease, coconut oil is cheap, has no adverse side effects, and is readily available to everyone. This, however, may also be a drawback. Because it is a natural product that is already widely available, the pharmaceutical and medical industries have no desire to fund studies or promote interest in this area. There is no profit for them. Since most of the information on MCFAs and coconut oil is buried in scientific literature, few people are aware of the benefits. Knowledge about the true health aspects of coconut oil has to come from experienced clinicians, authors, and researchers who are familiar with the true facts about coconut oil. Yet they face an uphill battle because they must fight prejudice and misguided popular opinion that is fueled by powerful profit-seeking enterprises.

The soybean industry’s attack on tropical oils was built on the accusation that these oils cause heart disease. This is ironic because replacing tropical oils with hydrogenated vegetable oils has actually increased heart disease deaths. And they know it. As far back as the 1950s, hydrogenated oils were suspected of causing heart disease. The soybean industry, fully aware that hydrogenated oils cause health problems, attempted to discourage and even suppress studies that presented unfavorable results. In the book
What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You,
Jane Heimlich tells about one researcher who, after publishing the results of a study unfavorable to hydrogenated oils, found that she could no longer find funding. The purpose of her research, she thought, was to reveal truth and increase knowledge, not promote a product, but this didn’t sit well with the vegetable oil industry, and they refused to fund any of her future studies.

The truth about hydrogenated oils and trans fatty acids eventually emerged. Like the tobacco industry, which denied for years that cigarette smoke caused cancer, the soybean industry has denied that trans fatty acids promote heart disease. They cunningly diverted the public’s attention to saturated fats and tropical oils, pointing a finger and calling them the troublemakers. In the 1980s and early 1990s, as the soybean industry’s campaign against tropical oils raged, study after study implicated hydrogenated oils in contributing to heart disease as well as to a number of other health problems. Aware of the growing evidence against hydrogenated oils, the soybean industry conveniently avoided discussing this in their anti–tropical oil campaign. They always implied that tropical oils should be replaced by “vegetable oils.” They didn’t say what type of vegetable oil, but they knew all along that it would be hydrogenated vegetable oil.

As knowledge of the benefits of coconut oil increases, the soybean industry and its friends will step up their efforts to confuse the public with unfounded criticism and research funding designed to hide the truth and to make its products appear more desirable. Biased research in favor of the funding institution or industry happens all too often. Smear campaigns like those sponsored in the 1980s and early 1990s will undoubtedly continue.

“There’s nothing else we can do,”
the doctor said as the 57-year-old kidney patient lay dying. For nine months Dr. Gibert had desperately tried one antibiotic after another, but nothing worked. The man’s blood remained flooded with bacteria, slowly poisoning his body.

“We tried six or seven different medications. Some we didn’t think would work. But we had nothing else to try,” said Gibert, an infectious disease specialist at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Even experimental drugs proved useless. Sometimes the man’s blood tested clean, but within days the infection came roaring back. One strain of bacteria would die, but a few
antibiotic-resistant bacteria would take the place of their more vulnerable cousins. Then they multiplied by the billions. The patient sensed his doctor’s frustration.

“I guess you’re going to tell me I’m dying,” he sighed discouragingly.

“Nothing is working,” she confided. “There are no more options.”

Antibiotics, the miracle drugs of the twentieth century, had been useless against this new strain of bacteria, and within days the patient died of a massive bacterial infection of the blood and heart.

Today people are suffering and dying from illnesses that science predicted 40 years ago would be wiped off the face of the earth. Infectious illnesses like tuberculosis, pneumonia, and sexually transmitted diseases, which were thought to have been conquered through the use of antibiotics, have made a frightening comeback. Infectious diseases are now the third leading killer of Americans, after cancer and heart disease, and are becoming a global threat. “The world’s population has never been more vulnerable to emerging and reemerging infections,” wrote Dr. Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize winner for research in the genetic structure of microbes, in an editorial in the
Journal of the American Medical Association.

Experts say our overuse of antibiotics is largely to blame: antibiotics encourage proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) examined death records nationwide and found that 65 of every 100,000 deaths were caused by infectious disease, up from 41 of every 100,000 deaths 12 years earlier. In 1946, just five years after penicillin came into wide use, doctors discovered a strain of staphylococcus bacteria that was not vulnerable to the drug. Pharmacologists developed new antibiotics, but new drug-resistant bacteria appeared. As new drugs were
developed, new strains of bacteria arose. By developing new drugs to combat the new strains of bacteria, pharmacologists thought they would be able to stay ahead. Slowly, scourges such as tuberculosis, bacterial pneumonia, septicemia (blood poisoning), syphilis, gonorrhea, and other bacterial infections were vanquished—or so it seemed. People still died from these ills, but not so many. In recent years, disease-causing bacteria have been staging a powerful comeback. We are in a new age of germ warfare—the age of the “supergerm.”

Today every disease-causing bacterium has versions that resist at least one of medicine’s hundred-plus antibiotics. Some of these supergerms resist almost all known antibiotics. Drug-resistant tuberculosis now accounts for one in seven new cases. Several resistant strains of pneumococcus, the microbe responsible for infected surgical wounds and some children’s ear infections and meningitis, appeared in the 1970s and are still going strong. Thousands of patients are now dying of bacterial infections that were once cured by antibiotics. It isn’t that their infections were immune to every single drug but rather that by the time doctors found an antibiotic that worked, the rampaging bacteria had poisoned the patient’s blood or crippled some vital organ.

While medications are still an important defense against bacterial infections, the emergence of supergerms has increased our vulnerability to many diseases we thought would soon be rare or extinct.

Another growing concern in recent years is the sanitation practices in the food-processing industry. Food poisoning caused by bacteria is
becoming a serious concern. Meat is the most common source of harmful bacteria. It easily becomes contaminated in slaughterhouses and warehouses, where sanitary conditions are often deplorable. Because of the prevalence of contamination in meat, we are continually advised to cook all meat thoroughly before eating. Even a tiny speck of blood on a cutting board or knife can transfer the bacteria to raw foods, leading to illness or even death.