Coconut oil is an amazing food, and literally a book could be written (and has been!) on how it works and all the many ways it can benefit your health. Unfortunately it’s gotten an unfair and undeserved rap and people don’t know what an incredible food and health supplement it is. I’m hesitant to write a post like this because there’s no way I can do justice to the benefits of coconut oil. But I’ll try to sum up some of what I consider the major points – there’s a lot of research out there if you’re interested in learning more about coconut oil and understanding how it affects the body.
People automatically hear coconut oil and think ‘saturated fat- isn’t that bad for you?’ First of all, saturated fats aren’t bad for you. I know, it’s hard to believe since that’s not what we hear in the mainstream media. But the mainstream media is the last place to turn to for accurate information on anything, including nutrition. Saturated fats actually play a very important role in maintaining your health – consider that for centuries peoples across the globe stayed healthy while eating large amounts of saturated fat, and it’s only since the early 1900s when artificial and processed fats were introduced into people’s diets that we started to see things like heart disease (to be more accurate, I think the very first documented heart attack was in the 1870s but it was still rare until the 1920s). What’s a problem are fats that are oxidized (ie damaged), which all of the processed polyunsaturated vegetable oils are; it’s these oxidized fats that lead to many of the prevalent diseases of today.
Next, coconut oil is comprised of medium chain fatty acids. That means that it is processed differently in the body than most fats. Coconut oil is very easy to digest because medium chain fatty acids don’t require bile salts to be digested. It contains high amounts of lauric acid, something found abundantly in mother’s milk but otherwise can only be found in large amounts in coconut oil and palm oil (butterfat has a small amount). Lauric acid converts to monolaurin in your body, which strengthens your immune system and helps fight all kinds of illness.
Coconut oil aids immune function and is a protective antioxidant. It’s anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, and anti-viral:
- Anti fungal – helps combat candida, athlete’s foot, diaper rash, cradle cap – ds16 used this recently for less than a week and no longer has athlete’s foot, something he’s tried to get rid of for at least two years. Ds22 months once had diaper rash caused by thrush when he was 9 months old – I put coconut oil on his bottom and it killed the thrush, literally peeling the top layer away and leaving perfect skin underneath. (When I changed his diaper I found what looked like a layer of dead skin, which was actually the dead fungus – it took only two applications.) It’s also helpful in combatting cradle cap – rub it into the baby’s scalp.
- Anti – bacterial -bacterial illnesses include throat infections, earaches, strep
- Anti viral – viruses cause a wide variety of illnesses, and antibiotics aren’t effective in combatting them. These viruses include the flu, measles, and HIV.
When you’re feeling under the weather, up your intake of coconut oil. In some parts of the world where coconut oil has been used for generations, it is literally drunk as a tonic when people begin to feel unwell.
Helps expel or kill worms, lice, and parasites – when I thought my toddler ds had worms (dd saw something when changing him but I didn’t see it myself), I put coconut oil on the anus, in addition to giving him raw carrots to eat and increasing his consumption of coconut oil. We didn’t see any signs of anything after that.
Helps protect liver, supports thyroid function, improves brain function (even found to be helpful for Alzheimer’s patients ). It is thermogenic – that means it boosts your metabolism and raises your body temperature. The increased rate of metabolism means that it’s helpful for weight loss and will give you a natural energy boost. If you’re perpetually cold (a sign of thyroid and/or adrenal fatigue), consuming coconut oil will help warm you up.
Skin cleanser – my teens think this is the best anti-acne skin treatment – they use the oil cleansing method, with expeller pressed coconut oil as the oil of choice.
Skin moisturizer – anything you put on your skin goes into your body just as if you ate it, so what you put on your skin is much more important than most people realize. Not only doesn’t this have chemicals, it has substantial soothing and healing powers. Protects skin from sun, can be used in placed of sunscreen. Dd14 commented to me on how soft her face feels now after using it as a skin cleanser.
Hair conditioner – use as a deep oil treatment to nourish your hair; leave on overnight and then wash out in the morning. I’m planning to try this with one of my shaitels sometime soon.
Toothpaste replacement – I sometimes dip my toothbrush in it and use it to brush with (I thought of doing this after noticing coconut oil was a main ingredient in tooth soap).
Base for creams, salves, and more – we made an herbal skin salve and used coconut oil for the base.
Oil pulling – this is the oil I used on the periodic occasions that I do oil pulling.
I’ve seen coconut oil recommended for so many different things that it’s hard to believe one food can be so widely beneficial, but the reason it’s so healthy is because of the factors I listed in the very beginning – being a medium chain fatty acid and rich in lauric acid.
Bruce Fife has written a book about coconut oil that I’d recommend if you’re interested in learning more – The Coconut Oil Miracle. It’s very easy to read. He also has a website, and there’s a lot of information online available, if you don’t mind it taking longer to put all the info together. If you like more technically written books, then Mary Enig is the top lipids researcher in the world and knows her stuff inside out – I haven’t been able to get her book on fats – Know Your Fats: The Complete Primer for Understanding the Nutrition of Fats, Oils, and Cholesterol. Together with Sally Fallon she’s also written Eat Fat Lose Fat that includes information on coconut oil. I personally prefer Mary’s writing, but any and all of these books are worth reading.
Avivah
Re: coconut oil as an antifungal…you apply it topically and just rub it in? I’ve used grapefruit seed extract diluted in water, but water isn’t good for yeast.
Have you ever tried it for oral thrush?
Yes, just rub it in. Couldn’t be easier, right? 🙂
None of my kids have ever had oral thrush; I only saw it show up in the diaper area the one time a child had thrush. I applied some coconut oil on myself and put it in his food, in case he had it orally and wasn’t showing symptoms.
I have a couple of follow up questions..
Can you talk about the differences between the coconut oils? I found a very nice organic coconut oil that would turn to liquid outside of the fridge, and solid inside it. And then we found another one, perhaps also organic, but it was always solid. I’m pretty sure it’s not as good quality as the first one, but still edible. Do you know about that?
Also, it’s possible to get these benefits from other coconut products, right? Like dried flakes and coconut milk? (I hope so!)
Thanks!!
The difference between the oils is something I’ve also wondered about. Bruce Fife of coconut research fame says that though the most unrefined are clearly best, the others are beneficial also, so I use expeller pressed for most of my baking and cooking – I only use the extra virgin for when the coconut flavor is welcome. I don’t know about your specific question – all of the kinds of coconut oil I’ve ever bought liquified at around 72 – 76 degrees (Fahrenheit) and solidified below that. If it’s really cheap (like the stuff at Walmart), then it might not be worth buying. Mary Enig writes about how the oils are processed and strongly encourages using extra virgin.
Yes, all coconut products are beneficial. This is why I bought a 50 lb bag of dried unsweetened coconut flakes last month, to have another way to integrate coconut into our diets. I only once found kosher coconut milk, and it was filled with sugars, stabilizers, and emulsifiers, so I didn’t buy it. I doubted that the health benefits of coconut could overcome all the junk in it. It’s possible to make your own coconut milk, something I’ll eventually get around to trying but it’s not at the top of my list right now.:)
Avivah, do your kids use pacifiers? I assume not 😉
My boys didn’t, but my daughter used one very infrequently (much to my dismay, but she is a “sucker” and before she found her fingers, others decided it was a good idea). And the “infrequently” I think led to yeast growth — she found it a few months later, popped it in her mouth, and a couple days after that I found white patches in her mouth. I was able to control it before I had any symptoms, B”H…
I think there is a correlation between it…
Either way, how does using the oil work with cloth diapers?
Oh, LN, don’t assume so fast! Actually, most of my kids have used pacifiers. I started giving it to my second child to avoid the thumb sucking issue we had with my oldest, thinking it would be easier to take away a pacifier than a thumb. She sporadically used a pacifier until about 3 months. One child used one until he was 6 months, but no one used one longer than that. I didn’t give pacifiers to any of them until they were at least 4 – 6 weeks old. The current baby hasn’t had a pacifier and I’m not planning to give him one.
Regarding coconut oil and cloth diapers, with the fleece inserts I haven’t found any issue of staining or anything else. It might not be a big deal without inserts, but I can’t speak from experience.
On the topic of sunscreen and toxicity:
You are quite right to be concerned about the toxicity of sunscreens and to look for alternatives. Some of your readers may be interested in this website, which evaluates cosmetics and grooming products for toxicity. They have a “best 10” list for sunscreens, all with toxicity ratings of 0 or 1 (nil to very low — recommended) and high effectiveness in blocking UV sunlight. Here it is:
http://www.ewg.org/cosmetics/report/sunscreen09/Beach-Sunscreens
(The general product search is well worth using. Some “natural” products may surprise you for their high toxicity.)
My mother used to use coconut oil as a suntan oil (they didn’t call it a sunscreen); she had many bad burns and developed melanoma (skin cancer) as an adult. So I don’t recommend putting too much trust in that. If you don’t want to use any sunscreen, protective clothing is the way to go. My kids always wear swim shirts, for instance.
Jennifer, I agree that using protective clothing is one of the most important ways to protect yourself. Most of my kids don’t have light complexions, but as you saw in a past post, even my little boys wear swimsuits that cover them more than the average suit for this reason.
Other things that are relevant are: 1) realizing that sun is good in moderation, and not using sunscreen as a way to stay out longer than is beneficial; 2) the quality of the fats you eat affects how you tolerate sun exposure much more than what you put on your skin since what we eat is released in part via the skin.
Using coconut oil as a tanning lotion can’t overcome excessive exposure and poor nutritional habits, but it can be helpful when combined with other good practices. Generations of Pacific Islanders have routinely eaten and used coconut oil on their skin, spent many hours outside, and skin cancer was a rarity; it was due in large part to their use of coconut oil.
My personal experience is only anecdotal, but here it is 🙂 : ds16 has been working all day in the sun for the last week, working on our patio. I’d prefer he wait until later in the day when it’s cooler and the sun isn’t directly overhead, but he likes to work when he’s fresh. Always in the past, he would begin to get pink if he stayed out more than a couple of hours in the sun. After his first day on this project when he began to get pink after hauling bricks for a couple of hours, I mentioned coconut oil to him. The next day, he started eating a generous helping of coconut oil first thing in the morning, as well as spreading it on his skin. He feels there’s been a big difference in his sun tolerance since doing this – he’s outside for up to ten hours at a stretch in a t-shirt but except for some pinkness on his neck and forearms the first day (before he used the coconut oil), hasn’t shown the slightest bit of redness. And after applying the oil to his skin when it was pink, the pinkness disappeared within a very short period of time – his past experience didn’t lead him to expect that and he was pretty impressed.
I have been told by two different Rabbis that coconut milk is fine without a hechsher so long as 1) it only states coconut milk on the ingredients 2) it does not come from China, otherwise it is fine. Also there is this: http://www.kosherquest.org/getfood.php?id=2090.
I love coconut milk. I make a coconut milk tonic and use it in place of soy milk or non dairy creamer for fleshig meals. I also make ice cream with it for Shabbos and it really is delicious.
Dina, this is great to know – thank you! What brands have you found that only have coconut milk in them? I’d love to include this in our diet.
I have actually been looking for a new brand b/c I was using roland’s (with a hechser), but it was full of all the junk and I couldn’t justify it anymore. I found this: http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Value-Coconut-14-Ounce-Containers/dp/B000LKVIEG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=grocery&qid=1247617839&sr=8-1
I went to their webpage and it says they have kosher products so this may even be certified!
The ingredients are just pure coconut extract and water.