Coconut Oil Touted as Alzheimer's Remedy
Posted by Unknown in Biofuel, Coconut Oil, Health Issues, News, Nutrition, USA on Sunday 27 January 2013
An
estimated 5.4 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with
Alzheimer's disease and that number is expected to increase
exponentially as baby boomer generation enters their golden years.
But for some people, coconut oil has proven to slow the progression of Alzheimer's and may have even prevented it.
One
of those people is Steve Newport, whose Alzheimer's has slowed
considerably. Some of his symptoms even reversed, thanks to the unlikely
treatment prescribed by his wife, Dr. Mary Newport, a physician who
runs a neonatology ward at a Tampa, Fla., hospital.
Dr.
Newport became determined to help her husband after the severity of his
disease was discovered through an Alzheimer's test in which the person
being tested is asked to draw a picture of a clock.
"He drew circles and several numbers just in a very random pattern, didn't really look anything like a clock," she said.
"And
the doctor pulled me over to the side and said, 'You know, he's
actually on the verge of severe Alzheimer's at this point, he's beyond
moderate," Dr. Newport recalled.
"So that was very, very devastating news," she said.
Dr. Newport began learning everything she could about her husband's disease.
"It
appears to be a type of diabetes of the brain and it's a process that
starts happening at least 10 or 20 years before you start having
symptoms and it's very similar to type 1 or type 2 diabetes in that you
develop a problem with insulin," she explained.
Alternative Brain Fuel
In this case, insulin problems prevent brain cells from accepting glucose, their primary fuel. Without it, they eventually die.
But
there is an alternative fuel -- ketones, which cells easily accept.
Ketones are metabolized in the liver after you eat medium chain
triglicerides, found in coconut oil.
Dr.
Newport added coconut oil to her husband Steve's diet. Just two weeks
later, he took the clock test again and demonstrated stunning
improvement.
"I
thought at the time, was it just good luck? Was it a lot of prayer? Was
it the coconut oil?" she said. "And I thought, well, we're going to
keep the coconut oil going."
Three weeks later, Steve took the clock test a third time and continued to perform better on it.
And it wasn't just intellectually, he also improved emotionally and physically.
"He
was not able to run. He was able to run again," she recalled. "He could
not read for about a year and a half, but after two or three months he
was able to read."
"Instead
of being very sluggish, not talking very much in the morning, he would
come out in the morning with energy, talkative, and joking, and he could
find his water and his utensils," Dr. Newport said.
She
documented Steve's success in a book titled, Alzheimer's Disease: What
If There Was A Cure? Dr. Newport received many "thank you" letters from
people whose loved ones were suffering from Alzheimer's. Each of the
letters claimed their family member was helped after they followed
Steve's diet.
Expensive Power Punch
And while coconut oil is encouraging, there's something much more powerful.
A
team of biochemists, led by Professor Kieran Clarke at England's Oxford
University, have developed a ketone ester that packs a punch ten times
greater than coconut oil.
"It
reaches quite considerably higher levels," Clarke said. "And you can
get whatever levels you want depending on how much you drink."
The problem is, they need millions of dollars to mass produce it.
"It's
very expensive. And so we can't make very much of it ourselves," Clarke
said. "And what we would like is funding so we could actually scale up
and make it."
"But
of course there's no real profit in manufacturing stuff like that, and
so people really don't want to fund that sort of thing," he said.
Coconut Oil Myths
So until a high potency ketone ester is available to the general public, coconut oil is still a good ketone source.
Just
make sure it's pure, in other words, non-hydrogenated. Avoid any
hydrogenated oil, including coconut oil, because hydrogenated oils are
the same thing as dangerous trans fats. Check the list of ingredients
for the word, "hydrogenated."
Some people are afraid to eat coconut oil because they think it's bad for your heart. But it's actually very healthy.
Dr. Beverly Teter is a lipid biochemist researcher at the University of Maryland and an expert in the area of dietary fat.
She
said that years ago, coconut oil was criticized for raising
cholesterol. But scientists have since learned there are two kinds of
cholesterol -- LDL, the bad kind, and HDL, which is very good for you.
HDL, the good cholesterol, is the kind that coconut oil raises.
"So
they put out the message that it increased serum cholesterol," Teter
explained. "But the truth of the matter is, it was helping the profile
of the serum cholesterol."
"That
never has been corrected in the public press, and I think that's the
reason people have misconceptions about it," she said.
Defense against Disease
Not
only does coconut oil improve cholesterol levels, Teter said the way it
helps the brains of some Alzheimer's patients can even be extended to
people with Parkinson's disease, ALS , epilepsy, dementia, even
schizophrenia and autism.
Coconut
oil also kills bacteria, making it a natural antibiotic without the
negative side effects. Teter said because of that, it also helps defend
against viruses like HIV and herpes.
"The
coconut oil tends to keep the bacteria down so that if you're assaulted
with a virus, your immune system can concentrate on the virus. It
doesn't have to concentrate on 27 other bacteria that day," she
explained.
As always, consult your doctor before making any dietary changes and ask about the addition of coconut oil to your diet.
This entry was posted on Sunday 27 January 2013 at 10:51 and is filed under Biofuel, Coconut Oil, Health Issues, News, Nutrition, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response.
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