Article: The Dark Side Of Coconut Oil - A Cautionary Tale

jyb

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haidut said:
There is no dark side, the study simply showed that eating coconut oil increased the immune response in a mouse model of MS. This is actually a GOOD thing, as "autoimmune" conditions where your own immune system attacks you simply do not exist. The ramping up of immune response is the result of tissue breakdown that the immune system is simply trying to clean up lest it poisons you or invites a deadly bacterial infection. The tissue breakdown, especially in the nervous system, is usually caused by high estrogen, low levels of neurosteroids, or potentially a viral infection (i.e. JCV, EBV, herpes). All of these are results of hypothyroidism. The immune system's job is to maintain tissue integrity, and clean up disintegrated tissue that is prime food for viruses and bacteria.
http://www.morphostasis.org.uk/
You see, if you start with the premise that autoimmune conditions are caused by overactive immune system then of course anything that activates the immune response even more would be bad by definition. Of course, the "autoimmune" industry conveniently avoids explaining why people with "autoimmune" conditions (and thus overactive immune system) are much more prone to viral and bacterial infections, and even cancer.
The cure for "autoimmune" conditions is not to suppress the immune system! That is at best misguided and at worst remarkably, stunningly, criminally dumb approach. The solution if to inhibit tissue breakdown, and that's why therapies increasing NAD levels are so effective.
viewtopic.php?f=75&t=5014

That said, the study above claims the disease itself got worse, not just that the immune system got worse.
 

haidut

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jyb said:
post 117070
haidut said:
There is no dark side, the study simply showed that eating coconut oil increased the immune response in a mouse model of MS. This is actually a GOOD thing, as "autoimmune" conditions where your own immune system attacks you simply do not exist. The ramping up of immune response is the result of tissue breakdown that the immune system is simply trying to clean up lest it poisons you or invites a deadly bacterial infection. The tissue breakdown, especially in the nervous system, is usually caused by high estrogen, low levels of neurosteroids, or potentially a viral infection (i.e. JCV, EBV, herpes). All of these are results of hypothyroidism. The immune system's job is to maintain tissue integrity, and clean up disintegrated tissue that is prime food for viruses and bacteria.
http://www.morphostasis.org.uk/
You see, if you start with the premise that autoimmune conditions are caused by overactive immune system then of course anything that activates the immune response even more would be bad by definition. Of course, the "autoimmune" industry conveniently avoids explaining why people with "autoimmune" conditions (and thus overactive immune system) are much more prone to viral and bacterial infections, and even cancer.
The cure for "autoimmune" conditions is not to suppress the immune system! That is at best misguided and at worst remarkably, stunningly, criminally dumb approach. The solution if to inhibit tissue breakdown, and that's why therapies increasing NAD levels are so effective.
viewtopic.php?f=75&t=5014

That said, the study above claims the disease itself got worse, not just that the immune system got worse.

How did it get worse?
 
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charlie

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haidut

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Westside PUFAs said:
post 117095 This might explain Furious Pete's testicular cancer which has recently spread through his lymph nodes. Here he's eating a whole jar of coconut oil in just a few minutes:

"One Man. One 20oz Jar Of Coconut Oil (5,000 Calories of Fat!!)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibnikCcUACU

How does eating coconut oil explain his testicular cancer? Do you know what else this man has been eating/injecting/drinking? The BB forums claim he has been using steroids:
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthrea ... =167224991
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthrea ... =141047711

IF that is true (and I emphasize the IF) it could directly explain the testicular cancer. Coconut oil would be the last thing I'd suspect unless you have some studies to share that suggest carcinogenic effects of coconut oil.
 
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haidut

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haidut said:
post 117103
Westside PUFAs said:
post 117095 This might explain Furious Pete's testicular cancer which has recently spread through his lymph nodes. Here he's eating a whole jar of coconut oil in just a few minutes:

"One Man. One 20oz Jar Of Coconut Oil (5,000 Calories of Fat!!)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibnikCcUACU

How does eating coconut oil explain his testicular cancer? Do you know what else this man has been eating/injecting/drinking? The BB forums claim he has been using steroids:
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthrea ... =167224991
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthrea ... =141047711
http://askdurianrider.tumblr.com/post/1 ... y-steroids

"...Furious Pete just said his doctors say “steroids and eating 20 cheeseburgers in a meal has NOTHING to do with cancer!!” **** Pete, are u ******* blind mate? Look up the CMI sheet of ANY of the AAS you are guzzling each week and u will see why your doctors are ******* uneducated idiots. Go watch Forks Over Knives and also learn why your shitty diet gave u cancer as well. Then go get some new doctors."

IF that is true (and I emphasize the IF) it could directly explain the testicular cancer. Coconut oil would be the last thing I'd suspect unless you have some studies to share that suggest carcinogenic effects of coconut oil.
 
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I know George. I was half-joking. ;)

Yea, he ate and still continues to eat like crazy. And like you said, he used juice (roids).
 

Zachs

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Besides the steroids and eating competition diet which I'm sure he downs literally gallons of pufa over the last few years, he also came from a background of anorexia. Once you destroy your metabolism and thyroid, it's very hard to bounce back.
 

haidut

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Westside PUFAs said:
post 117106 I know George. I was half-joking. ;)

Yea, he ate and still continues to eat like crazy. And like you said, he used juice (roids).

Oh, ok, didn't catch the sarcasm:): Incidentally, a common test for testicular cancer is to pee on a female pregnancy test strip. The HCG used to confirm pregnancy is elevated in males with testicular cancer. Recently, the elevated HCG levels have been confirmed to be potentially diagnostic for many other cancers, so both men and women could potentially have easy access to a non-invasive cancer test available OTC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_cho ... mor_marker
 
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J

James IV

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A little Coconut oil makes food taste better. Too much coconut oil makes me gag. Thats the deep inner workings of my coconut oil regulatory system.
 

beachbum

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This was posted on the Ray Peat Fans Facebook, and I wanted to get everyone's take. The author points to studies showing increased chances of autoimmunity in people who consume large amounts of coconut oil. He recommends people, who eat more than a couple of tablespoons of coconut oil consume large amounts of vegetables in order to promote fermentation and formation of short-chain fatty acids.

No one on Facebook has offered any sort of rebuttal. I've included some relevant excerpts from the article. Link to the article and studies at the bottom. Would love to get folks take on this as I am far too dumb to argue against it lol.

:hattip

------------------------------------

In this study, researchers first added FAs ranging from C4 to C12 (from butyric acid to lauric acid) to naïve mouse T cells, showing that as the length of hydrocarbon backbone increased, the number of T cells that differentiated into Th17 cells increased in a strikingly linear fashion.

So what are Th17 cells, and why should we care?

Imbalanced T cell subsets drive numerous autoimmune diseases, and an abundance Th17 cells (called Th17-skewed immune system) can result in inflammatory autoimmune disease, including intestinal bowel disorder (IBD) and multiple sclerosis (MS).

See, Th17 cells are meant to attack parasites and pathogenic bacteria, but having too many of them in your body can increase the chances of their attacking your own tissues, such as myelin sheaths in the case of MS. But while Th17 cells promote inflammation, they can be balanced by anti-inflammatory regulatory T cells (Tregs), and it is the ratio of pro- and anti-inflammatory T cells, not the absolute number of each cell type, that is predictive of health and disease.

Anyways, so back to this study. Mice eating higher amounts of LA exhibited Th17-skewing in the intestines, worsened MS symptoms, and changes in the microbiome (reduction in Prevotellaceae and S24-7 of the bacteria Bacteroidetes phylum). Disease worsening was actually worsened by this microbiota shift, as repeating this study with germ-free mice (that have no intestinal microbiota) did not result in Th17-skewing.

To be clear, these results show that high amounts of coconut oil can create rampant inflammation, nerve damage and worsen an autoimmune disease.


Remarkably, feeding mice the SCFA proprionic acid (C3) both prevented the onset and alleviated symptoms of MS. The overall conclusion of this study is that through the intestinal microbiota, LCFA can induce pro-inflammatory T cells, and SCFA ca induce anti-inflammatory, regulatory T cells.

Therefore, SCFA can mitigate the harmful effects of LCFA.

In other words, if you consume SCFA along with your coconut and MCT oil based LCFAs, you mitigate the damage.

And where do you get SCFAs in quite generous amounts?

You guess it: vegetables.

A high-fat diet? Thumbs mostly down.

A high-fat diet mixed with a high intake of nutrient-rich, SCFA-inducing plants? Thumbs up.


-----------------------------------

http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/201 ... xtremists/

http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/wp- ... estine.pdf

I know this thread is a little old:rolleyes:. But just my 2 cents. Isn't coconut oil a antimicrobial--antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, and I think it kills parasites..well killing them wouldn't it cause chaos for a while until your body becomes healthy. .meaning if your killing the bad dudes you are going to experience autoimmune symptoms. This is why they say start off slow using coconut oil. I believe when people say they can't tolerate coconut oil. .cramps, pain, tired or hyper it's d oing something good IMO..

Thank you for listening
Beachbum
 

BibleBeliever

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This might explain Furious Pete's testicular cancer which has recently spread through his lymph nodes. Here he's eating a whole jar of coconut oil in just a few minutes:

"One Man. One 20oz Jar Of Coconut Oil (5,000 Calories of Fat!!)"


How can he eat like that and not be obese, nor even have an expanded stomach? Wouldn't his metabolism be insanely high?
 

Tim Lundeen

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Greenfield's "Dark Side of Coconut Oil" article has some bad numbers in it.

The correct number is 11 tablespoons of coconut oil to get as much lauric acid as was feed to the mice. 2-3 T of coconut oil shouldn't be a problem at all.

How to get the correct number?

If you look at the original study, it has a link to supplemental info (http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...921/9195eb531ad19b39b5fe8a4504baf245/mmc1.pdf). From the supplemental info, you can get the exact diet fed to the high-fat mice: ssniff EF R/M E15116-34. There is a breakdown is available from http://www.bio-services.nl/cms/file...10_catalogue_EF_new_Experimentele_voeders.pdf

From this detail, you can see that lauric acid (LA) is 12.58% of the raw weight of the feed, that crude fat is 30.2% of the feed, and that fat is about 55% of total calories from the feed. This works out to LA providing (12.58/30.2)*55% or about 23% of total calories.

So for a 2,500 calorie-per-day human diet, you would have to eat about 23% of calories from LA. Since coconut oil is about 44% LA, and about 116 calories per tablespoon, you would have to eat 2500*0.23/(116*0.44) tablespoons of coconut oil to get this much LA. Or 11 tablespoons of coconut oil...
 

Tim Lundeen

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There are some other issues with the original study ttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1074761315003921 -- the total fat fed to the high-fat/high-lauric-acid (LA) mice was 30.2% of the feed by weight. But if you add up the known FA breakdown of the diet, it adds up to 28.7 (including 1.5% known polyunsaturated fats by weight). So there is a "mystery" fat component of 1.5% of the feed. If these mystery fats include much trans-fat, that could be a major factor in the immune response. If these mystery fats are largely polyunsaturated, then the total PUFA in the diet could be on the order of 5-6% of total calories, and this might be enough to cause immune flare-up. Unfortunately, they did NOT study two diets that differed in only the LA content. It would have been much more helpful to compare two groups of mice fed coconut oil and butter as their fats, in varying percentages.
 

jitsmonkey

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shocking.
another podcast purveyor, author, supplement and coaching salesperson, health guru
dabbling in misinformation and hyperbole
never would have expected that.
Not anti-capitalist drivel.... Factual pattern recognition
 

BigChad

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There is no dark side, the study simply showed that eating coconut oil increased the immune response in a mouse model of MS. This is actually a GOOD thing, as "autoimmune" conditions where your own immune system attacks you simply do not exist. The ramping up of immune response is the result of tissue breakdown that the immune system is simply trying to clean up lest it poisons you or invites a deadly bacterial infection. The tissue breakdown, especially in the nervous system, is usually caused by high estrogen, low levels of neurosteroids, or potentially a viral infection (i.e. JCV, EBV, herpes). All of these are results of hypothyroidism. The immune system's job is to maintain tissue integrity, and clean up disintegrated tissue that is prime food for viruses and bacteria.
home_page
You see, if you start with the premise that autoimmune conditions are caused by overactive immune system then of course anything that activates the immune response even more would be bad by definition. Of course, the "autoimmune" industry conveniently avoids explaining why people with "autoimmune" conditions (and thus overactive immune system) are much more prone to viral and bacterial infections, and even cancer.
The cure for "autoimmune" conditions is not to suppress the immune system! That is at best misguided and at worst potentially lethal approach - i.e. I am sure you have all seen the ads for Humira, Entyvio, Remicade, Embrel, etc and their side effects of causing cancer. The solution is to inhibit tissue breakdown, and that's why therapies increasing NAD levels are so effective.
viewtopic.php?f=75&t=5014

NAD levels, and actually NAD/NADH ratio, is one of the most reliable biomarkers for good health and metabolism. Oh and btw, raising NAD levels also stimulates the immune response.
http://www.jleukbio.org/content/93/5/669.full
http://www.idi.harvard.edu/uploads/inve ... d_2009.pdf

Why is this not detrimental for the "autoimmune" conditions, but rather therapeutic?!?

Giving cortisol to people with "autoimmune" conditions is one of the worst things you can do. Cortisol will suppress the immune system AND also increase tissue breakdown. So, the people with "autoimmune" conditions taking cortisol or any other immunosuppressive therapy tend to die much earlier than people not taking anything. And here is the "fun" part - these people tend to die of cancer, systemic infections, or especially nasty conditions like PML. Not that there are any nice lethal conditions, but PML progression is much like Mad Cow disease and turns a person into a zombie before they expire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressi ... phalopathy
Again, if anybody doubts that suppressing the immune system is a bad thing just look up the side effects of Humira or Embrel - the blockbuster immunosuppressive drugs used for virtually all "autoimmune" conditions.
Adalimumab - Wikipedia
Etanercept - Wikipedia

Why is it that people with autoimmune conditions seem to notice a worsening of symptoms upon adding in things like ashwaganda, or high dose K2, or iodine. these are supposed to stimulate the immune system and people with autoimmune disorders have noted these things worsening their condition. is it a temporary worsening of the condition, or what would cause for example increased hair shedding when people with hypothyroidism or autoimmunity take MK4. Some on here have claimed low estrogen but didn't Ray say he doubts low estrogen causes negative effects and that it's even possible to be "too low" in it?
 

Waynish

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Why is it that people with autoimmune conditions seem to notice a worsening of symptoms upon adding in things like ashwaganda, or high dose K2, or iodine. these are supposed to stimulate the immune system and people with autoimmune disorders have noted these things worsening their condition. is it a temporary worsening of the condition, or what would cause for example increased hair shedding when people with hypothyroidism or autoimmunity take MK4. Some on here have claimed low estrogen but didn't Ray say he doubts low estrogen causes negative effects and that it's even possible to be "too low" in it?

Probably because those are so potent. Their low metabolisms are a requirement for their energy deficit. They need to build up the energy system before adding such potent stuff. Quality K2 shouldn't cause problems for autoimmune people - they could supplement it from the beginning. Why create an imbalance using "high dose"? Iodine can dump stored stuff that can increase the causes of autoimmune - and they probably aren't deficient in the first place. If they're supplementing Ashwaganda for testosterone, then I don't think that's the approach they should take to increase testosterone.
 

charlie

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Why is it that people with autoimmune conditions seem to notice a worsening of symptoms upon adding in things like ashwaganda, or high dose K2, or iodine. these are supposed to stimulate the immune system and people with autoimmune disorders have noted these things worsening their condition. is it a temporary worsening of the condition, or what would cause for example increased hair shedding when people with hypothyroidism or autoimmunity take MK4. Some on here have claimed low estrogen but didn't Ray say he doubts low estrogen causes negative effects and that it's even possible to be "too low" in it?
Possibly due to deficiencies.
 

BigChad

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Probably because those are so potent. Their low metabolisms are a requirement for their energy deficit. They need to build up the energy system before adding such potent stuff. Quality K2 shouldn't cause problems for autoimmune people - they could supplement it from the beginning. Why create an imbalance using "high dose"? Iodine can dump stored stuff that can increase the causes of autoimmune - and they probably aren't deficient in the first place. If they're supplementing Ashwaganda for testosterone, then I don't think that's the approach they should take to increase testosterone.

Ashwaganda increases T4 or T4 to T3 conversion in addition to the testosterone effects. I heard it lowers cortisol, but that it can raise serotonin. I have seen some on here getting hair shedding with just 5mg of MK4, usually hypothyroid or autoimmune conditions. I noticed when I took 15 mg Mk4 a few times a week it also seemed to cause increased hair shedding and thinning.

What do you mean by building up the energy systems. How is that done
 
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