Coconut Oil Touted as Alzheimer's
Remedy
By Lorie Johnson
CBN News Medical Reporter
Thursday, January 05, 2012
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TAMPA, Fla. - 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.
