Top Coconut Health Stories from 2013

Editors, Health Impact News

Coconut oil how-to and DIY articles once again dominated our top Coconut Health stories in 2013. This reflects a growing trend where many more people know and understand the health benefits of coconut oil, and are looking for ways to incorporate it into their daily lives. Here are the top 10 most-read Coconut Health stories published in 2013:

As far as new research published on coconut oil, there were several studies published in 2013 regarding coconut oil’s powerful effects on skin health. See:

We continued to document remarkable stories in 2013 regarding coconut oil’s ability to help, and even reverse, Alzheimer’s Disease and dementia, as well as other neurological diseases like Parkinson’s. See:

2013 might also be the year that those in the medical community could no longer deny the effect of coconut oil on Alzheimer’s Disease and other neurological problems. A study published in 2013 by the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial University of Newfoundland might be one of the first of many studies we can expect to see in the future, looking for ways to develop drugs that mimic the effects of coconut oil. The title of the study is “Coconut Oil Attenuates the Effects of Amyloid- on Cortical Neurons In Vitro.” Rather than study the dietary effects of coconut oil, or the ketogenic diet, on neurodegenerative diseases, this was actually an in vitro study that examined “rodent cortical neurons exposed to AB peptide” and virgin coconut oil, most likely in a petri dish or beaker, inside of a laboratory. Read more about the study here.

A much more promising study on coconut oil and Alzheimer’s began in 2013 at the University of South Florida’s Health Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute. Since coconut oil cannot be patented like drugs can, there is no interest from the medical community to fund these types of studies, so the Byrd Alzheimer’s study is being funded completely through private funds. They have a study currently in progress where they enrolled 65 individuals with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s to measure the effects of coconut oil, versus a placebo, on the disease. We should see the results of their study in 2014.

This interest in studying coconut oil also corresponds with quite a few studies published regarding the remarkable effects of the Ketogenic Diet in 2013, a diet originally developed at John Hopkins Hospital in the 1920s to cure epilepsy in children who did not respond to drugs. It is a high fat, low carbohydrate diet. Coconut oil is a key ingredient in a ketogenic diet, due to the ketone effects of the medium chain fatty acids found in coconut oil. Some of the research we highlighted in 2013 regarding the ketogenic diet:

And lastly, another study done in 2013 confirmed that the wet-milling traditional way of producing coconut oil produces the highest levels of antioxidants in Virgin Coconut Oil. A study published in Food and Function, of the Royal Society of Chemistry, showed once again that the highest amounts of antioxidants in coconut oil are found in virgin coconut oils produced by the wet-milling process. The study was conducted in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Kerala in India. You can read more about this study here.

Health Impact News will continue to publish BOTH testimonials and published research regarding coconut oil and other coconut health issues in 2014. All of the peer-reviewed research is also logged at CoconutOil.com, and there is a special Facebook Page just for Coconut Health here.

About the author: Unlike many people who write about coconut oil by simply reading about it, Brian Shilhavy actually lived in a coconut producing area of the Philippines for several years with his family, observing firsthand the differences between the diet and health of the younger generation and those of his wife’s parents’ generation still consuming a traditional diet. This led to years of studying Philippine nutrition and dietary patterns first hand while living in a rural farming community in the Philippines. Brian is the author of the best-selling book: Virgin Coconut Oil: How it has changed people’s lives and how it can change yours!