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Can coconuts provide the answer?

9 January 2013

Can coconuts provide the answer?

For some families coconut oil has proved effective in slowly the effects of dementia.  There has been no research into this area and there are some drawbacks but for one family in London it seems to have done the trick.

A 67 year old production line worker was diagnosed with late stage Alzheimer’s and couldn’t take care of himself, sometime later his family started adding coconut oil into his food and since then he has improved significantly.  He is now able to take the bus unaided and has regained his ability to carry out daily tasks, such as washing and dressing.

It is thought that the coconut oil has this effect because it allows the body to produce more ketone, molecules which provide energy to the brain.  There is also a food supplement in the US which harnesses this benefit, which has also had some success among families.

There are some drawbacks to using coconut oil in that fats found within can be bad your heart so it is important to monitor cholesterol if using the supplement.  Research needs to be conducted to determine the true effects and identify any other possible side effects.

David Smith, professor of pharmacology at the Physiology Institute at Oxford University said, “We have no way of knowing if coconut oil is truly effective, but given the scale of the  Alzheimer’s crisis facing us, and that there’s a rational mechanism for why it could work, it’s obviously crying out for a proper trial.”