Rustless Hearts: Adding 15-20ml of Virgin Coconut Oil to Your Diet May Counter the Oxidative Stress From Partially Oxidized Fats and Keep Your Heart Rust-Free

Could a daily dose of virgin coconut oil really be all it takes to escape the #1 leading cause of death (CDC data) - despite French fries and co?

Originally I wanted to post the results of this study from the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia as a short news item in the Facebook News. Then I decided that it may actually be worth to allow you to have a look a the surprisingly pronounced effects the addition (not replacement!) of 3-4 tablespoons of virgin coconut oil had on the in vivo lipid oxidation levels of rodent hearts in the course of this 4 months study at the end of which the researchers did not simply measure the systemic, but the more significant local malondialdehyde (MDA) levels. With the direct analysis of the presence of lipid oxidation production in the heart being a more reliable indicator of whether or not the changes the researchers observed in the study at hand are physically relevant...

Ah, I don't want to give it all away. So let's rather take a look at Subermaniam et al.'s attempt to "to investigate the influence of virgin coconut oil on the malondialdehyde level in the heart tissue of rats fed with heated palm oil." (Subermaniam. 2013)

Palm oil is ubiquitous

I am not sure if you are aware of that, but the regular palm oil (not the red PO with the high carotene and tocotrienol content), with its saturated - unsaturated fatty acid ratio close to one, has become the most widely used "vegetable oil" worldwide. In fact, if the product label says "vegetable oil" and there is a significant amount of saturated fats in a product, it's likely that what you are about to eat contains palm oil, which is easy to process and, with its 1:1 ratio of saturated to unsaturated fats relatively stable.

Rejection points of various oils (Marikkar. 2007; Berger. 2005; Casai. 2010)

Cooking with Virgin Coconut Oil (VCO) - good or bad idea? The answer to this question is not as straight forward as you may think. On the one hand frying the "virgin" oil, will have it lose it's virginity, i.e. most of those molecules that are responsible for the beneficial health effects. On the other hand, a study by Marikkar et al. (2007) shows that these molecules act as a buffer, due to which VCO has a 30% higher rejection point (13h vs. 10h of frying at "only" 180°C; compare to the other oils in the table to the right) than regular coconut oil (CNO) and refined corn oil (CO). After those 13h the concentration of newly formed compounds (TPCs) that have higher polarity such as oxidized triglycerides, diacylglycerides and fatty acids is >25% and downright unhealthy.

Despite being less prone to oxidation, the way the oil is reheated and (ab-)used for deep frying by the food industry can cause changes in the fatty acids composition of palm oil that may have significant health consequences.

"Repeatedly heated oil undergoes changes in physical appearance and a series of chemical reactions such as oxidation, hydrolysis and polymerization that eventually alter the fatty acid composition . Therefore, when the degree of unsaturation in fatty acid is greater, it is more vulnerable to lipid peroxidation (Choe. 2007)." (Subermanian. 2013)

In mouse and man, the ingestion of this chemically altered oil has been found to increase the levels of ,alondialdehyde  (MDA), one of the major end products of lipid peroxidation which causes endothelial damage, vascular inflammation and cell membrane injury (USDA. 2007).

Virgin coconut oil to the rescue?

Studies by Harrison and Ng have shown that the increases in MDA levels in response to the ingestion of oxidated palm oil causes "oxidative stress" and increases in blood pressure that cannot be countered by the ingestion of common antioxidants such as vitamin C and E (Harrison. 2007). Now, Subermaniam et al. were interested, whether the same would be true for the sunsaponifiable components in virgin coconut oil.

SuppVersity Suggested Read: True or false - Eating tons of medium chain triglycerides (MCTs) will make you lean | learn the truth!

In previous studies, these molecules, which are lost when the milk is not extracted under controlled temperature, have been linked to a host of beneficial health effects, e.g.

• anti-inflammatory and anti-thrombotic properties,
• the ability to reduce the oxidation of LDL cholesterol, or
• beneficial effects on the immune factor and cytokine response to endotoxins,

of the increasingly popular medium-chain-triglyceride rich oil from Cocos Nucifera Linn - an oil of which Figure 1 tells you that it has a lower peroxide value than freshly extracted palm oil even after processing and storage.

In view of its already established health benefits, the assumption that virgin coconut oil can ameliorate the pro-oxidative effect of diets that were fortified with 15% pre-heated palm oil, when it is administered to rodents at a daily dose of 1.43 ml/kg of body weight/day by oral gavage does not appear to be too far-fetched.

Figure 1: Left - MDA level in heart tissue after 4 months of feeding with basal diet (control), five times heated palm oil (HPO), basal diet and VCO supplementation (VCO) and five times heated palm oil with VCO supplementation (HPO+VCO; left); right - baseline peroxide value (in mEQO2/kg) of the oils used in the study (Subermaniam. 2013)

The rats stayed on these regular palm oil, pre-heated palm oil, regular palm oil + VCO, pre-heated palm oil + VCO and an unmodified control diet for 4 months. Thereafter, the thirty two rats were sacrificed and their heart tissues were harvested in order to measure the level of lipid oxidation. The results? Well, you just have to look at Figure 1 to see that there was a significant (p < 0.05) decrease in MDA (and peroxide / data not shown) values in the rodents which received the supplemental coconut oil on top of their heated palm oil diets.

Bottom line: It is unquestionably impressive that the effects of what would have been ca. 15-20ml commercially available virgin coconut oil for a human being were so pronounced that the oxidative stability of the lipids in the cells of the rodents on the HPO + VCO ended up being virtually identical to that of the rodents which received the regular chow. I must still warn you not to expect any of the meanwhile literal "Coconut Miracles".

In view of the fact that the benefits of the 'VCO supplement' did not depend on the presence of a "junk food" diet, it is still obvious that the addition of one or another tablespoon of virgin coconut oil may be one of the 1001 pieces of your personal "healthy lifestyle" puzzle - along with a protein- and vegetable-rich whole foods diet, exercise and more than just an occasional night of good night's sleep, of course ;-)

References

• Berger KG. The use of palm oil in frying. Malaysian Palm Oil Promotion Council. 2005.
• Casal S, Malheiro R, Sendas A, Oliveira BP, Pereira JA. Olive oil stability under deep-frying conditions. Food Chem Toxicol. 2010 Oct;48(10):2972-9.
• Choe E, Min DB. Chemistry and reactions of deep-fat frying oils. Journal of Food Science. 2007; 72(5):R77-R86.
• Harrison DG, Gongora MC, Guzik TJ, Widder J. Oxidative stress and hypertension. Journal of the American Society of Hypertension. 2007; 1(1):30-44.
• Marikkar et al. Assessment of the stability ofvirgin coconut oil during deep-frying. Cord 2007; 23(1).
• Ng CY, Kamisah Y, Faizah O, Jubri Z, Qodriyah HM, Jaarin K. Involvement of inflammation and adverse vascular remodelling in the blood pressure raising effect of repeatedly heated palm oil in rats. Int J Vasc Med. 2012;2012:404025.
• Subermaniam K, et al. Virgin Coconut Oil (VCO) Decreases the Level of Malondialdehyde (MDA) in the Cardiac Tissue of Experimental Sprague-Dawley Rats Fed with Heated Palm Oil. Journal of Medical and Bioengineering. 2014; 3(2).
• World  Vegetable  &  Marine  oil  Consumption,  World  Statistics, USDA, 2007, pp. 10

Adelfo Cerame - Road to The Wheelchair Nationals '12: Cheating Allowed! Another Beauty of Intermittent Fasting.

Image 1: Just graduated - Adelfo Cerame Jr. holds the lecture on "cheating"

When I just received Adelfo's email with his weekly progress update, I thought "Damn. He is just giving away things you had in stall for one of the next installments of the Intermittent Thoughts". In view of the fact that re-feeds, the particular value of the occasional high-carb meals on an otherwise low-carb diet and the widespread misconception that a single occasional binge could actually make you fat are so near and dear to my heart, that I think we (meanwhile I feel like Adelfo has become part of the SuppVersity staff ;-) cannot address these issues often enough. "Go ahead then, Prof. Cerame! Let the student's know about your dietary escapades!" And you, dear students, always remember: At the SuppVersity you learn everything it takes to succeed - even cheating ;-)

The four commandments of faithful cheating

I know I mentioned in last week's installment of my weekly contest prep blog that I would refrain from cheating on my meal plan or even re-feeding for the next couple of weeks, until either Christmas is almost their or my body was signalling me that it was about to time to refuel. Now, this past weekend, the occasion, or I should say, social obligations, called for it and ... I complied, realizing that the ability to cheat is another if not one of the most outstanding beauties of being on an intermittent fasting protocol!

Image 2: On Saturday night I had a medium rare double Angus burger with crisp cut seasoned fries which I washed down with seasonal pumpkin spiced ale! I finished off with a dessert: A triple chocolate pizookie. And to make sure I was really satisfied, I broke my fast on Sunday with 6 slices of pizza ;-)

As I mentioned, I had no idea that this was going to be a cheat day, when I woke up on Saturday morning, so I went about it like it was any other day: I trained fasted (this is something I only do on Saturdays, because I train in the morning, then), broke my fast at the regular time, which is around 3pm, and then went to go watch a football game. A couple hours later, I got a phone call from my family asking me if I wanted to meet with them at a restaurant for dinner... and guess what: I gladly accept - without hesitation! Now, you are probably even more surprised than my relatives, asking yourselves:

"Aren’t you preparing for a bodybuilding competition!? Why would you do such a thing!?""

To be honest, when I come to think about it, there is not just one, but rather a whole host of reasons for something so outrageous as being flexible with my diet ;-)

• For one, I started my prep early and gave myself, 20+ weeks rather than the usual 12 weeks that had to suffice in the past. So the first reason is just a time issue: Taking your time to prep for a show does not only allow you to drop body flat at a lower and much more natural pace, is also gives you the dietary flexibility you need in scenarios like these.
• Secondly, being on an intermittent fasting protocol, I was - despite a cheat - still within my caloric macronutrient range - after all, I had not had the typical 3-4 high protein, high carb meals your usual bodybuilder would already have gulped down, when I received the invitation. And though I may eventually have gone a little over my projected caloric inttake, that was not half as bad as it would have been, when I had eaten 2/3 of my daily allotment before I even arrived at the restaurant.
• Thirdly, and on a related note, intermittent fasting, that is something I have come to realize allows, no IF almost forces you to "EAT BIG!", anyway. When it's about time to eat, you eat, you do not peck like a bird, you eat until you're full... and no, not just that "somewhat satisfied" or "just enough" type of being full you are persuading yourself into, when your brain is telling you that you are hitting your planned caloric intake. No, you'll think you had overeaten, feeling guilty with your two huge meals inside your slightly protruding tummy.... and yet, you are most likely still on slight caloric deficit. Personally, I've even had to re-check or re-count the calories and macros on days where I felt I might have eaten too much, only to realize that at the end of the day, my stomach was bulging, but I had barely hit my macros for the day.
• Fourthly, I trained. When you train (heavy and intense, no sissy 30min walk on the treadmill), you have a little leeway (don't get me wrong and try to make up for binges by hitting the gym for hours - that won't work!), not because you burned so much calories (a hilarious concept, anyway), but because you have primed your body to make good use of the nutrients (remember you eat nutrients, not calories) you are consuming... but I guess you have learned all that already in the course of the past installments of the Intermittent Thoughts Series (esp. the article on the "Anabolic Barn Door"). And if I understood Dr. Andro correctly, he will have some very concrete examples of how you can make the most of this nutrient partitioning effect in the future installments on how to program dietary and athletic success.
• And fifth- and lastly, this was a cheat/re-feed day. Although many of you probably would like to eat out with family every day, this is something you can do on special occasions, it is yet something you cannot do everyday! Used sparingly, re-feeds can kick-start your metabolism, fill glycogen stores and most importantly (!) maintain your psychological health and keep your friends and family happy ;-)

"What do you say?" No! One or two days of controlled cheating will not make you fat. You might put on some extra water weight, but that will be lost as soon as you get back on track, which - and I cannot stress that enough - is what distinguishes controlled binging as in re-feeding from the disordered binge-eating you may see in some hopeless dieters who are at the verge of developing a full blown eating disorder. 

Image 3: Me on Monday morning. As you can see, I did not put on any body fat. If anything, my muscles had more pop and felt fuller and my energy and strength in the gym were through the roof that Monday.

And if you still ain't convinced, think about it this way: If you eat like shit for 14 days straight, and then decide to eat healthy on the 15th day; will that make a difference? Probably not. So the same goes with cheat days, if you eat healthy the majority of the time and decide to have cheat days from time to time, it’s fine.  

You think you could use some advice on your own training, diet and supplementation regimen and want it from someone who obviously knows what it takes to build muscle and lose fat? You can reach out to Adelfo via Facebook.

Real men (and women) ain't scared of food.
                                     It’s all about balance and moderation.

Back in my previous preps, when I used to follow a more conventional bodybuilding-type eat-every-two-hours diet, my re-feeds would last the whole day, but ever since I began to fast intermittently, my cheat meals are within my feeding hours. In my humble opinion, this really maximizes the benefits you can reap from your re-feeds. Not only does the limited feeding-window prevent you from going totally overboard, it's actually also more enjoyable, because you do not have to stuff your face the whole day! Believe me, try having a cheat day, where you eat from morning to night - sounds fun? Well, I guess you have not tried that, yet! The first meal is always great, but by the third meal of the day, lethargy, sleepiness and that uncomfortable comatose feeling start to hit you like Thor's hammer (remember image 1 from last week ;-). You don't want to do anything but lie in bed (even sitting on the couch feels like a workout) and the rest of your pre-scheduled meals become a challenging task, in the course of which you forcefully stuff yourself with carbs!

A pros pos carbs. I mentioned before that the caloric overload on intermittent fasting re-feeds is obviously limited by the amount of food you can eat within the relatively short feeding-window. Thusly, you will consume more energy than usual, yet by far not in similarly excessive amounts as on a "regular" re-feed. That being said, with the focus of my re-feeds being on carbohydrates, there is a major shift in the macronutrient composition, which is intended to top off the glycogen stores of my muscles (and liver, which is the organ that will supply your brain with glucose, whenever there is a transient shortage of energy) and to take advantage of the anti-catabolic and IGF-1 promoting effects insulin - and it is in the vicinity of a workout (as last Saturday, for example), with your muscles ready and willing to suck up every mole of glucose they can possibly get, when you get the most "anabolic bang" for your "sugary bucks" ;-)

To summarize - here is a rough outline of my cheat day / re-feed protocol:

1. I keep protein intake the same.After all, I do not want the anabolic machinery to run out of amino acid fuel ;-)
2. My carb intake is high (remember if carbs are low in your regular diet, it is only logical to put a focus on carbs when you refeed), since I am only given a small window (max. 8 hours) to carb load, I prefer fast digesting or high glycemic index carbs, so that it transports straight to the muscles and do not digest until the "anabolic barn doors" are already half closed.I do nevertheless try to avoid real junk food and stick to my pineapple coconut pancaces (see recipe of the week), white potatoes, rice, pasta and high sugar fruits to get straight to the point and not waste anytime!



Image 4: It always baffles me, how many people still believe that "low fat" equals "healthy"

3. I keep my fat intake low. This allows me to potentially eat more carbohydrates (fats take up a lot of calories and on re-feed days, when I'd rather have the calories from carbohydrates). Fats also slow the digestion of carbs, and, as mentioned before, that's not what I want on a glycogen repleting re-feed day. I realize that it is sometimes hard to keep fats low during a cheat day - after all, your usual "cheats" (i.e. the junk many people eat everyday ;-) are about as high in fat as they are in carbs, so I take advantage of the nutritional stupidity of "low fat eating" and go to Trader Joe's and similar places, where I avail myself of some low-fat junk,... ah I mean USDA myPlate-type foods like the "low fat Twinies" in image 4 *rofl*
4. I eat until I am full! And, I even dare to say, until I have to unbutton my pants... so just that you know what kind of "full" we are talking about, here ;-)

Well… that’s all I got for this week. What? Oh, yes. No, I did not forget it. The promised weekly recipe from my ever-growing cookbook.

Image 5: Pancakes are one of my favorite cheat- / re-feed meals

Recipe of the Week: Pineapple coconut pancakes

Ingredients:

• 12 oz of pineapple & coconut pancake flour mix
• chocolate syrup
• coconut syrup
• 1 bowl of cocoa puffs
• 40g whey protein (pour over cereal as milk)

Quick tip: When I re-feed, I don’t count calories - this is why you do not see specific serving sizes or macros, like you usually have with my other recipes. Just remember the four golden rules: Keep protein high, focus on carbohydrates, while keeping fats low and - never forget - eat until you're full, full as in "unbuttoning- your-pants full" ;-)

Let me just give you this advise to take along: This is a cheat meal recipe though, so I would not recommend making this a staple in your nutritional regimen… Well, now that I think of it I guess it would be possible, if you cater it to your daily macronutrient intake. Yet, not everything that is possible is also also advisable, after all the "Twinkies Diet" was a great example that you can lose weight while eating junk food, but this is neither healthy, nor will it help you to achieve a stage ready physique. So, I guess your best bet is to cheat today and to come back for next week's installment of this series for healthier alternatives!

Sesame Powered High Omega-6 Diet Boosts Endurance Performance in Rodents - High Omega-3 Diet Sucks: Intra-Muscular Lipid Ratios Determine Exercise Performance

At least in rodents omega-6s appear to make abetter match with exercise than in human beings.

I actually referenced this study several times in the past. It came up in a Facebook conversation I had with Roy Nelson who pointed me to a press release telling me that (I quote) "Certain Fat Could Help Humans Lose Weight". Interestingly, the "certain fat" in this particular study is (brace yourselves) linolic acid, better known as "omega-6" (obviously a misnomer, since omega-6 is actually referring to a whole class of fatty acids).

In view of the fact that the corresponding study in which Rogowski et al. observed a significant correlation between the omega-6 fatty acid content in the muscle and mitochondrial uncoupling and fat oxidation. The problem with the study is however that it was conducted not just with mice, but with genetically modified mice.

The results of the said study by Rogoswki, Patin et al. may thus form the basis for further investigations, but should not be taken as "hard evidence" that a high intake of omega-6 fatty acids will have similar effects. The accumulation of linolic acid in the mouse muscles was after all a result of the genetic modification and not the consequence of high n-6 chow.

So what's the effect of dietary linolic acid, then?

Unlike Rogowski et al., Kerry J. Ayre and A.J. Hulbert from the University of Wollongong did not just use normal male Wistar rats as their test objects, they also did what the scientists from Texas Tech didn't do: They supplied their rodents with diets with different fatty acid profiles.

Table 1: If you have ever wondered about the "evolution" of the omega-3 vs. omega-6 ratio in our (=the human) diet, I suggest you take a closer look at the table to the right. According to this overview from a 2004 paper by Artemsis Simopoulus in Food Reviews International. As you will see, it has more than just reversed ever since the paleolithic era.

All diets contained the exact same macronutrient composition with 22%, 56% and 22% of the total energy being derived from fat, carbohydrates, and protein, respectively. The amount of essential fatty acids and their ratios in the 22% fat content of the diet did however differ significantly:

• 

  Irrespective of the fact that it sucks for rodent endurance, coconut oil could help you approach a flat tummy like the one above| learn more

  Coconut diet: Designed as (almost) "essentially fatty acid free", the coconut oil based diet had a saturated fatty acid / mono-unsaturated fatty acid / N-6 / N-3 ratio of 95:4:1:0
• High N-6: Being based on sesame oil, the high N-6 diet had a SFA / MUFA / N-6 / N-3 ratio of 16:30:50:4 that translates to an N-3:N-6 Ratio of 0.08 (1:12.5); now that sounds crazily low, but the average Westerner consumes a diet with a N-3:N-6 ratio of 0.0625 (1:16; cf. Simpopoulos. 2004) in other words - that was not even "as bad" (?) as the Western diet
• High N-3: By adding both sesame and a commercially available omega-3 supplement to the diet, the scientists hit a 21:25:35:16 ratio for SFA / MUFA / N-6 / N-3 - that's still far from "N-3 exclusive" but much more like what current expert advice tells us we should strive for, i.e. 1g of omega-3 for every 2g of omega-6

If we go by the contemporarily popular dietary paradigms, it should be obvious that the health of the rodents in the N-6 diet will take a beating. Against that background it is all the more surprising that it were the rodents in the high N-6 group that outdistanced their hairy competition in an endurance test at the end of the 9 week study period.

Figure 1: Fatty acid composition of the diets and corresponding endurance performance of male Wistar rats after 9-weeks on coconut, high n-6 and high n-3 diet (Ayre. 1997)

What's more, it's not as if the omega-6 mice had simply been running slower and were thus able to run for a longer time, they did also have higher workloads (=product of body mass, distance traveled, and percentage grade of the incline).

"So where is the connection to the new study from Texas Tech, then?"

If we look back at the initially mentioned results from the Texas Tech study, it appears logical to assume that the beneficial effects on the endurance capacity could be another downstream effects of an increased ability to oxidize dietary fats (which is basically what the Rogowski, Paton et al. argued). Compared to the minimal amount of blood glucose and the highly limited glycogen stores in the muscle and liver, the fat stores of mice (and man) do after all hold an almost inexhaustible amount of energy - they just have to be accessed.

Figure 2: Skeletal muscle fatty acid composition after 9 weeks (Ayre. 1997)

As you can see, in figure 2 the fatty acid composition of the skeletal muscle of the rodents in the Ayre study did reflect the fatty acid composition of the diets (remember: the changes in the Rogowski study occured on the same chow, simply due to a genetic mutation) and the significantly increased omega-6 content in the N-6 group mirrors the effect Rogowski et al. observed in response to their neat GMO tricks. It does therefore appear logical to assume that the rodents in the Ayre study experienced a similar upregulation of PPAR-delta (unfortunately back in the day scientists did not measure that). The latter would increase the oxidation of fatty acid and thus the energy availability during aerobic activity.

"Making the Right Fish Choices" is important for your healths, so I suggest you learn how in the same-titled SuppVersity article.

What should not go unmentioned is that the performance discrepancies were very long-lived. Even after 5 weeks on a regular diet, the rodents in the N-6 diet easily outperformed their coconut and omega-3 competition - probably because it takes months (in rodents and years in men) to restore a "normal" muscular fatty acid profile. Now this is an interesting thought, because it will eventually lead us to the hypothesis that the huge benefits we are currently seeing (at least in some individuals) from the consumption of supplemental omega-3 fatty acids would be a direct result of the their effect on a cellular fatty acid ratio that has been messed up over years!

In view of the profundity of the omega-6 overshoot in the SAD diet and considering the fact that many of us have been consuming diets containing 15x more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3s for decades, this does not appear unlikely. From a scientific perspective it would yet reaffirm that the "optimal n3:n:6 ratio" for someone with a well-balanced cellular level of the latter could be very different from the 1:1 optimum some experts currently recommend as target in the battle against diabesity - right?

Swine study says 1:5 ratio of N3:N6 or higher = optimal health | more

Let's ground ourselves: Don't take this post as an incentive to guzzle vegetable oil all day.

As a strength athlete you may actually harm yourself as it appears that the high omega-6 intake favors the oxidative over the glycolytic pathway. As an endurance athlete, however you may reconsider how important it really is for you to avoid all omega-6 fatty acids as a plague.

On a more general note, it may in fact be worth to take another look at "optimal ratios". While some of the effects of the polyunsaturated fatty acids are in fact acute, their major effects appear to be brought about by their accumulation in our bodies.

The "optimal intake" will thus necessarily depend on the status quo, i.e. the current tissue level of n-3 and n-6 fatty acids and their respective ratios. Against that background we should not be surprised that you can counter the negative effects of an imbalanced diet by administering another imbalanced diet. In our case this is a correction of a profound omega-6 overshoot that can be achieved by increasing our consumption of omega-3 rich foods and limiting our use of omega-6 laden vegetable oils and the products of which the "food" industry tells us they were good for us, because they contain only healthy vegetable oils... this is a practice I have recommended in the past and something I still recommend today.

What I would hope we could agree on, though is the idea that the study at hand, despite being conducted in rodents should remind us that simply switching from one scapegoat to another did not help us, when that scapegoat was saturated fat. Do you really believe the outcomes will be better, when we simply glue the "avoid like a plague" sticker to the omega-6s? Yes? Well, I guess the first thing you should do then, is take your beloved extra-virgin olive oil and pour it away! Why? Well, 10% omega-6 and basically no omega-3 - that's a no go ;-)

References:

• Ayre KJ, Hulbert AJ. Dietary fatty acid profile affects endurance in rats. Lipids. 1997 Dec;32(12):1265-70. 
• Pella D, Dubnov G, Singh RB, Sharma R, Berry EM, Manor O. Effects of an Indo-Mediterranean diet on the omega-6/omega-3 ratio in patients at high risk of coronary artery disease: the Indian paradox. World Rev Nutr Diet. 2003;92:74-80.
• Rogowski MP, Flowers MT, Stamatikos AD, Ntambi JM, Paton CM. SCD1 activity in muscle increases triglyceride PUFA content, exercise capacity, and PPARδ expression in mice. J Lipid Res. 2013 Oct;54(10):2636-46.
• Simopoulos, AP. Omega-6/omega-3 essential fatty acid ratio and chronic diseases. Food Reviews International. 2004; 20(1).

Supplemental (!) Coconut Diet Reduces Waist Circumference in Men more Than in Women While Leaving Lipid Profiles Unchanged

I take the recent New York Times Article on coconut oil as clear evidence of the fact that the health benefit of tropical oils is getting more and more public attention. Studies that establish the many anecdotal reports you can find all over the Internet may even speed up this process and thus I am happy to report the findings of a Malasian study (Liau. 2011) that clearly underlines that the "bad" saturated fat cannot be so "bad" after all.

The scientists had a group of 20 healthy, but obese Malay volunteers consume an additional 30 mL of coconut oil (approx 2 tablespoons) per day taken in three divided doses, half an hour before each meal (as far as digestive side effects are concerned, this was the best tolerated dose as assessed before the actual study) and found...

that only waist circumference [WC] was significantly reduced after one month of VCO with a mean reduction of 2.87 +/-4.95 cm.

The high standard deviation of this data may well be attributed to the fact that there was no additional control of the dietary habits of the volunteers. The study says subjects "continued their weight loss efforts", but you probably know these "efforts" often turn out to be hardly comparable. I also feel that the real-world significance of the scientists statistical assessment "WC reduction was only seen in males" must be reevaluated, especially in view of the fact that "the reduction [meaning in cm WC] was larger in females" and the reduction in females with BMI <30 (4.8 +/-6.1 cm), other than in females with BMI >30 2.61 +/-2.17) was statistically significant (for more data cf. figure 1).

Figure 1: Comparison of mean differences in anthropometric measurements and lipid profile values in 7 males and 13 females after VCO consumption. (Liau. 2011)

I refrain from commenting on the reasons and invite readers to come up with their own theories, why someone who has gotten to a BMI of >30 (!!) may have problems losing weight on an uncontrolled intervention. What this should tell you, however, is that you may safely assume that 2 x tablespoons of coconut oil (~30ml) à day may be a worthwhile addition to your well-planned diet & exercise regimen.

On a side note: Who knows how much centimeters the volunteers had lost if the had just replaced some of the "good" seed oils in their diets? Well, I guess in view of the fact that the scientists seemed surprised that the bad saturated fats in coconut oil did not ruin their volunteers fatty acid profiles, they probably considered it unethical to ask their participants to completely replace corn with coconut oil ;-)