Coconut Oil Touted As Alzheimer’s Remedy

One of those people is Steve Newport, whose Alzheimer’s has slowed considerably. Some of his symptoms have 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 neurology tests showed her husband was entering the severe stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s doesn’t just happen overnight. It’s a long, slow process that takes at least 10 or 20 years to develop before symptoms start to show. Recent research has revealed that Alzheimer’s is a form of diabetes caused by insulin resistance in the brain. It is now referred to as type 3 diabetes. Insulin resistance prevents brain cells from accepting glucose, their primary fuel. Without it, the brain cells eventually die. But there is an alternative fuel — ketones, which brain cells easily accept. Ketones are metabolized in the liver after eating medium chain triglycerides, found in coconut oil. Dr. Newport added coconut oil to Steve’s diet. He showed almost immediate improvement. Over the course of a year Steve Newport has gone from being on the verge of sever Alzheimer’s to now being diagnosed as a mild case and has regained much of the cognitive skills and memory he had once lost.

Some people are afraid to eat coconut oil because they think it’s bad for the heart. “But it’s actually very healthy,” says Dr. Beverly Teter, a lipid biochemist researcher at the University of Maryland and an expert in the area of dietary fat. “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 explains. “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.”

 Teter said the way it helps the brains of 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 says.  “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.”