Coconut Oil health benefits includes increasing energy levels, enhancing your skin, help fight off viruses, fungi and bacteria, help balance body hormone, help strengthen body immune system and helps manage diabetes. Other benefits includes improving bone health, relieving stress, promoting weight loss, raising level of HDL cholesterol, helps fight constipation, boost cognitive function in Alzheimer patients and improving dental health.
What is Coconut Oil?
Unlike other saturated fats that are bad for your health, coconut oil is a nature’s wonder that you need to add in your daily life for more than one reason. A healthy skin, weight loss, luscious hair and improved overall health are just some of the benefits that come along when you incorporate the oil in your daily use. Coconut oil, with its unique combination of minerals and fatty acids, makes one of the healthiest foods on the planet.
Research has finally succeeded in uncovering the secrets to this incredible superfood: healthy fats known as medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs). These special fats comprise of:
- Lauric acid
- Caprylic acid
- Capric acid
Around 62% of the oils in coconut oil are made up of these 3 healthy fatty acids, and 91% of the oil’s fat comes from saturated fat. This composition of fat makes it one of the healthiest and most beneficial fats, as per the USDA nutrient database.
The majority of fats consumed take a long time to fully break down, but MCFAs present in coconut oil offer the ideal source of energy since they only have to go through a 3-step process in order to be transferred into fuel. On the other hand, other fats go through a 26-step process!
MCFAs, unlike long-chain fatty acids, are:
- Not easily stored as fat
- Quicker to digest
- Antifungal and antimicrobial
- Smaller in size, thereby allowing cell permeability for instant energy
- Processed by the liver, meaning that they are quickly converted into energy rather than being stored as fat
13 Impressive Health Benefits of Coconut Oil
Coconut oil is a wonder that brings along numerous benefits in terms of skin care, treating yeast infections, hair care, boosting immunity, and weight loss. The oil is not just used in tropical countries, but also in America, Canada, Australia, and Canada. People are discovering the magic this oil can create, and it is again rapidly popularizing on a global scale. Here we will be looking at top 13 known benefits of this oil.
1. Increases your Energy Levels
As mentioned above, coconut oil primarily consists of lauric acid, a fatty acid that metabolizes quite differently as compared to most saturated fats contained in most of dairy and meat products. Your body does not store digested medium-chain fatty acids, but instead transfers it directly to the liver where they are converted into energy very fast.
Add 3 to 4 tablespoons of coconut oil to your daily diet, and especially in the morning as it can spike up energy levels by around 5% for the entire day.
2. Skincare
Coconut oil makes an excellent moisturizer, even for dry skin. Since it doesn’t contain any petroleum-based products, as most moisturizers do, there are no side effects from that quarter. Plus, lauric and capric acids present in the oil are actually components of breast milk that enhances a baby’s ability to combat infections, which means they also help replace the protective acids from the sebum when applied topically on the skin.
Lastly, coconut oil packs a plentiful supply of Vitamin E, which helps with the correct amount of sebum production and unblocks the glands. This helps correct more than just the symptoms of acne.
3. Antibacterial Properties
The Lauric Acid makes about 50% of all fatty acids contained in the coconut oil and is known for its unique antibacterial properties. It kills various types of viruses, fungi, and bacteria, and therefore helps ward off a number of infections including Candida Albicans and Staphylococcus Aureus.
4. Helps Balance Your Hormones
In absence of effective building blocks such as fatty acids derivatives, your body fails to effectively produce the hormones required for regulating things such as digestion, thyroid function, mood, sex drive, and metabolism. And since coconut oil contains medium-chain fatty acids, it helps encourage the growth of healthy hormones that enhance digestion, reduce stress and anxiety, spike up energy levels, and eliminate rigid reserves of fat such as those found around the waist, thighs, and buttocks.
5. Strengthens Your Immune System
Coconut oil is a great way to boost your immunity since it contains antimicrobial lipids, caprylic acid, capric acid, and lauric acid, all of which have antiviral, antibacterial and antifungal properties. The human body converts lauric into monolaurin, which is believed to be an effective way of dealing with bacteria and viruses that cause diseases such as flu, herpes, HIV, and cytomegalovirus.
6. Helps Manage Diabetes
Coconut oil helps control blood sugar level and enhances insulin secretion. It also stimulates the effective use of blood glucose, thus treating and preventing diabetes.
7. Improves Your Bone Health
As mentioned earlier, coconut oil enhances our body’s ability to absorb important nutrients better. These include Magnesium and Calcium, which are crucial for the development of healthy bones. Therefore, it is pretty useful for middle-aged women who are prone to osteoporosis.
8. Relieves Stress
Coconut oil is very relaxing, and thus it helps alleviate stress. Applying it to your head, and following it with a gentle massage can help eliminate exhaustion. As per research, pure coconut oil offers relief from stress and also has antioxidant properties.
9. Promotes Weight Loss
Coconut oil improves the body’s ability to break down food and absorb nutrients, which will enable you to consume less food without feeling tired or weak all the time. This can help you reach your weight loss faster and more effectively.
10. Raises Your Level of HDL Cholesterol
The natural saturated oils contained in coconut oil increase good HDL cholesterol, and may also help lower bad cholesterol, thereby improving your cardiovascular health.
11. Improves Dental Health
At present day, the importance of coconut oil as a mouthwash is increasing rapidly. This process is known as oil pulling, which can get rid of some of the very harmful bacteria in the mouth, reduce bad breath and improve your overall dental health.
12. Boosts Cognitive Function in Patients with Alzheimer’s
Studies speculate that ketones present in coconut oil can offer an alternative source of energy to the malfunctioning brain cells in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, thereby reducing its symptoms.
13. Fights Constipation
Coconut oil is a powerful stool softener owing to the presence of medium-chain fatty acids, which offer an instant supply of energy for your intestinal cells that boost your metabolism and thus, improve your bowel movements.
Conclusion
You can consume coconut oil on its own, or you can add this miracle oil to different dishes or beverages. Since it has stool softening properties, consuming too much of coconut oil can induce symptoms of diarrhea. As a beginner, the recommended daily dose for you is one teaspoon in the morning and another teaspoon at dinner.
