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Coconut Oil/Coconut Products/Coconut Saturated Fat
My Vitamin A detox journey is going well. Now that I'm regaining some cognitive capacity, I plan on updating my progress report in the near future and responding to everyone that was kind enough to respond to me. It's incredible how VitA toxicity makes simple things like constructing responses, and finding the energy to carry on conversations difficult.
I know Grant has written about coconut oil/palmitic acid in the coconut oil, as palmitic acid is part of retinyl palmitate, a very common retinyl ester form of Poison/"Vitamin A" that the body likes to store in the liver. Additionally, Dr. Garrett Smith writes about it here. Coconut Oil is also known in the Ray Peat circles to theoretically detox PUFAs more quickly, and people do warn in that community that it can cause an escalation of PUFA detox symptoms.
We are bombarded with an assortment of toxins, and I believe VitA and PUFAs are notable ones. I certainly see where people are coming from regarding coconut oil. At different points in my health journey over the years, after consuming coconut oil, I would certainly have interesting symptoms and sometimes a negative shift in mental status. But this was almost always followed by an improvement the next day (and long term glowing, smooth skin). Now, I can consume coconut products with very little issue. According the Ray Peat and others in that community, this is theoretically because I have consumed very little PUFA for a couple years. I am an athlete, with very low body fat and a pretty muscular physique (and what I would hope, very low amounts of PUFA).
I've been on the low VitA diet for about 6 weeks now. Up until 2 weeks ago, I was still shooting to consume a cup of heavy cream a day, mostly for calories (800 calories), but I underestimated how much Vitamin A is in it (close to 3000 IU). For 2 weeks, I have replaced the cup of heavy cream with a coconut milk smoothie every day. The canned full-fat organic coconut milk (no synthetics added). It is 700 calories a can. I use 1 can, 2 scoops of protein powder, pineapple chunks (low oxalate), a little bit of coconut sugar, and a little bit of stevia. It is DELICIOUS. Tastes like a Pina Colada without the rum, and provides me around 1000 calories with lots of saturated fat that makes hormones and metabolism run well (I believe any demonization of saturated fat is total BS). My daily goal is to consume this, around a pound of meat, and other miscellaneous stuff daily (total caloric goal around 2500 calories). So far, this has made me feel great. I've only gotten more lean, feel that brain is healing, and am very happy with this routine because I am consuming virtually no VitA. It also greatly simplifies the decision fatigue that results from wondering what to eat everyday. I only consume sugar as sucrose and fructose (coconut sugar, honey, limited fruit). I believe starch (lots of bonded glucose molecules) is incredibly insulinogenic and not conducive to creating a healing environment in the body. I consume roughly 200 calories or less from sugar/carbs specifically. I believe this amount is enough to get the anti-stress, pro-metabolic effects of sugar while retaining metabolic flexibility and occasionally dipping down into ketosis. This is in contrast to eating a larger bag of potato chips that can provide 700+ calories of essentially pure glucose. I consume virtually zero fiber because it causes gastrointestinal issues. I use activated charcoal as a bile sequestrant every other day or every 3 days to interrupt enterohepatic recirculation (bile production is biologically expensive), which I believe is a superior option than using soluble fiber as a sequestrant agent.
I was hoping to hear others experiences with coconut oil/full fat coconut milk. I think it may increase the rate of VitA detox and PUFA detox, and I wonder when people experience negative effects from it whether it is from the VitA detox or PUFA detox that is causing an escalation of symptoms (or both). If you experience negative effects from Coconut Oil, what is your health background? Do you consume lots of PUFAs? Have excess fat stores? When you consumed Coconut Oil, did you also eat high amount of starch? Coconut Oil seems to have profound capacity to heal the brain, and while there are some studies, it seems we can only speculate on why that may be.
I reacted horrible to a cocunut nut butter. Terrible sebderm flair and I avoided coconut products ever since. Could be detox since coconut is anti-fungal but I dont really know. I was on a extremely low PUFA diet for over a year at that point. It was high Vitamin A though and I took Accutane 8 years ago. Like you Im active, not much body fat on me and I guess I have a healthy metabolism.
I just know that people have tried coconut oil topically against sebderm and it got really bad, since there is something in it that acutally feeds the sebderm-fungus. Thats why then people started to use MCT oil instead.
I would love to try your coconut drink that sounds so delicious and lots of nice calories. But Im kinda affraid that the same will happen like last time. But maybe it would be different now since Im low A for 3 months now.
@max-3 The coconut drink is honestly a bit of a game changer. 1 can is $1.80 X 30 = roughly $54 for a month supply. The only other main grocery item that I have to buy is 1 pound of meat per day.
I also think there might be some interaction with coconut oil and oxalates in the body, although it's hard to find anything online directly correlating it. So that may be something to look into. A high oxalate load in the body may interact with coconut oil somehow. Lauric acid is extremely interesting to me. Some people attribute most of its action to monolaurin, but I think that only accounts for a fraction of its biological impact. There is some interaction between Vitamin A and monoglycerides (which is what monolaurin is), although after reviewing the literature I couldn't decide whether it would be a detrimental or positive thing to supplement monolaurin in regards to detoxing VitA. I do know that coconut oil does not cause my skin to breakout, but taking monolaurin does. Not sure why that would be. If anyone has taken monolaurin with success, please comment!
Wow that so cheap and it would solve my issues with getting enough calories in. I will try it next time I go shopping. I will report back. Maybe being on a low A diet makes me tolerate it. Lets see.
So I tried coconut milk,. Seems like I can tolerate it now after being low A for a while. This is really a gamechanger and I think anyone should try it. Great source of fat and full of important minerals like selenium.
I eat it with a banana or mix a little bit of honey in it. Very tasty.
I buy canned coconut cream and use it like a spread instead of butter, with jam or banana on bread for example.
I don't like it. You'd think I would if it was so good for me. I have no desire. But if you do, go for it. I do like the occasional macaroon, pina colada or coconut curry. But for me, coconut is a sometimes food, not a staple. I can totally see how some might say there is a historical record for some people to use it as a staple. But I don't think my people, which are all northern, used it recently!
I knew I had some issues regarding mold, viruses, fungi so I started using Lauricidin (Monolaurin) which is said to be the natural ivermectin, after taking it all my past memories came flooding back, my brain felt much more free like the neuroinflmation had been lifted from it, I now see massive benefits from probiotics since taking it when before they didn't really do anything for me, it also caused some pathogenic looking organisms to be released from coffee enemas which I wasn't seeing before I started the Monolaurin, I could feel some pain in gallbladder like its killing something, skin does look better, motivation much better. Whether it was moving VA into storage I'm not sure but the amount of fat was tiny 0.5g-1.5g per dose and i didn't get any of these benefits from other dietary fats
Coconut oil both refined and unrefined do not give me these effects, both just inflame my gallbladder. Also started using a caprylic acid supplement which is antifungal and a biofilm disruptor as well, its helpful at times but nothing like the Monolaurin.
My brain function started deteriorating significantly since I started the VA detox, I started experiencing serious confusion and dementia type symptoms at times which was pretty concerning considering I'm 26 and never had any confusion before the VA detox.
@christian @alexm I find there is something new related to memory : I used to remember numbers very easily (phone numbers for example, at a time when you had to punch in numbers every time you phoned). This ability disappeared around twenty years ago, when I was 50 years old. I thought this was related to computer use and the facility of storing numbers instead of having to remember them. Losing this ability for lack of practice.
Last week I had to remember all kinds of numbers, phone, ticket numbers, new card numbers, estimates etc...) and suddenly I did not need to check them, they were all very accurate, and there was a lot of them!!!! Amazing!!!! I am so happy!!!! It seems to be back for good. No mistake for the last 10 days.
2 years and 11 months into the no vA diet. A BIG THANK YOU @ggenereux2014