Coconut Controversy: Issues of Coconut Oil and Leaky Gut (#162)

Dr. Berkson's Best Health Radio Podcast

Health food tends to run in trends. At the moment coconut is king. But just as we live in a material world with two sides to everything, it appears there may be a “shadow side” to coconut oil—for some patients.

You will learn Dr. Berkson’s conclusions from first hearing this at an A4M Anti-aging Gastroenterology module she was both a professor and student at, along with “sleuthing’ the science.

In this show you will learn:

• What is intestinal permeability and why is “Goldilocks” just right permeability critical.
• What is coconut fat and how is this saturated fat very different from animal saturated fat.
• What is LPS and endotoxins.
• How to test for LPS and which labs do it.
• How different oils effect this.
• How different oils effect how we absorb sugar from food.
• Who should be very moderate if not avoid coconut oil and who doesn’t need to.
• What might coconut oil do to the gut wall and what are the studies suggesting this.
• What might coconut oil to the colonic microbiome and what are the studies suggesting this.
• Where is the Department of Nutrition that 1st published a pig and now a human study looking at every hour, up to five hour, blood levels of endotoxins, after consuming coconut oil.
• This does not reflect food.
• This probably does not reflect MTC oils.
• The gut and gut wall benefit of spore probiotics.
• The role of dietary fats and fatty liver.

A few interesting citations:

Lipids Health Dis. 2016 Nov 5;15(1):186. Postprandial serum endotoxin in healthy humans is modulated by dietary fat in a randomized, controlled, cross-over study.

BMC genomics 19 (1), 808 2018 Nov 7 Differential Effects of Coconut Versus Soy Oil on Gut Microbiota Composition and Predicted Metabolic Function in Adult Mice

J Med Food 2019 Dec 3 Virgin Coconut Oil Associated With High-Fat Diet Induces Metabolic Dysfunctions, Adipose Inflammation, and Hepatic Lipid Accumulation

Influencia de la ingesta de aceites vegetales en la absorción intestinal de glucosa in vitro en hamster dorado [Influence of intake of vegetable oils on the in vitro intestinal absorption of glucose in golden hamsters]. Arch Latinoam Nutr. 1995;45(4):290–294.