Can Coconut Oil Fight Viruses Like Soap?

HERE’S HOW:  Coconut oil may help kill deadly viruses inside the human body The same way soap washing removes germs from the skin

Handwashing with soap and bathing are now must-do-protocols to reduce or eliminate any viral contamination we can acquire when we go out of our homes and get exposed to the quarantined community. Even before this age of quarantine, handwashing with soap and a daily shower and bath, are practices of good hygiene.

Did you know that drinking Coconut Oil has the same cleaning or prophylactic effects against germs inside your body? To be specific, most of these germs-pathogenic viruses and bacteria – are coated with fat (called lipids in chemistry).

To understand how Coconut oil helps kill the deadly viruses, it would be helpful to understand how soap kills or removes germs from our skin or from our clothes.

A little bit of Soap Chemistry

The chemistry of the fat cells which make up the soaps and detergent can be visualized as having a head and a tail. The head is polar, a term which means it gets attracted to water, and the tail is non-polar, which means it gets attracted to another fat.

When one washes with soap or detergent, the dirt and all the germs in the skin or clothing gets lifted off. The soap molecules disrupt the lipid coat on viruses and bacteria thus destroying them.

Each virus particle consists of genetic material called RNA or DNA and a protein, enclosed by a coating of fats (lipids), and because fat coatings are easily torn apart by soap, at least 20 seconds of thorough handwashing can remove bacteria and viruses. 

The Science Behind Coconut Oil’s Effectiveness Against Fat Coated Viruses

Lauric acid comprises about 45-50% of coconut oil. When one consumes coconut oil orally, key fatty acids of coconut oil, in particular lauric acid, and a related compound, monolaurin, are released.

Working like soap, detergents

While “floating” in the bloodstream, this is where the lauric fatty acids encounter cells infected with fat-coated viruses and other fat-coated pathogens (bacteria, yeasts). Similar to the action soap, the lauric fatty acids non-polar tail get attracted to the fat-coating of the virus, strips it off from the RNA and protein assembly, and exposes the RNA and protein prone for attack by the body’s immune cells.

Lauric acid is therefore an effective soldier in the fight against infection.

 

As recommended reading, Dr. Fabian Dayrit and Dr. Mary Newport discusses mechanisms of action of Lauric Acid in their paper “The Potential of Coconut Oil and its Derivatives as Effective and Safe Antiviral Agents Against the Novel Coronavirus (nCov-2019).

Drinking directly and eating coconut oil as part of a coconut-diet

To benefit from coconut oil as an immune booster, the most direct way is to take 3 tablespoons of virgin coconut oil after a meal. You can start with one tablespoon and as you get comfortable increase to 3 tablespoons. For a more palatable way to consume VCO, you may mix it with your coffee. 

For your meals, you can use cooking oil grade coconut oil to fry your fish, chicken, and pork. A lot of popular southeast Asian recipes use coconut milk which contains a significant amount of coconut oil.

Yes, it’s the coconut diet that makes people in coconut producing areas in the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Africa, India generally healthy.

 

02 April 2020

By R. Pacheco Jr. M.Sc. Appl. Phys.
CEO, Organix Solutions, Inc.
VCO Producer based in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao, PH

NOTE l This post is for informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or cure a disease nor was this evaluated by the FDA. For medical and health concerns, pls seek the advice of qualified medical physician.

References

1.The Potential of Coconut Oil and its Derivatives as Effective and Safe Antiviral Agents Against the Novel Coronavirus (nCoV-2019), 2020 January 31, F. Dayrit, Ph.D., M. Newport MD https://www.ateneo.edu/ls/sose/sose/news/research/potential-coconut-oil-and-its-derivatives-effective-and-safe-antiviral

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9.Discovery of a novel coronavirus associated with the recent pneumonia outbreak in 2 humans and its potential bat origin. bioRxiv preprint first posted online Jan. 23, 2020; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.22.914952.

10.Review: Lauric acid-rich medium-chain triglycerides can substitute for other oils in cooking applications and may have limited pathogenicity, Open Heart, BMJ, 2016 July

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