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Coconut oil research: https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/the-health-benefits-of-coconut-oil/
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OK so we’ve all heard that coconut oil is good for dogs … and that’s not entirely untrue. But there’s something in coconut oil that can really harm your dog’s gut. It can undo all the good that coconut oil can do.
OK, the healthy part of coconut oil is something called a medium chain fatty acid. Coconut oil contains about 8% caprylic acid, 7% capric acid and smaller amounts of other medium chain fats like myristic and palmitic acid. These fats have natural antiviral, antibacterial and anti fungal properties. So that means medium chain fats can be used as a natural topical antibiotic or anti fungal for dogs with skin issues. And there’s also research showing that if you give your dog coconut oil in his food, it can help fight yeast infections and improve brain function. Now, what’s unique about medium chain fats is they way they’re digested. They’re quickly broken down by an enzyme called lipase and then they travel directly to the blood and then the liver, where they’re converted to ketones. The liver can use ketones to feed its own cells and to help it detoxify – and the rest go back into the blood where they’re used for fuel in the brain and body. This is great because other fats are mainly just stored as fat. So that’s the good news.
The dark side of coconut oil is that about half of it is another fat called lauric acid. Up until the 70’s lauric acid was categorized as a long chain fatty acid because is has 12 carbon atoms … and that makes a difference because the length of the fatty acid determines how it’s digested in the body. The other medium chain fats have 10 carbon atoms or less, which means they can easily be converted to ketones. But lauric acid uses a completely different metabolic pathway and isn’t converted to ketones. When fats contain 12 or more carbon atoms, it’s harder it is for the liver to digest them so they just get dumped into fat stores. But back in the 70’s, people started making and promoting both coconut and palm oil – there was a big push in the industry and, mysteriously, scientists suddenly called lauric acid a medium chain fatty acid. It doesn’t matter what you call it because lauric acid isn’t digested like medium chain fats.
OK, so there are two significant problems with coconut oil. First, is the huge amount of lauric acid in it and second is that coconut oil is nearly all saturated fat. Back in the 70’s when they started pushing coconut oil as a superfood, they didn’t know all that much about gut health and the microbiome. But today, we know that your dog needs healthy bacteria and a healthy gut lining. Without this, he can develop leaky gut, which happens when the cell walls in the gut stretch out and allow undigested food, bacteria, yeast and viruses to get out of the gut and into the blood and organs. This causes really harmful levels of chronic inflammation and you’ll see the organs and immune system start to break down. This chronic inflammation is the cause of nearly all chronic disease in the body, including cancer, allergies, joint pain and organ disease. Thanks to gut research, we even know that clogged arteries are caused by chronic inflammation. So now that we know more about the gut, scientists are taking a new look at foods. And new research shows that coconut oil is a real problem for dogs and people too.
First, coconut oil is a saturated fat. Most food these days is higher in saturated fat than it used to be, thanks to feeding grains to food animals. So even dogs eating a raw diet are eating a diet that’s too high in saturated fats – so adding more saturated fat from coconut oil will only make the diet even less unbalanced. Studies show that diets high in saturated fat cause an imbalance in gut bacteria and cause gut inflammation, which can lead to leaky gut. Next, there’s a 2018 study from Brazil that showed that lauric acid increases gut inflammation – and more than any other saturated fat. And another study showed that no other fat increased endotoxin levels in the blood more than coconut oil. Endotoxins come from the gut bacteria and are supposed to stay in the gut and never enter the body. But coconut oil cause gut inflammation, which lets endotoxins get through, plus saturated fats and lauric acid produce a more toxic form of an endotoxin called LPS or lipopolysaccharide. LPS triggers cytokines, which means even more chronic inflammation.
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