Anyone tried Coconut Oil to treat dementia?

I have heard good things too
but no proof
Kevin

I have also heard good reports on using coconut oil. One sib spreads it on toast. Negative side effect with my Mom is severe intestinal disturbance. Check YouTube to check usage and amounts. I imagine you could add coconut oil to most anything. My Mom's brain is too deteriorated at this point. Even if we could find something to slow the progression of the disease, why would we do that? Damage done cannot be repaired.

I bought some coconut oil to use on myself. It is more like hard shortening. I wouldn't use it on toast, because it taste like shortening, kind of. There are all kinds of warnings about cooking with it -- don't let it get too hot or it will burst into flames. Without some flavor, I can't see it replacing butter in anything. Really, I don't know what to do with it. I guess maybe it will because something to put on my skin.

To date there is no reason that coconut oil prevents dementia. However, it is a good source of Omega 3s and it can do no harm in moderation. Know it has a lower point at which it boils, so if you cook with it, it will burn quickly at medium heat. There solid coconut oil for your hair (use lightly), and I use a hair masque made with coconut oil.

Have you tried using it in cooking? I now use it almost exclusively for sautéing, frying eggs, fish, etc. it has spectacular flavor! And smells heavenly when you cook with it. Replace any shortening with it, it's so much better for you than hydronated oils. Use in cookies, muffins, in oatmeal, on steamed veggies. Doesn't really taste like coconut, per se, but does add a slight sweetness and richer taste. If you really need the butter flavor, you can use half butter and half coconut oil. And yes, it's also good for skin and hair!

My husband stirs it into his yogurt and his dementia seems a little better -- at least it is no worse

I have friends who like coconut oil. They use it for cooking, or stir into their hot coffee, one uses it on her face (?)! They are healthy people.
I bought it for my husband after he was first diagnosed with Alzheimers. He liked it by the teaspoonful...it was room temp and like syrup. But it did not help him at all. We went thru 3 jars of it. Nothing. BUT you never know. I would say go ahead and try it. It is not expensive. Try ANYTHING.

I bought Virgin Coconut Oil in a softgel pill form on Amazon. It's probably a placebo effect but I feel like I think more clear when I'm working (I do not have dementia.) Also mentioned above was how Coconut oil is not a high-temp oil. I would like to mention that olive oil when heated high actually turns toxic but many of us do this. The point is to understand the oil you are cooking with.

It could be that it has some sort of anti- plaque effect when warmed to body temperature. I know that fat cells in general bind to proteins. Coconut oil is supposed to have a cleansing effect. Like the "pulling" of toxins from the mouth using the oil for 20 minutes is supposed to have. On the skin, it is supposed to help by being almost as an antiseptic, as it has the ability to kill bacteria & fungi. I have not seen the proof of any of these claims. However, I am willing to try anything to see what happens. That, study I read was about that Dr. that gave coconut oil to her husband & he improved remarkably. But, didn't his dementia come back again anyway? I remember her story not having the happy ending we'd hoped it would. Good luck to all! blou

Tried it for for a year with elderly mom with dementia. Zero results. I had been so hopeful. Things getting worse... Just such a sad disease:(

For whatever it's worth, I have been "oil pulling" every day with canola oil with coconut oil added (melt it first) and my dentist was amazed at a couple of teeth that had been "mobile" that are now very solid. I also add it to nut butters to make them smoother (I can't eat peanuts); better than the ones with hydrogenated oils.

Bloujeanbaby.....I saw that article too, that's why we tried it. I wondered if it was a fluke, maybe something else helped her husband, or maybe he did not have alzheimers. I always wondered what happened to him, after. But as I said, try anything, you never know what might work.

I have heard that drinking "coconut water" is good for you. Does anyone know anything about this? I tried lemonade coconut water and did not like the taste at all but that doesn't mean they all have unpleasant tastes.

I blend one teaspoon into a smoothie with banana, blueberries, yoghurt and almond milk. There's two kinds - refined and unrefined. You want the unrefined. As with any oil you do not want to overheat it so that it smokes. Every oil has what's called a smoke point. Not only does burnt oil stink up the whole house but also it's terrible for you because of the aldehydes, ketones, alcohols, dienes, and acids that result from overheating oil.

i think they were thinking that the omega three's are good for cleaning the brain, like cholesterol, because it goes every where, but I do not know if it does anything else. I have one jar for her skin and the other jar to put in her oatmeal. She thinks she is eating some newfangled macaroon...ah no sugar, I win again...

I love coconut oil. I never held much hope for my husband but encourage its use with my children because it is a very beneficial healthy oil. I use it for everything (except olive oil) A good information source is the book Healthy Brain by Dr Perlmutter. Also, my brother with very high cholesterol starting putting it in his smoothie and he is now off all cholesterol medicine and my sister is also in normal limits.

from all the posts, coconut oil for dementia doesn't work very well.

Coconut oil has helped my Dad tremendously. If he doesn't have it 2-3 times a day, we notice it. He's not as good without it. You do have to work up the dosage slowly, because it can cause stomach issues if you have whole ton of it right away. My mom used to put it in my Dad's oatmeal in the morning, and we'd give him two tablespoons in one of those tablespoon measuring cups (looks like a shot glass) in the afternoon and at night. He was getting 2 tablespoons 3x a day. My mom found out about coconut oil while researching alternative therapies online. There is an MD Mary Newport who has done lots of research on coconut oil and Alzheimers patients. Her husband has Alzheimers. Here is her website. http://www.coconutketones.com. She has a book, too, called "Alzheimers: What if there was a cure?". We give my Dad Garden of Life Living Foods Extra Virgin Coconut oil. I'm not sure if the quality of the coconut oil makes a difference, so I figured I would let you know what brand worked for us. Hopefully it will work for your loved one. Also, I know this question is about coconut oil, but I'm going to throw this out there as well. We also give my Dad a nutraceutical supplement called Perceptiv. www.thinkperceptiv.com/. It has ingredients that help with memory and MOOD. The coconut oil combined with the nutraceutical supplement have helped my Dad a lot. I hope this info helps you and your loved one.

Dear GladImHere,
The coconut oil has been shown to reverse Alzheimers, not to just slow it down. The Doctor who gave it to her husband brought him back from a memory care facility where he couldn't even read, to home, going out to dinner, having conversation and working in his wood-working shop. He was not able to resume his career, but what a comeback! It's Dr. Newport Here's a link to the story

I drink bulletproof coffee every morning with coconut oil in it. Excellent stuff.

Where do you get bullet proof cofee?

Sherry - Google "bulletproof coffee" for a description of it. There's a website that claims to have invented the idea of bulletproof coffee, but the concept is centuries old. It's just that we have just now caught onto it here in the states.

What I'm about to say is going to sound like an infomercial for bulletproof coffee, but since you asked about it, I'm going to give you a quick and dirty lesson on it. I've been drinking it for about 6 months now, and I won't go a day without it.

Keep in mind that bulletproof coffee, to be effective, needs to be part of a healthy diet - one in which sugar and starches are at a minimum, and you are eating healthy fats, meats and vegetables.

The website that claims to have invented bulletproof coffee says you should use only THEIR products in order to get optimal results (of course). However, you can get excellent results using the best ingredients you can afford - you don't have to pay $20 a pound for their coffee for it to work. I use unrefined extra virgin coconut oil, grassfed butter (unsalted) and a small amount of sweetner or sugar-free flavored syrup for mine. Sometimes I add a little heavy cream. I use a good quality coffee, but I've heard of many people just using Folgers or their usual coffee, because it's what they can afford, and that's fine - there's no hard and fast rule that says you have to use an expensive coffee.

QUICK NOTE ABOUT COCONUT OIL: I use unrefined - it smells and tastes a little like coconut. Not everyone likes that. If you don't, then you can use the refined type - it is odorless and tasteless and contains the same MCTs (medium chain triglycerides) as the unrefined type, which is what you're looking for when using coconut oil. It's the "good fat".

The key to a good cup of BPC (bulletproof coffee) is in the blending. No one wants to look in their coffee cup and see an oil slick on the top of the coffee. That's what you'll have if you don't blend. I use a cheap little battery-operated frother - it blends and emulsifies everything nicely (frother was $6.95 on Amazon). You can use an immersion blender - just make sure you use a large enough container to blend it in, so you don't have a wave of coffee fly out of the cup and all over you. DO NOT use a shaker bottle or anything with a sealed lid to blend this - the heat will blow the top off and spray coffee all over. I've also heard that blending it in a Ninja or Bullet-type blender works, but that the heat from the coffee damages the gaskets - so that's not recommended either. A frother makes it quick and easy, with no cleanup required - other than rinsing off the frother.

When blended properly, a BPC has a nice thick head of foam, like a cappuccino, and tastes rich and creamy. Some people don't like it, but most love it. If you find that you feel a little queasy after drinking it, cut back on the amount of coconut oil you're using for a while, then increase it gradually until you're using the recommended amount. You can add a touch of spice and a tablespoon of pumpkin puree for a pumpkin latte style drink - without the $6 price tag!

Don't like coffee but want to try BPC? Use green tea or any other type of tea you like and add the other ingredients to it. If you're on Pinterest, you can find recipes for bulletproof hot cocoa as well.

Benefits of BPC: clearer thinking (your brain NEEDS fat - and water - to function properly); softer skin and hair; long-lasting energy boost. Some also claim this aids weight loss, but you have to be eating a healthy diet for it to work that way - you can't drink BPC and eat sugar, starch and junk and expect it to work properly. It won't.

Before anyone jumps on the "fat is bad" bandwagon, please read up first. Coconut oil is a GOOD fat and has a huge list of benefits.

LaurieAC, could you describe more specifically in what ways your father improved on coconut oil? I'm sincerely interested. What do you mean that he "wasn't good" without it? And it sounds like he eats about 700 calories from the oil each day. What was his weight like?

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Dr Mary Newport's husband was not cured. He improved dramatically in the first year and was stable for two years after that, and then declined. Improvement is awesome and worthwhile, but it is not a cure.

My husband was reading bank statements upside down, was paranoid, very confused, hallucinating, and then improved dramatically over a year and remained stable for about 8 years. Then he gradually declined physically (though never to the same cognitive and behavioral level of the first year.) He died in year 10.

In other words, my husband's improvement was as dramatic as Dr. Newport's husband's, and he sustained it much longer. What caused this remarkable "cure"? Well, I'm not sure, but I know for a positive fact that it wasn't coconut oil, because he never used it. Thinking about it, he did eat a lot of ramen noodle soup that first year. Maybe I should be promoting Ramen Noodles as the amazing hidden cure for dementia. Maybe I should write a book advocating high-sodium diets for persons with dementia. That is pretty absurd, of course. But I hope you see my point that anecdotal stories are not the same as evidence. One person's history can be suggestive and suggest other avenues of study, but in itself it proves nothing.

As far as I know, coconut oil is a perfectly fine food. I don't see big red flags in using it. But I wouldn't pin my hopes on its curative powers against dementia.

What about cholesterol in coconut oil? I have done some reading online, that coconut oil is packed with it. I am definitely not an expert in much of anything that is part of a healty diet, including cholesterol, have not had to be concerned at least at this point in my life. On a side note, in spite of years and years of heavy (almost to the point of gross over use) my Mom has never had a cholesterol problem. The reason is she had a portion of the intestine removed probably 50 years ago. Evidently that portion had something to do with the way her body processes cholesterol, and also the reason for the chronic intestinal problems all her life.

Glad, no plants have cholesterol -- only animal products can contain cholesterol. Egg yolks have a lot, coconuts have none. All the years my husband followed a heart-healthy diet he was discouraged from having coconut oil because the types of fat it contains were thought to provide the building blocks of our bodies producing our own cholesterol. Science has learned a great deal about fat types in the last decade or so. At least some people now consider coconut oil healthy. I really don't know. I do know I could not afford 700 calories of fat per day just on the basis of weight control.

I am not sure that coconut oil is really the villain we once thought it was. I also don't think there is enough research evidence to claim it cures dementia.

There is a lot of conflicting research on the whole subject of cholesterol, and there is evidence that the original research on the subject was flawed if not biased. I personally had very bad experiences on cholesterol meds and one of the problems was memory loss, which reversed quickly when I got off the meds. So it is possible that someone who has memory issues due to low cholesterol were to normalize it with coconut oil it could appear to be have a beneficial effect. The whole issue has been getting more research, so might be worth some Google time.

After a lot of reading, it seemed the dosage might be critical - there might be a minimum dosage of about 40 ml a day (someone else on this forum uses even more). We put 1 tablespoon (20 ml) in porridge in the morning and 1 in a pre-dinner soup in the evening before we saw any effect. It seemed to arrest the decline (things that happened now seem like a long time ago rather than no memory of them at all) and slightly improve the capacity to anticipate events, but the main effect was on mood (worth it alone).

Some reading suggested, indirectly, it might be effective for only 20% of people with some sort of Alzheimer disease (my interpretation of the information).

Some clinical trials of dosage matched with brain scans, stage and type of the disease, and overall mental health would be really helpful.

I have a friend who works at a nursing home,, claims they gave it to alot of patients and they improved.. But in my opinion if there were a mircle cure we would have all heard of it.. like a magic weight loss cure. My dad has good days and bad days.. no rhyme or reason. I;d love to find one (or both...LOL)

Any time that you are able to increase fats that feed the brain, I believe you help dementia. No medical opinion here, just a personal opinion. Cholesterol is a necessary ingredient in a healthy body. When there is an injury to blood vessels, cholesterol rallys to coat that injury. The brain needs cholesterol to survive and thrive. It's the dairy that contains casein which literally scratches the inside of the arteries causing cholesterol to build up there that is the culprit, not the cholesterol.

Not a doctor or scientist here, but arteries clog from eating too much sugar and refined carbs....actually makes cells sticky....read Gary Taubes' book Good Calories, Bad Calories (or whatever it's called). Ingested fats are not the problem--it's carbs, and too many calories overall.