It seems as if coconut oil has become the snake oil of this decade. It certainly has some outrageous health related claims attached to it. However one that does have some efficacy is its improvement of your lipid profile.

SuppVersity  brings us a review of literature on the topic.

One of the more well done recent studies involved multiple rat subjects consuming different diets with the center piece being virgin coconut oil.

  • Group 1 was fed the normal pellet diet (control),

  • Group 2 was administered normal diet with VCO (1 ml/day),

  • Group 3 named as HCD received bread with pellet,

  • Group 4  animals received HCD bread and pellet with VCO (1 ml/day),

  • Group 5 called as HLD animals received cheese with pellet,

  • Group 6 named HLD animals received cheese and pellet with VCO (1 ml/day)

The diets were followed for 8 weeks. The interesting findings where all of the groups including coconut oil had a notable increase in HDL. Perhaps more interesting was that the HLD group had the highest increase in LDL but the HLD group with coconut oil actually mitigated the increase in LDL. The recommended dose to see the same effect in humans is 3tbsp a day.

This means that for anyone worrying about their lipid profile, replacing some of your daily fat intake with virgin coconut oil regularly can help improve HDL and LDL. For the low carb dieters out there, the medium chain triglycerides found in coconut oil are fast digesting and are a good choice for pre workout energy!

Understanding what goes on in the body in response to proper nutrition is incredibly important to performance, browse our nutritional education page as well as our supplement page to take your game to the next level.

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