With more than 5 million Americans suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, many people are looking to alternative treatments for help.
Coconut Oil and Alzheimer’s Disease were a Hot News Item in 2012
2012 was the year that the news about coconut oil and Alzheimer’s disease started making it into the mainstream media. This is not surprising, as it coincided with news about the failure of drugs in treating Alzheimer’s also making headlines. In January 2012, drug companies Pfizer and Medivation admitted that the new drug they were developing for Alzheimer’s, dimebon, not only did not help patients in trials, but made patients worse. The expensive drug had already reached phase III trials. So as the development of this drug has now been abandoned, and so many other potential drugs have also failed, many are beginning to look at the role of diet in Alzheimer’s and focusing on prevention. People are also beginning to see positive results in using coconut oil to reverse the effects of Alzheimer’s.
Dr. Mary Newport discovered the benefits of using coconut oil to treat her husband's Alzheimer's Disease. She discusses how quickly the coconut oil showed improvements in her husband's condition and what kind of changes happened when the coconut oil wasn't administered.
Read more: Coconut Oil and Alzheimer's Disease Dr. Mary Newport
An Interview with Author, Dr. Mary Newport
Mary T. Newport, MD: Well, the interesting thing in the patent application the pilot study showed that people after the first dose had improved scores on cognitive testing. It was something like five out of seven tests that they did they had improved scores. They... so but the other thing too was that people who were apolipoprotein E 4-negative were much more likely to improve and the people who were positive for that gene as a group did not improve. And, Steve, I knew at that point, was positive for that gene, so I didn't really expect anything. I didn't expect any improvement for him, but I felt like, "What do we have to lose?"
Basically, what happened, he went to the first screening, this was like at 1:00 a.m. that I learned this information, and the screening was at 9:00 a.m. the next morning, so I didn't have time to run out and buy coconut oil. So we went to that screening and he still didn't qualify. He got a score of 14 out of 30. He qualified in every other aspect, but not that. The interesting thing that happened that day that ties into the long story, the longer version, is that she asked him to draw a clock, too. The clock test for Alzheimer's is very specific test. They can kind of see where a person's at, mild, moderate, severe, based on the test and he drew a few little random circles and a few numbers and it really wasn't organized like a clock, and that was a bit shocking for me to see. She told me that she felt he was on the verge of severe Alzheimer's.
And I myself felt that he was kind of on a downward spiral at that point. So on the way home I thought, "What do we got to lose? I'm going to go pick up some coconut oil." So I made a big detour about an hour away from where we live to the only place I've ever seen it, and it's everywhere, but I didn't know that at that point and I picked up some coconut oil and when I got home I researched coconut oil. I had to kind of do biochemistry 101 refresher like which are the medium chain triglycerides. I was able to find a fatty acid analysis breakdown. It's on the USDA website and I figured out that coconut oil is almost 60 percent medium chain triglycerides.
From the dose that they were using for this medical food, I was able to figure out how much coconut oil to give Steve and that turned out to be a little over two tablespoons was equivalent to their dose. The next morning he had a screening scheduled at 1:00 in the afternoon and for breakfast I gave him a little over two tablespoons of coconut oil and put it into oatmeal because coconut oil is a little solid at room temperature. And he ate it without any problem, I actually had a little bit indigestion myself. I took it, too I thought I'm not going to make him take something that I won't take. And his screening was scheduled for 1:00 in the afternoon and on the way down, you know, I tried to remind him what the day of the week was and the season. He couldn't even pull the word spring out, you know. He couldn't remember the word and I really didn't think he was going to do any
better.
When we got down there they took him away and he came back in the room. He didn't really feel like he had done very well on the test, but a nurse came in and she starts taking his blood pressure and talking about drawing blood and I said, "What's happening?" and she said, "Well, he scored an 18 and he actually met the criteria for the study." So we were overjoyed and I didn't really know at that point if it was the coconut oil, good luck, prayers, you know, or what it was exactly, but we decided that we would keep the coconut oil going and I just researched everything I could get my hands on about ketones, medium chain triglycerides, coconut oil. You know, gave him a little over two tablespoons every morning for breakfast. So I measured it
out and then started cooking with it the rest of the day. I started substituting it for things in the diet and what I found in addition to the, you know, improved score was that he was more alert in the morning. He used to come out very sluggish and not very conversive in the morning. He couldn't remember how to get water out of the refrigerator door, you know, and confusion about utensils, and things like that and he just came out with a lot more energy and more animation in his face, more personality, joking with me, could find the water. These kinds of things started happening.
Interviewer: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Newport: And about the fourth or fifth day into it, you know, we talked about how our life changed for the better and he felt so much better. He said to him it was like a light switch went on the day he started the coconut oil, that a fog lifted, and he really felt like he had gotten his life back and had hope for the future. He had been quite depressed up to that point.
Interviewer: So you continue to see improvement over the weeks and months. What happens when ultimately you are going to forget a dose or something is going to happen like travel or something? Did you notice something on those days, too?
Dr. Newport: Yes, yeah we did have a couple of occasions like that. One time he had fasting blood work and the line was so long that it was noon by the time he had gotten his dose of coconut oil. But he was very shaky and he felt a little claustrophobic and he had trouble, his tremor, he had had a tremor that had basically gone away and that came back and just more confused. Twenty to 30 minutes after we gave him the coconut oil that he almost sighs and the tremor goes away and he can think more clearly. So we had a couple of occasions that we saw that happen. So it literally acts like energy and if you don't have it like your tank runs out of gas your car doesn't run. You know, and it was almost something like that that we were seeing.
