Zhong-Yi Liu's Blog: Appeal to Study the Efficacy and Safety of Coconut Oil on Dementia
Coconut & the Tree
Appeal to Study the Efficacy and Safety of Coconut Oil on Dementia
History allows present scholars to integrate the collective wisdom and experience of the past for study using the methods of modern science. It is an approach for resolving intransigent contemporary problems.
As human life expectancy increases, the rist of slipping into dementia is growing. Many people will live to be octogenarians, and it is estimated that one third to one half of them will die with some form of dementia, as they will forget familiar events or they may even be unable to recognize their loved ones. This tragic prospect generates fear in individuals and challenges for institutions to provide the care that they need. Unfortunately, modern medicine can do nothing to change the tragedy as it stands today.
Current literature offers compelling evidence that, after taking a moderate dose of edible coconut oil (CO), for example, 20 grams twice daily for three months, symptoms of dementia could be alleviated and even reversed, not just delayed.(1) Because there are also patients with no response, large-scale testing is needed to discover the treatment indicators. However, since CO is a common cooking oil and therefore not eligible for patent protection, necessary clinical testing for its use would not be commercially profitable. This is similar to the situation in the U.S. in the 1950s when Li2CO3for treating bipolar disorders was ineligible for a patent in the U.S.(2) Even though it was known from the 1949 work of Australian psychiatrist John Cade, MD (1912-1980) that Li2CO3satisfied efficacy and safety requirements for the treatment of bipolar disorders, and that many European countries endorsed its use, the US-FDA received no evidence in clinical studies in the U.S. to satisfy its requirements of efficacy and safety. It was not until 1976, after nearly all other industrialized nations worldwide had accepted it, that the use of Li2CO3was authorized in the U.S.
What CO is to dementia today is similar to what Li2CO3was to bipolar disorders in the 1950s in America. Although some cases of dementia are known to show positive responses to CO, no one would underwrite the financial cost of the requisite clinical study to demonstrate its efficacy and safety as required by the US-FDA. At this juncture, is there something revealing from the history of medicine to break the bottleneck?
Probably so. We may learn a thing or two from the Austrian psychiatrist Julius Wagner-Juaregg, MD (1857-1940). He won the 1927 Nobel Laureate for physiology and medicine for his discovery of Fever Therapy for syphilitic dementia. At the time, cases of that kind of dementia were at their height, and most of the victims were cured by his newly discovered therapy. Why?
Dr. Wagner-Juaregg found, by chance, a demented man who was a long time patient in an asylum. For no apparent reason, the man abruptly became nearly normal. This had never been known to happen before, and no one understood why the patient improved. Dr. Wagner-Juaregg was one of the few who were seeking the truth, and his dogged efforts paid off.(3)
Unlike the 1920s when doctors could carry out medical experiments on their patients, such approaches today—even of the patient’s condition improving—are considered unethical and the basis for malpractice lawsuits. In addition, modern medicine is linked to the financial profitability of numerous groups, public and private. So an individual physician is unable to work alone to discover what subtype of “senile dementia” might respond to CO and what subtype might not if we could work them out stratified by something. Large-scale, double blind clinical studies would be needed, and they require equally large-scale financial investment. Since profit cannot be assured to would-be investors, it is unlikely that the necessary studies will be done.
The problem is further complicated by the fact that CO is considered a saturated fatty acid. Physicians may worry that patients might experience elevated levels of blood lipids as a side effect, since older patients are often treated for elevated levels of blood lipids. Today two opposite views have been reported in the international medical literature: one says that blood lipids increase and the other says they do not(4). The best approach would be to set up in vivo studies, administer measured quantities of CO, and then measure blood lipids. As noted, because there is little or no potential for financial profit and there is legal risk, it is unlikely this will be done.
This is the awkward situation that the medico-pharmaceutical industry faces and that hinders doctors’ finding promising therapies using common substances. At 84 years of age and as a life-long, now retired, neuro-psychiatrist, I am appealing to the public and to interested philanthropists to provide a special fund to explore the benefits of CO for dementia. This may expedite a less expensive product for treatment of dementia than those currently used and authorized by Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance companies.
(Acknowledgment: Ms. Elaine McKee, RN, has helped with the text revision that the author would like to express his gratitude.)
Literature
(1) Mary Newport， M.D. Alzheimer’s Disease: What If There Was a Cure。 Basic Health， 2011。
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