Healing Dry Sensitive Skin

We’ve come to believe that fats are bad. Fat is packed with calories that can easily turn to fat that we store in our bodies, in places where we don’t want it. On top of that, saturated fat is portrayed as hazardous for our hearts. And considering that heart disease is our number one killer, this is not to be taken lightly. But fats are essential to our well being. We need the essential fatty acids that they contain. The fact is, all fats are not created equal; not even the much-maligned “saturated” fats. Could we have gotten it wrong about them?

Coconut and palm oils are saturated fats, yet people who eat lots of them have far less heart disease than we do. They have been studied extensively and the scientific findings have been consistent and conclusive. People who eat lots of tropical oils have less heart disease than people who eat so-called hearty-friendly, polyunsaturated vegetable oils. So why don’t we hear more about these good saturated fats?

The soybean lobby was behind the fiction that saturated fats are bad for us. They targeted the tropical oils that were used extensively in food processing, looking to create a market for their product. Unfortunately, they succeeded. Vegetable oils came to replace tropical oils in our processed food. Trans-fats, used extensively in margarine and shortening, were born. But instead of improved health and wellness, we have seen an increase in heart disease and obesity.

Not all of our health problems are a result of the switch into vegetable oils, of course. But we have not been well served by the shift out of healthy tropical oils, into unstable vegetable oils and franken-fats. And 30 years later, saturated fats continue to be castigated as bad for us.

The evidence says otherwise. Extensive studies of those cultures where coconut and palm oils are consumed in large quantities show that there is no link whatsoever between consumption of those fats and heart disease. In fact, the people who eat the most of them have the least heart disease. Nothing hard to figure out there, really.

These fats are highly stable, meaning they do not go rancid and become fodder for free radicals in our bodies, causing aging and degenerative disease.

They are not digested in the same way as other fats. They go straight to the liver, by-passing the digestive processes that cause fat molecules to circulate though blood vessels and potentially clog them. And they are converted immediately into energy, in much the same way as carbohydrates.
People who switch from vegetable oils to coconut oil, and keep their total calorie intake constant, find that they lose weight as a result of the switch.

Different fats behave differently in our bodies, depending on their composition. There are unhealthy saturated fats, and there are healthy ones. Coconut oil is one of the healthiest fats we can consume, and it is time to change the misleading message that continues to be put forth that “saturated fats are bad.”

I use coconut oil in my cooking, and in my organic moisturizer. I recommend it for internal and external use. I find it especially helpful in caring for extra dry skin.