CoolTweetPete
Member
This was posted on the Ray Peat Fans Facebook, and I wanted to get everyone's take. The author points to studies showing increased chances of autoimmunity in people who consume large amounts of coconut oil. He recommends people, who eat more than a couple of tablespoons of coconut oil consume large amounts of vegetables in order to promote fermentation and formation of short-chain fatty acids.
No one on Facebook has offered any sort of rebuttal. I've included some relevant excerpts from the article. Link to the article and studies at the bottom. Would love to get folks take on this as I am far too dumb to argue against it lol.
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In this study, researchers first added FAs ranging from C4 to C12 (from butyric acid to lauric acid) to naïve mouse T cells, showing that as the length of hydrocarbon backbone increased, the number of T cells that differentiated into Th17 cells increased in a strikingly linear fashion.
So what are Th17 cells, and why should we care?
Imbalanced T cell subsets drive numerous autoimmune diseases, and an abundance Th17 cells (called Th17-skewed immune system) can result in inflammatory autoimmune disease, including intestinal bowel disorder (IBD) and multiple sclerosis (MS).
See, Th17 cells are meant to attack parasites and pathogenic bacteria, but having too many of them in your body can increase the chances of their attacking your own tissues, such as myelin sheaths in the case of MS. But while Th17 cells promote inflammation, they can be balanced by anti-inflammatory regulatory T cells (Tregs), and it is the ratio of pro- and anti-inflammatory T cells, not the absolute number of each cell type, that is predictive of health and disease.
Anyways, so back to this study. Mice eating higher amounts of LA exhibited Th17-skewing in the intestines, worsened MS symptoms, and changes in the microbiome (reduction in Prevotellaceae and S24-7 of the bacteria Bacteroidetes phylum). Disease worsening was actually worsened by this microbiota shift, as repeating this study with germ-free mice (that have no intestinal microbiota) did not result in Th17-skewing.
To be clear, these results show that high amounts of coconut oil can create rampant inflammation, nerve damage and worsen an autoimmune disease.
Remarkably, feeding mice the SCFA proprionic acid (C3) both prevented the onset and alleviated symptoms of MS. The overall conclusion of this study is that through the intestinal microbiota, LCFA can induce pro-inflammatory T cells, and SCFA ca induce anti-inflammatory, regulatory T cells.
Therefore, SCFA can mitigate the harmful effects of LCFA.
In other words, if you consume SCFA along with your coconut and MCT oil based LCFAs, you mitigate the damage.
And where do you get SCFAs in quite generous amounts?
You guess it: vegetables.
A high-fat diet? Thumbs mostly down.
A high-fat diet mixed with a high intake of nutrient-rich, SCFA-inducing plants? Thumbs up.
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http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/201 ... xtremists/
http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/wp- ... estine.pdf
No one on Facebook has offered any sort of rebuttal. I've included some relevant excerpts from the article. Link to the article and studies at the bottom. Would love to get folks take on this as I am far too dumb to argue against it lol.
------------------------------------
In this study, researchers first added FAs ranging from C4 to C12 (from butyric acid to lauric acid) to naïve mouse T cells, showing that as the length of hydrocarbon backbone increased, the number of T cells that differentiated into Th17 cells increased in a strikingly linear fashion.
So what are Th17 cells, and why should we care?
Imbalanced T cell subsets drive numerous autoimmune diseases, and an abundance Th17 cells (called Th17-skewed immune system) can result in inflammatory autoimmune disease, including intestinal bowel disorder (IBD) and multiple sclerosis (MS).
See, Th17 cells are meant to attack parasites and pathogenic bacteria, but having too many of them in your body can increase the chances of their attacking your own tissues, such as myelin sheaths in the case of MS. But while Th17 cells promote inflammation, they can be balanced by anti-inflammatory regulatory T cells (Tregs), and it is the ratio of pro- and anti-inflammatory T cells, not the absolute number of each cell type, that is predictive of health and disease.
Anyways, so back to this study. Mice eating higher amounts of LA exhibited Th17-skewing in the intestines, worsened MS symptoms, and changes in the microbiome (reduction in Prevotellaceae and S24-7 of the bacteria Bacteroidetes phylum). Disease worsening was actually worsened by this microbiota shift, as repeating this study with germ-free mice (that have no intestinal microbiota) did not result in Th17-skewing.
To be clear, these results show that high amounts of coconut oil can create rampant inflammation, nerve damage and worsen an autoimmune disease.
Remarkably, feeding mice the SCFA proprionic acid (C3) both prevented the onset and alleviated symptoms of MS. The overall conclusion of this study is that through the intestinal microbiota, LCFA can induce pro-inflammatory T cells, and SCFA ca induce anti-inflammatory, regulatory T cells.
Therefore, SCFA can mitigate the harmful effects of LCFA.
In other words, if you consume SCFA along with your coconut and MCT oil based LCFAs, you mitigate the damage.
And where do you get SCFAs in quite generous amounts?
You guess it: vegetables.
A high-fat diet? Thumbs mostly down.
A high-fat diet mixed with a high intake of nutrient-rich, SCFA-inducing plants? Thumbs up.
-----------------------------------
http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/201 ... xtremists/
http://www.bengreenfieldfitness.com/wp- ... estine.pdf