The Surprising Health Benefits of Coconut Oil - Part II

Why Coconut Oil Benefits Your Health — What Makes It So Powerful?

"The secret lies in its saturated fat structure and the size of the structure. Let me take you into the fat structure so that I can show you clearly why the unique fat in coconut oil can benefit your health so much. Sorry, it's gonna be somewhat technical, but I promise I'll keep it as simple as possible so that I won't bore you to death. 

Are you ready? Here we go.

All oils are essentially made up of 3 types of fatty acids:

• Saturated Fat — consists of a chain of carbon atoms (denoted by 'C') fully attached with hydrogen atoms (denoted by 'H').'O' means oxygen atom.
• Monounsaturated Fat — similar to saturated fat structure except for a missing pair of hydrogen atoms. The missing hydrogen pair will cause the 2 neighboring carbon atoms to bond with each other via a double bond. A single bond between carbon atoms is stronger than a double bond. Hence the double bonding between carbon atoms indicates its vulnerability to external attack and will readily react with free radicals (unstable atoms or molecules) that come into contact with it.
• Polyunsaturated Fat — similar to monounsaturated fat except that it lacks 2 or more pairs of hydrogen atoms in the chain. 'Poly' means many. Since there could occur 2 or more double bonding, this type of fat is very unstable and thus, highly susceptible to oxidative damage.

Fully filled with hydrogen atoms, saturated fat (in coconut oil) remains very stable because it allows no space for other atoms to fit in. Even when you expose the oil to oxygen, heat or light, it doesn't encourage oxidation easily. Hence, formation of free radicals basically won't take place. As a result, it doesn't compromise coconut oil's health benefits.

Whereas the other two types of fat (especially polyunsaturated fat) are very prone to oxidation and free radicals formation at the exposure of heat, light and / or oxygen. Therefore, in terms of structure they are inferior to that of saturated fat.

If the oil (containing predominantly unsaturated fats) gets oxidized, its fundamental health benefits and properties will change totally even though it may still smell and taste seemingly normal. 

But free radicals don't just enter our body through dietary channel. Free radicals appear everywhere in the environment. The more polluted the environment, the more free radicals there are, and the more you will inhale.That's why people who consume oxidized polyunsaturated fat tend to develop cancer and degenerative diseases faster and more easily than those who do not or eat lesser.

In other words, there may be no way you can completely stop the assault by free radicals, but you can strengthen your resistance to their attacks by eating coconut oil which contains abundance of saturated fats (about 92%) acting as antioxidants.

That means your chances of developing cancers and degenerative diseases will become much slimmer with regular consumption of coconut oil."

http://www.ionehealth.com/nutrition-health/coconut-oil-health-benefits.htm

As we can see in this part of the article there is a more technical analysis and explanation of why at a molecular level coconut oil's medium-chain fatty acid makeup has exceedingly anticarcinogenic properties.

All saturated fats are not necessarily bad; as we see with coconut oil it depends on the type, quality, and freshness of the saturated fat.  In coconut oil's case, medium-chain fatty acids make up the vast majority of its composition of saturated fat, and as a result of the inherent benefits of such fatty acids, coconut oil is a very healthy source of dietary fat.  Perhaps one of the healthiest on Earth.