Plant Oil Generates Powerful Health Benefits
A recent study, conducted at the Postgraduate Program in Cardiology at the School of Medicine, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil evaluated the health effects of extra virgin coconut oil. The study focused primarily on how coconut oil affects HDL cholesterol and a range of other measurements, such as body weight, size, and circumference.
All study participants were hypertensive, had abnormal blood lipid profiles and were taking standard cholesterol-lowering drugs. For the first three months, 136 participants were put on a standardized diet.
During the third month and onward, the 116 who completed the first phase were placed in two intervention groups. The first group contained 22 participants who remained on the diet. The remaining 92 were put on the diet and given an additional 13 ml of extra virgin coconut oil daily (equivalent to approximately one tablespoon).
The results at the end of the three months showed that the group of participants taking coconut oil experienced a decrease in all six of the bodily parameters measured, including weight (reduction of .6 kilograms), body mass (reduction of .2 kg), waist circumference (reduction of 2.1 cm), neck perimeter (reduction of 4cm), systolic blood pressure (reduction of 3.3 points), and diastolic blood pressure (reduction of 3.5 points). Participants also experienced a 3.1 to 7.4 mg increase in HDL cholesterol.
The researchers concluded that “nonpharmoacological interventions are essential for risk factor control in secondary prevention among patients with coronary disease. Our study showed that a diet rich in extra virgin coconut oil seems to favor the reduction of WC and the increase of HDL-C concentrations, raising with secondary prevention for CAD patients.”
Source:
http://www.worldhealth.net/news/tablespoon-coconut-oil-produces-significan-health-/