Coconut Oil Side Effects

You need to take it even slower it seems. i would recommend only 1 TEAspoon for a week, then step up gradually. It's not a race

I don't think that you should take VCO late in the afternoon as I have read that it will keep you from sleeping, the same goes for vitamins, for example and even MSM or anything that gives you energy!

You are taking in an additional 300 calories per day. If you are not cutting out the same amount of calories, you are going to gain weight, to the tune of about 1 pound every 12 days.

Coconut oil has 120 calories per tablespoon. Your taking in an extra 360 calories daily which is like eating an extra meal. One pound is equal to 3500 calories. Every 10 to 12 days you will gain a pound if you don't work the extra 360 off. The oil is beneficial, just x out your morning bagel or evening dessert, or run for 20 minutes daily. Best of luck

As with any living organisms, they tend to run away from the source trying to kill them. This happens even in cancer. My favorite solution is to get a magnesium chloride solution and apply to the red unknown area and apply that as many times as possible. However, there is other possibilities, such as applying vinegar, or lugol's solution to the area. You need at least apply this 6 to 8 times a day for it to begin working. However magnesium tends to work almost immediately in some cases. Vinegar tends to work against virus and some fungus, but you need to keep getting vinegar long enough, or with the solution such as 20 minutes at least. The lugol's works best against virus, but also the fungus.

If I am dealing with the fungus issue, it is best to keep the body alkalized as the best approach in general, as fungus can't exist in more alkaline condition. At the very least the simplest of all solution, is 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda taken 30 minutes after meal, preferably three times a day. If it is taken for about two weeks, the fungus will begin to subside, not in every case, because yeast and fungus may still persist in certain areas of the body. The reason why they won't completely die off is that they will survive on one more thing: sugar either from fruits, sweet drinks and any sugar. Thereafter they may persist on wheat, white bread and flour. A person with a mineral deficiencies, such as chromium, selenium, molybdenum, copper and manganese tend to be low in people with this condition. A simple vitamin to reduce some candida that I know is niacinamide vitamin B3. If the red thing on the arm is indeed a fungus, a strong solution, say 50% vitamin B3 niacinamide apply to the skin should kill them. The same is true if 250 mg of niacinamide is taken 4 times a day, for about a week or so. The chemical properties of niacinamide seems to prevent the fungus from attaching to healthy cells, hence kill it off that way, technically it kills by disturbing the fungus metabolism. However, I do find people with fungus issue are also low on B1 thiamine, and B2 riboflavin.

Ted

The "C" shape is usually indicative of hives, which means your body is treating the coconut as an allergen, and releases histamine which form in little raised formations. The hives can go away in one spot, then come back in another spot. Try taking an antihistamine for symptoms and get an allergy test done before further use.

Hi Francesca...Regarding using coconut oil for cooking, her is what Wikipedia has to say:

"Coconut oil is very heat stable so it makes an excellent cooking and frying oil. It has a smoke point of about 360°F (180°C). Because of its stability it is slow to oxidize and thus resistant to rancidity, lasting up to two years due to high saturated fat content."

"Coconut oil is commonly used in cooking, especially when frying. In communities where coconut oil is widely used in cooking, the unrefined oil is the one most commonly used. Coconut oil is commonly used to flavor many South Asian curries. It does not create any harmful byproducts when heated"

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_oil

I am not sure exactly why the coconut oil should cause your constipation -- it did the opposite for me and cleared my own constipation quickly, although if your pancreas was not producing enough bicarbonates or your liver was not producing enough bile, this too could also cause constipation issues. Whilst I was doing my own Candida remedy and taking coconut oil(and other remedies), I also took Milk Thistle capsules which helps support the liver as well as to help stimulate the liver's production of bile.

Perhaps the secret here is to also drink plenty of water with your meals too, and I would beware of eating too much dessicated fruit as this would definitely tend to reduce the moisture of the faeces.

Sorry Bill, two more questions. Is there a test for Candida? I ask this because a while ago a guy contacted me about eye floaters and he told me that he was convinced that he had Candida and was being tested for it but my natural doctor says that you can't really test for Candida or else you would have to test everywhere where you could have it. Another question is supposing that I have Candida (no idea so far, just guessing) is it good to take molasses? I have no idea what kind of molasses it is, here they don't tell but I buy it in a good health shop.

As far as the coconut oil I looked on Wikipedia and couldn't find anything about grilling or barbecuing but I suppose that you shouldn't do that because the heat is too high. A pity because when I feel like a simple meal I often grill a bit of meat or fish in the oven.

I still have constipation but today and yesterday I have been doing a juice fast. Tomorrow I will start eating fruit first thing in the morning, it usually helps me. I do have a bad digestion so maybe that is what caused it when I started cooking with coconut oil and taking it in my tea.

Hi Francisca...There are well over 20 symptoms of Candida, and I've read much evidence how candida can lead to a multitude of other serious ailments including cancer. I've just recently read some research that found to their amazement, in a research trial of diabetics, that all the diabetic participants had candida.

But these days even doctors can be fooled by candida, very difficult to diagnose, especially if it is hidden and masked by symptoms of another major ailment.

As to your question:

"Another question is supposing that I have Candida (no idea so far, just guessing) is it good to take molasses?"

No, it isn't so good to take ordinary molasses. If you want to take molasses as an aid to health then you must use only BLACKSTRAP MOLASSES(BSM) -- not the same as ordinary molasses.

BSM is made from the third boiling of sugar cane juice -- which has much less sugar than ordinary molasses, and BSM contains more iron, potassium and other minerals. Ordinary molasses is made from the first or second boiling of sugar cane, and has too much sugar, and is not as good for you as BSM. I took BSM as part of my regimen for Candida because I wanted extra potassium from a natural source. But I wouldn't say that BSM was an essential part of my candida regimen, you don't have to use it if you'ld rather not do so.

I just use a spoonful of BSM in my coffee every morning just to get the minerals, which is a tasty way to take BSM.

Bill, I assume that the molasses you buy here here BSM because it is only sold in halth shops, not refined, very black and quite bitter. In this part of Europe people just don't use molasses so it is not available in supermarkets.

By the way, coconut oil is horribly expensive here! Maybe five times more expensive than olive oil.

So... if I understand well there is no test for Candida which is a pity. I don't know why that other guy contacted me to tell me that he was being tested for Candida because of eye floaters. In the past few days I was on a juice fast and the itching in my eyes stopped completely so maybe it is indeed related to Candida. In my Coconut oil book the author talks about a coconut detox, do you have any experience with it or maybe someone else?

Hi Francisca...Blackstrap molasses isn't really essential to my diet protocol -- it's just a nice convenient way to ingest minerals -- and they grow sugar cane here in the Philippines, so its cheap.

Yes, I know how much it costs in UK to buy VCO. But again, here in the Philippines every third tree is a coconut tree...LOL, so this too is pretty cheap.

Yes, there is a test for Candida -- called the Spit Test, but I don't know how reliable it is. Check this site:

http://www.adhdrelief.com/CandidaTest.html

I confess that I've never heard of the coconut detox that you mention. I just use it for all my cooking now.

Hi Cpn...I think your protocol is fine as it stands. But the yellow stool might also be due to problems with bile production from your liver, so I would just buy a good liver herb for some liver protection and take that.

I religiously used all of Ted's alkalizing remedies, at one time or another, every day for my own anti-candida protocol, even the bare 1/2 tps baking soda on its own with water at times. I also took a good brand of Milk Thistle herb capsule to protect my liver. I also took molasses in my coffee every day and avoided all foods containing standard veg oils like canola, and avoided all food containing sugar or sweeteners.

I also made up my own tri-herbal remedy as a general tonic, but you've probably read about that anyway. Other than that, I ate fairly normally and had the occasional glass of wine to make it all bearable..LOL.

I have been there. one constant was lack of exercise. when i was exercising all itching went away. when i stopped it came back. body can not eliminate toxins easily with out it. believe me tried all the stuff you did too. so bad woke me up at night some times. if your itching is around the torso area at its worst, mine always started around the breast area and then would move further out it is because i think one of the places where lymph tissue is trying to unload waste is located in the pit area. drink lots of water and try to get some exercise. serious. i suffered for months and tried everything!!!

You could try soaking in an epsom salt bath - 1-3 cups of epsom salts in warm water.

And definitely stop using all of your products..

Perhaps one day you can try new products but until you get this under control stop.

You can wash yourself fine in the epsom salt water - I have even used this in the past for hair washing.

If you absolutely need soap you can use some natural olive oil soap like kiss my face which has no coconut oil in it. After you get out of your bath you can use olive oil or any other oil you are not allergic to all over you body.

Hope you feel better soon. Drink lots of water.

Wow, you have described me exactly. I have the exact same symptoms. More anxiety, less sleep, heart racing, light-headed. It's been a week since I stopped taking the oil and I am still getting heart palpitations. It's been awful. I hadn't taken it in over a month and I decided to try some again. I only took it twice-a couple tsp each time-and I ended up with the worst heart palpitations ever that don't seem to be going away this time. In fact, I went to the cardiologist today because it's so unsettling and it really freaks me out! They didn't find anything yet, but I need further testing to make sure it's not serious. It seems like every time I try to incorporate CO into my diet my symptoms get worse. I've also tried it topically and ended up with red bumps all over my face. This time, I will not be trying again. Ever. It's nice to know I'm not alone! I will try to follow up and I would like to hear your experience too. Best wishes!

It has been a little over a week, and i am still having that nervous feeling, like i cannot calm down, like i am on caffeine. i have been concerned about my heart as well; especially because i have anxiety and i keep thinking something is wrong with me. i just don't feel right. i haven't been getting the fluttering anymore, but i think i have other symptoms of palpitations, like being too aware of my heart rate; just a nervous feeling in my chest.i get lightheaded, too. i wish it would just get out of my system, i am tired of this.i think someone else's post said they were better within two weeks. someone said it could be that if your liver is sluggish, the coconut oil would cause this. this makes sense to me, because i know i have a sluggish liver, and i read somewhere else that coconut oil is converted to energy directly in the liver and that is something that makes it different from other fats, and while the liver is sluggish, the person may not be able to process it properly.

Can anybody who has had side effects with coconut oil tell me how long it takes to leave the system? i have been off of it for two weeks. i feel like it has ruined my life. i constantly feel my heart beating and i am nervous and my resting heart rate is higher than my normal. i was up almost all night. i cannot find answers; nobody really knows why it has this effect. i have four children and i am worried about this all day and night.

Amanda, I'd take some magnesium and see if that helps (there's lots of magnesium info here at EC to guide you on types and dosages). I don't take coconut oil because it gives me palpitations as well. I have autoimmune thyroid disease which can swing from hypo to hyper. I don't think anyone with an overactive thyroid should take coconut oil supplementally as it stimulates the thyroid. I wonder if you have an underlying thyroid condition. Anxiety, sleeplessness, and nervousness can be all be symptoms as well. You might want to get your thyroid tested (be sure they test Free T3 and Free T4 in addition to their usual TSH, and consider getting antibody tests as well). Let us know if you do that as it may help others reading here in future, and also let us know if the magnesium helps. If it doesn't, there's a bugleweed/motherwort compound that is sold at a major vitamin dealer online which might be helpful. Bugleweed is a thyroxin antagonist which has been useful in treating hyperthyroid conditions as well as irregular heartbeat. Motherwort has similar properties.

You should of course research thoroughly for yourself before trying any remedy. Good luck, and please do update us!

Thanks, you all who have responded. i will try to make this short. the magnesium oil i had put on the bottom of my feet did help that day, but the next day i decided to take a bath in the crystals (from the same company) i was not aware until after the fact that the crystals are stronger than the oil, and i am not a large person 127 lbs, and i didn't fill the tub very much because i did not want to dilute it too much. well, that night was AWFUL! i had palpitations all night and couldn't sleep. i am a sensitive person and i do not need much of whatever i take.anyway, i went out to a friend that sells herbs from a well known company and she had something that can tell you what supplements your body needs at the time, and you don't even enter information into the computer. you put your hold your hand on something that is like a computer mouse (it is like muscle testing). anyway, magnesium malate came up for me, and i started taking it yesterday evening. i calmed down and was able to sleep and it is 10:30 p.m and i have been doing great.i even was very nervous because i am afraid of it coming back and i checked my pulse and was sure it would be high because of being so nervous.it was 67, which is my normal.praise God!anyway, i had tried magnesium glycinate a few days ago and that had made me feel worse, too. a few years ago i had taken magnesium citrate for depression and it made me feel terrible and weird. so i said all of this to say that sometimes even the same thing but in different forms could affect a person different. it's good to find someone who muscle tests. anyway, like someone had said, maybe the coconut oil can use up your magnesium and that could be one reason to affect some people this way.

I am not a doctor but have been told that detox can take years as toxins can be stored away in fat tissue and slowly release as fat is burned. I am told this is why lsd flashbacks can happen years after initial ingestion. I am told that this can apply to almost anything from prescription and over the counter drugs to caffeine and vitamins in addition to more well known toxins. Sweating is the best way to detox fast and MSM can help with that. Smaller doses of VCO should result in less fat burning to help minimize daily detox.

Those SYMPTOMS are DIE OFF so in that case decrease the amount that you are taking to a dose low enough that you an handle the detoxification symptoms. THYROID problems are mostly an INFECTION and the coconut oil kills the infection over time. If you can't take it orally at first, then use it on your skin and hair. Then after a few weeks try a small amount orally and use that amount until you have no more reaction, then build up over time. This will benefit your body greatly, so don't be afraid of it. In the long-run your body will be better for it and all of the microbes that were making you ill will be under control... As long as you use it for life!

You have to be really careful with which symptoms you blame as "die off. " I have also read that if you are deficient in saturated fats, which your heart needs, the Virgin Coconut Oil will cause it to overact. That person recommended continuing taking the vco, but if it is making you unable to sleep after a month of taking it, I would just stop.

Anyone that is sensitive to heart rate increases is going to have difficulty dealing with these symptoms. It will become both a mental and physical illness. Please do not blame everything on this "die off" process that I have yet to even be able to find actual scientific evidence of. I am not saying it is not real, but people can have negative reactions to foods for a number of reasons; some that could be dangerous.

I have anxiety as well and have been trying Virgin Coconut Oil (very good, highly recommended brand) for three days now. I experience about 5 hours of heart palpitations, dizziness, the shakes, etc. All the symptoms of panic attacks. This is after 1 tablespoon in the morning. I am going to try cutting way down because the antifungal/bacterial aspect of Virgin Coconut Oil _is_ medically proven, but if this persists I am going to have to stop.

Not all negative side effects are "die off."

I understand the distrust in modern medicine, but please be careful with these kinds of sites. Going natural is great, but I have yet to read a medical professional on this site comment on anything and there is a certain amount of biological knowledge that comes with a medical degree that we as laymen just do not have.

I don't think it is true as I have blood -0 and just love using coconut oil either on my skin or drinking it with orange juice (1 tbsp in a cup). I had awful red, itchy skin spots after keeping exfoliant overnight (I was sure it was lotion!) and coconut oil was my treatment of choice-better after one day, no trace after a week.

I have to add as well. I am O and I love coconut oil, both internally and externally. My body did not love it at first as I did not know I had a candida issue, which I quickly found out. Die-off symptoms can be unpleasant. I knew from doing a little pre-reading some of the things to expect--just incase I were to have a Candida problem. Could people be allergic? Maybe. I would have to say though with most cases it is just any number of die-off symptoms. We are all different and react in different ways weather it is listed as a symptom or not. My take--slowly expose yourself to it even if it is just 1x a week then 2x a week. Use just as a lotion on a covered part of the body if your breaking out or even a hand lotion once or twice a week. Expose yourself slowly then gradually increase and decrease sugar intake cause your feeding the Candida. I agree with Lisa From Thousand Oaks, CA; Candida is a serious problem in the US. Of course Dr.s won't get on board, they are getting used to the extra income. If they help their patients cure the dozens of ailments that Candida causes then they loose income. It is getting time we wise up and take control and educate ourselves and family. TV isn't helping either. Have you noticed lately on about every channel just about ever other commercial is a drug commercial be it over the counter or Rx. It is big business and they will do anything to keep the revenue!

I'm also 0 Rhesus negative and I had bad intestinal candida 3 years ago. Part of my protocol was to take 3 tbsns of coconut oil a day.

My candida is gone, and I cook everything in virgin coconut oil now. My reasoning for this is historic and goes like this:

Before 1910, all western diets used either tallow, lard or butter(all saturated fats) as dietary cooking fats at this time. And there was no heart disease, diabetes, Parkinsons, Obeisity, Allergies, ME, Fibromyalgia, CFS, Cancer or any other auto-immune diseases that exist so widely as they do today.

One primary culprit is processed foods and, in particularly, the heavily processed dietary vegetable fats and oils that we all use now. The relatively newboy on the block is vegetable oils (not in our diets at all before 1910). We started to use both vegetable oils and margarine heavily, particularly after WW2. This is when all these strange ailments and diseases all started to appear in larger and larger numbers.

Much fear was caused in the sixties when there was a big and successful advertising push to promote vegetable oils(like Canola oil) and margarine as the best and healthiest oils for your body in the West(rather than saturated fats like coconut oil). But what many seem to forget is that vegetable oil is completely manufactured and processed chemically and is not a natural oil derived from a natural process. The same can be said about margarine -- which is a completely man-made "food".

The other problem with vegetable oils(polyunsaturates as well as mono-unsaturates like olive oil) is that they oxidize far quicker than saturated oils like coconut oil and palm oil. Saturated fats have much stronger bonds and are oxidised far slower than polyunsaturated or monounsaturated oils that contain weaker bonds, therefore saturated fats last longer, are healthier and can be heated to higher temperatures than polyunsaturated or monounsaturated fats without the dangers of oxidation. And for this reason, saturated fats like coconut oil made from a natural process(no chemicals, no deodorizing etc.) are the best oils for your body.

I also read an article recently. A respected gastro-intestinological surgeon on interview said that in all his forty years of operating on human intestines, he said that he had never ever seen what he believed to be a healthy intestine. In the majority of his operations, he described that the inner coating of the intestines of all his patients were rather black and smooth, like a dark varnish on the intestinal wall. And he believed that this was entirely caused by the heavily processed and oxidized vegetable oils in the modern diets of today.

This information may well go against the belief of some. But even the organic food industry is a big earner now. And whenever a product -- even perhaps an organic vegetable oil product -- becomes popular and a big earner, the industry will do its utmost to find ways to quicken the production of that product and take industrial shortcuts to increase profit -- and the easiest way is to invent a quicker chemical process for production. Vegetable oils and margarine are wonderful examples of this common industrial practice.

Coconut Oil is the one oil that does not spoil. It does not have to be refrigerated and it will not become rancid. What you experienced is a normal reaction for someone consuming that much coconut oil for the first time. You really must start your intake slowly. Read the Coconut Oil section and you will find everyone suggests to start slowly and build up your intake. It has amazing health benefits, don't give up. Good luck.

I know someone who weaned herself off of SSRIs. That she did was taper off very slowly for a few months. I think it does take some will power too, and won't happen without some suffering.

Also, sweating might get some of those toxins out: saunas?