skin care
Why You Should Leave a Jar of Coconut Oil Next to Your Stove and your Bathroom Sink.
If you haven’t already figured this out, I am a big fan of coconut oil for cooking. It is healthy and is a good high heat cooking medium. It does not impart a coconut taste and I honestly believe that food fried in it has a less greasy cleaner mouth feel. Well I am also a big fan of using coconut oil on my skin. I use the same organic unrefined coconut oil that I cook with on my skin. It has a pleasant smell and makes my skin so soft. The organic unrefined coconut oil I use comes from Whole Foods and is pretty reasonably priced, around $5 for a 16 oz. jar. I just scoop some out with a spoon, rub it in my hands and spread it all over my body. My skin glistens for awhile after application, but fairly quickly absorbs into my skin. I have never had a problem with it staining my clothes either. Why use coconut oil as a skin moisturizer instead of other commercial lotions or moisturizers? Simply put its better for you and has a host of other benefits as well.
Published studies in medical journals show that coconut, in one form or another, may provide a wide range of health benefits. Some of these include:
- Reduces inflammation.
- Supports tissue healing and repair.
- Supports and aids immune system function.
- Is heart healthy; improves cholesterol ratio reducing risk of heart disease.
- Protects arteries from injury that causes atherosclerosis and thus protects against heart disease.
- Helps prevent periodontal disease and tooth decay.
- Functions as a protective antioxidant.
- Helps to protect the body from harmful free radicals that promote premature aging and degenerative disease.
- Does not deplete the body’s antioxidant reserves like other oil.
Bruce Fife, N.D., a prolific author on the use and benefits of coconut oil, warns against the use of most commercial moisturizers that are predominantly water. This is because the moisture is quickly absorbed into dry, wrinkled skin. As the water enters the skin, it expands the tissues, like filling a balloon with water, so that wrinkles fade away and the skin feels smoother. But this is only temporary. As soon as the water evaporates or is carried away by the blood stream, the dry, wrinkled skin returns. Besides the water, most lotions have an oil of some type. This oil is almost always a highly refined vegetable oil devoid of all natural protective antioxidants. As most of you know if you follow the Primal Blueprint, vegetable oils lead to a great deal of free radicals in our body. Not good, right!
As we age our skin is continually subjected to free-radical attack which breaks down the fiber and connective tissue that makes up our skin. As a result, connective tissues become hardened and lose both elasticity and strength. The skin loses its ability to hold itself together and begins to sag and become wrinkled.
Once a free-radical reaction is started it can cause a chain reaction which produces more free radicals, which ultimately damages thousands of molecules. The only way our body has to fight them is with antioxidants. When a free radical comes into contact with an antioxidant, the chain reaction is stopped. For this reason, it is good to have plenty of antioxidants in our cells and tissues to protect us.  Having anti-oxidants in skin care products is important.
Dr. Ray Peat, a biochemist who has written about the antioxidant properties of coconut oil, asserts that it is well established that dietary coconut oil reduces the need for vitamin E, but he thinks its antioxidant role is more general than that, and that it has both direct and indirect antioxidant activities.
Conventional body care products that are made with refined vegetable oils, which have all the antioxidants stripped from them are highly prone to free-radical generation. This is why you should be careful about the type of oils you use on your skin, and in your lotions, creams and lip balms. If you use a lotion, or cream with a refined oil in it you may be in fact causing your skin to age faster. The lotion may actually accelerate the aging of the skin.
Once again, according to Bruce Fife, and as we all know, one of the classic signs of old age is the appearance of brown, freckle-like spots or liver spots. It is a sign of free-radical deterioration of the lipids (fats) in our skin. Oxidation of polyunsaturated fats and protein by free radical activity in the skin is recognized as the major cause of liver spots. Because cells cannot dispose of the lipofuscin pigment, it gradually accumulates within many cells of the body as we age. Once lipofuscin pigment develops, it tends to stick around for life, but you can prevent further osication and perhaps even reduce the spots you already have by using the right kind of oils in your diet and on your skin.
Coconut oil fits this description. Pure coconut oil prevents destructive free-radical formation and provides protection against them. It can help to keep the skin from developing liver spots, and other blemishes caused by aging and over exposure to sunlight. It helps to keep connective tissues strong and supple so that the skin doesn’t sag and wrinkle. In some cases it might even restore damaged or diseased skin. The oil is absorbed into the skin and into the cell structure of the connective tissues, limiting the damage excessive sun exposure can cause.
Coconut oil will not only bring temporary relief to the skin, but it will aid in healing and repairing. It will have lasting benefits, unlike most lotions. The coconut oil will aid in removing the outer layer of dead skin cells, making the skin smoother. The skin will become more evenly textured with a healthy “shine”. While doing this the coconut oil will penetrate into the deeper layers of the skin and strengthen the underlying tissues.
How does this work. According to the scientific literature, antiseptic fatty acids in coconut oil help to prevent fungal and bacterial infections in the skin when it is consumed and to some extent, when it is applied directly to the skin. The biggest chemical barrier to infectious organisms is the acid layer on the skin. Healthy skin has a pH of about 5, making it slightly acidic. Our sweat (containing uric and lactic acids) and body oils promote this acidic environment. For this reason, sweat and oil do us good. Harmless bacteria can tolerate the acid and live on the skin, but troublesome bacteria can’t thrive and their numbers are few.
The oil our bodies produce is called sebum. Sebum is secreted by oil glands (sebaceous glands) located at the root of every hair as well as other places. This oil is very important to skin health. It softens and lubricates the skin and hair and prevents the skin from drying and cracking. Sebum also contains medium chain fatty acids, in the form of medium chain triglycerides, that can be released to fight harmful germs.
Our skin is home to many tiny organisms, most of which are harmless; some are beneficial. At least one variety of bacterium is essential to the healthy environment on our skin. It feeds on the sebum, breaking down the tryglycerides into free fatty acids. The bacteria actually feed on the glycerol part of the triglyceride. This leaves fatty acids which are now “freed” from the glycerol unit that held them together. Medium chain fatty acids which are bound to the glycerol unit as they are in coconut oil have no antimicrobial properties. However, when they are broken apart into free fatty acids, they become powerful antimicrobials.
Coconut oil is nature’s richest source of medium chain fatty acids. When coconut oil is put on the skin it doesn’t have any immediate antimicrobial action. However, when bacteria which are always present on the skin turn these triglycerides into free fatty acids, the result is an increase in the number of antimicrobial fatty acids on the skin and protection from infection. The free fatty acids also help to contribute to the acid environment on the skin which repels disease causing germs.
When bathing or showering, soap washes the protective layer of oil and acid off our skin. Often afterwards the skin becomes tight and dry. Adding moisturizers helps the skin feel better, but it does not replace the acid or the protective medium chain fatty acid layers that was removed. By using a coconut oil cream, lotion or just pure coconut oil you can quickly help reestablish the skin’s natural antimicrobial and acid barrier.
I make it a habit to slather on the coconut oil after I bathe. You should try it too. not only will it make your skin incredibly soft, it will provide greater benefits than that.
