Coconut oil proves a powerful cure-all

Coconut oil proves a powerful cure-all

Slamet Susanto, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

While most babies his age were crawling around and getting frequent cuddles from their parents and relatives, 14-month-old Farhan had to bear the excruciating itch of eczema.

The condition of Farhan, whose rash covered almost his entire body, disturbed his uncle, Muhammad Amien, who tried to think of a way to help his beloved nephew.

Muhammad, a resident of Karanganyar regency in Central Java, was frustrated as the family had tried many ways to help the baby.

"It was very depressing to see Farhan always scratching the eczema, which eventually developed into scabs, while he could only cry as he could not bear the itchy feeling," Muhammad said.

Last month, when Muhammad was in Yogyakarta he chanced on an article in a local newspaper describing the curative properties of minyak kelapa, or coconut oil. The article said the refined oil was being produced by Gadjah Mada University's School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences and had been found useful in treating a series of ailments, including heart disease, hepatitis, and eczema. Curious, he went to the campus and bought four bottles of it.

"Arriving at home, I rubbed the oil on to Farhan's body and gave him some to drink. To our surprise, only two days later the eczema was drying. It's now completely cured," Muhammad said.

Researcher Bambang Setiadi, who developed the production of the coconut oil and conducted research into its healing powers, said that coconut oil did have many healing capacities, due to the high degree of laurat acid content, which was some 49 to 50 percent.

Laurat acid was similar to the acid in breast milk that could help prevent several diseases and was capable of killing off viruses, bacteria, and fungi, he said. Like breast milk acid, the acid in the oil was a good treatment for premature babies with weak immune systems. It was also a good treatment for varicose veins and prostate problems.

Quoting a book entitled The Healing Miracles of Coconut Oil written by nutritionist Jon J. Kabara of the U.S., Bambang said the laurat acid content in coconut oil could also kill numerous bacteria including listeria monocylogenes, helicobacter phlori, streptococcus aglalactiae and be used to combat viruses such as HIV, hepatitis C, and herpes viridae.

However, due to unfair business competition during the New Order era involving palm oil tycoon ..... , who wanted his product to dominate the country's cooking oil market, the popularity of coconut oil in the country decreased.

A campaign against coconut oil said it was less hygienic and contained higher levels of saturated fat, which caused high cholesterol in human blood. As a result, people preferred to consume palm oil than the healing substance-rich coconut oil.

But while coconut oil does contain a high content of saturated fat, Bambang said it was of a short-chain chemical structure (struktur kimia rantai pendek) that would not cause large deposits of fat in the human body. In fact, the oil was capable of quickly converting fat into energy, explaining why it was also good for dieting, and was not thus easily detected, leading to its sometime use as a doping agent.

"The fat (in the oil) is completely different from animal fats, which have a long-chain chemical structure and are dangerous for human health," Bambang said, adding that palm oil, similarly, contained alpha carotene that could accelerate the growth of cancer cells in the human body.

It was also because of its capability of burning fat that this year the oil was tested on 15 patients suffering from coronary heart disease in Jakarta, who had been ordered by their doctors to undergo heart bypass surgery. For three consecutive weeks they drank 5 cc of coconut oil, three times a day. By the end of the test, 12 of the participating patients had improved sufficiently that they did not need the surgery.

This year, coconut oil has also been tested on patients with hepatitis C. After taking the oil for three consecutive weeks, laboratory tests revealed the proliferation of the hepatitis C virus was down by 70 percent than before they took the oil.

"We are now developing it to treat patients with HIV/AIDS," Bambang said. Efforts to use coconut oil to treat human diseases were started last year after he found an article about its healing properties on the Internet written by Kabara, he said.

Research into the oil here, Bambang said, had been going on since 1985. However, it was not for medical purposes but to look for a way to produce a coconut cooking oil that would last longer. Traditional coconut oil production, which involved heating it meant the product would go rancid quickly.

After a series of different studies, the university finally succeeded in producing clear, rancid-proof coconut oil. So clear is the oil that it looks like water, although it feels greasy when touched.

The unlike the research, the refining technology is simple, the oil is refined by mixing the correct amount of the already- refined oil into coconut milk, stirring it thoroughly and evenly, and leaving it for about six to seven hours.

"The oil will separate itself from the other substances in the coconut milk and can last for nine years without going off," he said.

Presently, by employing more than 400 people, split into about 20 small factories in the Galur sub-district, Kulonprogo, the school is able to process about 4,500 fresh coconuts a day and produces some 4,000 bottles of coconut oil, each containing about 100 cc of oil.

"It is of course still far below the demand. That's why we are currently training new workers in some coconut plantation centers in the country, including Riau," Bambang said.