• Home
• About
• Contact NutriBody

Palm Oil and Heart Disease

Back in 1964, a study was conducted where researchers looked for heart attack indicators in thousands of autopsies in Africa nad the United States. The findings were surprising. In the African sample (Nigeria and Uguanda), they found only 3 out of more than 4,500 hearts, while the sample from the United States showed a much higher rate.

This led them to look at the diet. In Nigeria, they typical diet consists of home-processed grains, starchy root vegetables, beans, fruit, vegetables, peanuts, red palm oil, and a bit of dairy, fish and meat. Palm oil is on one of their main dietary fats.

To extract palm oil, the fruit is steamed and flesh removed and pressed to extract the oil. Like olive oil, plam oil is gently extracted from a fruit taht is richj in the oil. The resulting palm oil is deep red and might even be the most nutrient-rich fat on the planet.

Carotenes cause the red color, but red palm oil also contains a lot of vitamin E, vitamin K1, coenzyme Q10 and assorted other fat-soluble nutrients and antioxidants, which protect the fat from becoming rancid. Some of these nutrients and anti-oxidants make it into the body, where they apparently protect the body’s own fats from oxidizing.

Widespread nutritional adice is to avoid palm oil because half of the fat it contains is saturated fat, which is supposed to be the bad stuff, with common wisdom concluding saturated fat raises blood cholesterol, which increases the risk of heart disease. Right?

First know that there’s a difference between refined palm oil and the natural extracted red palm oil. While most studies concluding the link between palm oil and cholesterol were done with refined oil, there have been a few done with red palm oil.

Dr. Suzanna Scholtz led s study where they put 59 volunteers on diets dominated by sunflower oil, refined palm oil, or red palm oil for 4 weeks (The effect of red palm olein and refined palm olein on lipids and haemostatic factors in hyperfibrinogenaemic subjects). The results showed no difference in LDL cholesterol between sunflower oil and red palm oil groups. The red palm oil group, however, saw an marked increase in HDL. LDL and HDL both increased in the refined palm oil group compared to the sunflower oil group.

There have also been investigations into whether or not palm oil promotes hardening and thickening of the arteries. So far there has been no proof collected that palm oil promotes atherosclerosis. IN fact, in its unrefined state (red palm oil) it actually protects against atherosclerosis due to its ability to reduce oxidized LDL (oxLDL). oxLDL is a major risk factor in cardiovascular disease and a much better indicator of risk than the typically measured LDL cholesterol.

Know that atherosclerosis is only one factor in heart attack risk. Other factors include clotting tendency, plaque stability, and susceptibility to arrhythmia (irregular heart rate). Another factor most people aren’t aware of is the heart’s resistance to loss of oxygen (hypoxia).

If the heart is temporarily deprived of oxygen, the heart muscle can be damaged. Nitrites from green vegetables can protect the heart from damage and red palm oil is also protective. Red palm oil has also been proven to protects against high blood pressure in rats.

All of this research indicates red palm can help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Several studies have shown that a red palm oil extract called palmvitee lowers blood lipids in humans (Lowering of serum cholesterol in hypercholesterolemic humans by tocotrienols (palmvitee), Effect of a palm-oil-vitamin E concentrate on the serum and lipoprotein lipids in humans). This protective factor seems to go away when palm oil is refined.

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.

Copyright Nutribody