How Beneficial Is MCT Oil, Really?

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Often derived from coconuts (though it doesn’t have to be), medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs) are trendy… But does the science back the hype?

First, the principle

MCTs are commonly enjoyed because unlike short- or long-chain fatty acids, they can be quickly broken down and either immediately converted quickly and easily into energy, or turned into ketones in the case of a surplus (in the case of true excess, however, it’ll simply be stored as fat).

Most of that involves the liver, so for anyone who wants a refresher on liver health:

How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver ← notwithstanding the title, this is also important knowledge even if your liver is healthy now—if you’d like it to stay healthy, anyway!

You can also read about the ins and outs of glycogen metabolism and the body’s energy-based metabolic processes in general (including the body’s energy processes that go on in the liver), here:

From Apples to Bees, and High-Fructose Cs: Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

If the liver turns the MCTs into ketones, those ketones will then be used for energy if there is insufficient glucose available (as the body will always use glucose from the blood first, if available, before moving to alternative energy sources such as ketones and/or fat reserves.)

Thus, many people look to ketones as a solution for having enough energy to function while on a very low-carb diet such as the ketogenic diet:

Ketogenic Diet: Burning Fat Or Burning Out?

…which as you’ll recall, does work for short-term weight loss, but brings long-term health risks, so should not be undertaken for long periods of time.

So, does MCT Oil help?

With regard to weight loss, the research is weak and mixed:

  • Weak, because often the methodology was shoddy, often there are many factors not controlled-for, and often the sample sizes were small (and also, RCTs by their very nature tend to be quite short-term (often 6, 8, or 12 weeks), whereas heavy reliance on ketones from MCTs may fall into the same long-term problems as the ketogenic diet in general).
  • Mixed, because the results varied widely (probably because of the aforementioned problems).

Rather than pick at individual studies, let’s look at this review and meta-analysis of 13 studies, with a combined sample size of 749 people (so you can imagine how small the individual RCTs were):

❝Compared with LCTs, MCTs decreased body weight (-0.51 kg [95% CI-0.80 to -0.23 kg]; P<0.001; I(2)=35%); waist circumference (-1.46 cm [95% CI -2.04 to -0.87 cm]; P<0.001; I(2)=0%), hip circumference (-0.79 cm [95% CI -1.27 to -0.30 cm]; P=0.002; I(2)=0%), total body fat (standard mean difference -0.39 [95% CI -0.57 to -0.22]; P<0.001; I(2)=0%), total subcutaneous fat (standard mean difference -0.46 [95% CI -0.64 to -0.27]; P<0.001; I(2)=20%), and visceral fat (standard mean difference -0.55 [95% CI -0.75 to -0.34]; P<0.001; I(2)=0%).

No differences were seen in blood lipid levels.

Many trials lacked sufficient information for a complete quality assessment, and commercial bias was detected.❞

So, if we’re going to take those numbers at face value, that means a net weight loss, over the course of the trial period, was…

*drumroll*

0.51kg (that’s about 1 lb).

To put that into perspective, if you did nothing else but pee 1 cup of urine before getting weighed, you’d register as having lost 0.25kg (or about ½ lb) by virtue of the bathroom trip alone.

Here’s the paper:

Effects of medium-chain triglycerides on weight loss and body composition: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

What about cholesterol and heart health?

With regard to cholesterol, MCT oil is touted as improving blood lipids, which means lowering LDL and increasing HDL (within a safe range, anyway).

You’ll remember that the above review concluded “No differences were seen in blood lipid levels”.

It may again be a case of individual studies cancelling each other out. For example…

This study found that it improved lipids in 40 young women as part of a calorie-controlled interventional diet:

Effects of dietary coconut oil on the biochemical and anthropometric profiles of women presenting abdominal obesity

This study found that it worsened lipids in 17 young men, worse even than taking an equivalent amount of sunflower oil:

Effects of medium-chain fatty acids and oleic acid on blood lipids, lipoproteins, glucose, insulin, and lipid transfer protein activities

In short, it’s a gamble.

It may be good for insulin sensitivity, though

This one seems to be specific to people with type 2 diabetes. The paper heading says it all, but we include the link in case you want to know the details (the short version is, it improved insulin sensitivity in diabetic subjects only (not others), and didn’t affect anything else that was measured:

Dietary substitution of medium-chain triglycerides improves insulin-mediated glucose metabolism in NIDDM subjects

The sample size was small (20 people total, of whom 10 had diabetes), and the next study was with 40 people, this time moderately overweight and all with type 2 diabetes:

Effects of dietary medium-chain triglyceride on weight loss and insulin sensitivity in a group of moderately overweight free-living type 2 diabetic Chinese subjects

Want to try some?

We don’t sell it, but here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎

Enjoy!

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  • Heal & Reenergize Your Brain With Optimized Sleep Cycles

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Sometimes 8 hours sleep can result in grogginess while 6 hours can result in waking up fresh as a daisy, so what gives? Dr. Tracey Marks explains, in this short video.

    Getting more than Zs in

    Sleep involves 90-minute cycles, usually in 4 stages:

    1. Stage 1: (drowsy state): brief muscle jerks; lasts a few minutes.
    2. Stage 2: (light sleep): sleep spindles for memory consolidation; 50% of total sleep.
    3. Stage 3 (deep sleep): tissue repair, immune support, brain toxin removal via the glymphatic system.
    4. Stage 4 (REM sleep): emotional processing, creativity, problem-solving, and dreaming.

    Some things can disrupt some or all of those. To give a few common examples:

    • Alcohol: impairs REM sleep.
    • Caffeine: hinders deep sleep even if consumed hours before bed.
    • Screentime: delays sleep onset due to blue light (but not by much); the greater problem is that it can also disrupt REM sleep due to mental stimulation.

    To optimize things, Dr. Marks recommends:

    • 90-minute rule: plan sleep to align with full cycles (e.g: 22:30 to 06:00 = 7½ hours, which is 5x 90-minute cycles).
    • Smart alarms: use sleep-tracking apps with built-in alarm, to wake you up during light sleep phases.
    • Strategic naps: keep naps to 20 minutes or a full 90-minute cycle.
    • Pink noise: improves deep sleep.
    • Meal timing: avoid eating within 3 hours of bedtime.
    • Natural light: get morning light exposure in the morning to strengthen circadian rhythm.

    For more on all of this, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like to read:

    Calculate (And Enjoy) The Perfect Night’s Sleep

    Take care!

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  • How (And Why) To Train Your Pre-Frontal Cortex

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Dr. Chapman’s Keys For Mental Focus

    This is Dr. Sandra Chapman; she’s a cognitive neuroscientist, on a mission to, in her words, further our understanding of:

    • what makes the brain stronger, faster and last longer
    • what enhances human cognitive capacity, and
    • what enhances the underlying brain systems across the lifespan.

    To this end, she’s also the founder and Chief Director of the Center For Brain Health, where she has worked on her mission for the past 25 years (clocking up hundreds of peer-reviewed publications to her name), as well as being a professor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at UT Dallas.

    What does she want us to know?

    Get your brain into gear

    When it comes to your brainpower, it is “use it or lose it”, but it is also perfectly possible to use it and lose it.

    Why?

    Very often, what we are using our brains for is high-strain, low-yield stuff, such as multitasking, overthinking, or overthinking while multitasking. And to make it worse, we often do it without sufficient rest.

    This is the equivalent of owning a Ferrari but trying to drive it in second and third gear at once by switching between the two as rapidly as possible. And doing that for 18 hours each day.

    Suffice it to say, you’ll be going nowhere quickly.

    An alternative “use” of brainpower is low-strain, low-yield stuff, such as having to pay close attention to a boring conversation. It’s enough to stop your mind from doing anything else, but not enough to actually stimulate you.

    This is the equivalent of owning a Ferrari but keeping it idling. The wear and tear is minimal this time, but you’re not actually going anywhere either.

    Better, of course, are the other two quadrants:

    • low-strain, high-yield: consistently using our brain in relatively non-taxing ways that encourage its development
    • high-strain, high-yield: here the Ferrari metaphor definitely fails, because unlike cars, our bodies (including our brains) are machines that benefit from judicious regular progressive overloading (but just by a bit, and with adequate recovery time between overloads).

    See also: 12 Weeks To Measurably Boost Your Brain

    How to do the “low-strain, low-yield” part

    When it comes to “what’s the most important part of the brain to help in the face of cognitive decline?” the usual answer is either to focus on memory (hippocampi) or language (various parts, but for example Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area), since people most fear losing memory, and language is very important both socially and practically.

    Those are indeed critical, and we at 10almonds stand by them, but Dr. Chapman (herself having originally trained as speech and language pathologist!) makes a strong case for adding a third brain part to the list.

    Specifically, she advocates for strengthening the pre-frontal cortex, which is responsible for inhibition, task-switching, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. If that seems like a lot, do remember it’s a whole cortex and not one of the assorted important-but-small brain bits we mentioned above.

    How? She has developed training programs for this, based on what she calls Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Tactics (SMART), to support support attention, planning, judgment and emotional management.

    You can read more about those programs here:

    Center For Brain Health | Our Programs

    Participation in those is mostly not free, however, if you join their…

    Center For Brain Health | BrainHealth Project

    …then they will periodically invite you to join pilot programs, research programs, and the like, which will either be free or they-pay-you affairs—because this is how science is done, and you can read about yourself (anonymized, of course) later in peer-reviewed papers of the kind we often cite here.

    If you’re not interested in any of that though, we will say that according to Dr. Chapman, the keys are:

    Inhibition: be conscious of this function of your brain, and develop it. This is the function of your brain that stops you from making mistakes—or put differently: stops you from saying/doing something stupid.

    Switching: do this consciously; per “I am now doing this task, now I am switching to this other task”, rather than doing the gear-grinding thing we discussed earlier

    Working memory: this is effectively your brain’s RAM. Unlike the RAM of a computer (can be enhanced by adding another chip or replacing with a bigger chip), our brain’s RAM can be increased by frequent use, and especially by judicious use of progressive overloading (with rests between!) which we’ll discuss in the high-strain, high-yield section.

    Flexibility: this is about creative problem-solving, openness to new ideas, and curiosity

    See also: Curiosity Kills The Neurodegeneration

    How to do the “high-strain, high-yield” part

    Delighting this chess-playing writer, Dr. Chapman recommends chess. Although, similar games such as go (a Chinese game that looks simpler than chess but actually requires more calculation) work equally well too.

    Why?

    Games like chess and go cause structural changes that are particularly helpful, in terms of engaging in such foundational tasks as learning, abstract reasoning, problem-solving and self-control:

    Chess Practice as a Protective Factor in Dementia

    Basically, it checks (so to speak) a lot of boxes, especially for the pre-frontal cortex. Some notes:

    • Focusing on the game is required for brain improvement; simply pushing wood casually will not do it. Ideally, calculating several moves ahead will allow for strong working memory use (because to calculate several moves ahead, one will have to hold increasingly many possible positions in the mind while doing so).
    • The speed of play must be sufficiently slow as to allow not only for thinking, but also for what in chess is called “blunder-checking”, in other words, having decided on one’s move, pausing to consider whether it is a mistake, and actively trying to find evidence that it is. This is the crucial “inhibition habit”, and when one does it reflexively, one will make fewer mistakes. Tying this to dementia, see for example how one of the common symptoms of dementia is falling for scams that one wouldn’t have previously. How did cognitive decline make someone naïve? It didn’t, per se; it just took away their ability to, having decided what to do, pause to consider whether it was a mistake, and actively trying to find evidence that it is.
    • That “conscious switching” that we talked about, rather than multitasking? In chess, there is a difference between strategy and tactics. Don’t worry about what that difference is for now (learn it if you want to take up chess), but know that strong players will only strategize while it is their opponent’s turn, and only calculate (tactics) while it is their own turn. It’s very tempting to flit constantly between one and the other, but chess requires players to have the mental discipline be able to focus on one task or the other and stick with that task until it’s the appointed time to switch.

    If you feel like taking up chess, this site (and related app, if you want it) is free (it’s been funded by voluntary donations for a long time now) and good and even comes with free tuition and training tools: LiChess.org

    Here’s another site that this writer (hi, it’s me) personally uses—it has great features too, but many are paywalled (I’m mostly there just because I’ve been there nearly since its inception, so I’m baked into the community now): Chess.com

    Want to know more?

    You might like this book by Dr. Chapman, which we haven’t reviewed yet but it did inform large parts of today’s article:

    Make Your Brain Smarter: Increase Your Brain’s Creativity, Energy, and Focus – by Dr. Sandra Chapman

    Enjoy!

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  • Tomatoes vs Carrots – Which is Healthier?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Our Verdict

    When comparing tomatoes to carrots, we picked the carrots.

    Why?

    Both known for being vitamin-A heavyweights, there is nevertheless a clear winner:

    In terms of macros, carrots have a little over 2x the carbs, and/but also a little over 2x the fiber, so we consider category this a win for carrots.

    In the category of vitamins, tomatoes have more vitamin C, while carrots have more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B9, E, K, and choline. And about that vitamin A specifically: carrots have over 20x the vitamin A of tomatoes. An easy win for carrots here!

    When it comes to minerals, tomatoes have a little more copper, while carrots have more calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Another clear win for carrots.

    Looking at polyphenols, carrots are good but tomatoes have more, including a good healthy dose of quercetin; they also have more lycopene, not technically a polyphenol by virtue of its chemical structure (it’s a carotenoid), but a powerful phytochemical nonetheless (and much more prevalent in sun-dried tomatoes, in any case, which is not what we were looking at today—perhaps another day we’ll do sun-dried tomatoes and carrots head-to-head!).

    Still, a) carrots are not short of carotenoids either (including lycopene), and b) we don’t think the moderate win on polyphenols is enough to outdo carrots having won all the other categories.

    All in all, carrots win the day, but of course, do enjoy either or both; diversity is good!

    Want to learn more?

    You might like to read:

    Lycopene’s Benefits For The Gut, Heart, Brain, & More

    Enjoy!

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  • How To Build a Body That Lasts – by Adam Richardson

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    This book is written on a premise, and that premise is: “your age doesn’t define your mobility; your mobility defines your age”.

    To this end, we are treated to 328 pages of why and how to improve our mobility (mostly how; just enough on the “why” to keep the motivation flowing).

    Importantly, Richardson doesn’t expect that every reader is a regular gym-bunny or about to become one, doesn’t expect you to have several times your bodyweight in iron to life at home, and doesn’t expect that you’ll be doing the vertical splits against a wall any time soon.

    Rather, he expects that we’d like to not dislocate a shoulder while putting the groceries away, would like to not slip a disk while being greeted by the neighbor’s dog, and would like to not need a 7-step plan for putting our socks on.

    What follows is a guide to “on the good end of normal” mobility that is sustainable for life. The idea is that you might not be winning Olympic gymnastics gold medals in your 90s, but you will be able to get in and out of a car door as comfortably as you did when you were 20, for example.

    Bottom line: if you want to be a superathlete, then you might need something more than this book; if you want to be on the healthy end of average when it comes to mobility, and maintain that for the rest of your life, then this is the book for you.

    Click here to check out How To Build A Body That Lasts, and build a body that lasts!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • A Supplement To Rival St. John’s Wort Against Depression

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Do You Feel The SAMe?

    S-Adeonsyl-L-Methionone (SAMe) is a chemical found naturally in the body, and/but enjoyed widely as a supplement. The main reasons people take it are:

    • Improve mood (antidepressant effect)
    • Improve joints (reduce osteoarthritis symptoms)
    • Improve liver (detoxifying effect)

    Let’s see what the science says for each of those claims…

    Does it improve mood?

    It seems to perform comparably to St. John’s Wort (which is good; it performs comparably to Prozac).

    Best of all, it does this with fewer contraindications (St. John’s Wort has so many contraindications).

    Here’s how they stack up:

    St. John’s wort and S-Adenosyl Methionine as “natural” alternatives to conventional antidepressants in the era of the suicidality boxed warning: what is the evidence for clinically relevant benefit?

    This looks very promising, though it’d be nice to see a larger body of research, to be sure.

    Does it reduce osteoarthritis symptoms?

    The good news: it performs comparably to ibuprofen, with fewer side effects!

    The bad news: it also performs comparably to placebo!

    Read into that what you will about ibuprofen’s usefulness vs OA symptoms.

    Read all about it:

    S-Adenosylmethionine for osteoarthritis of the knee or hip

    If you were hoping for something for OA or similar symptoms, you might like our previous main features:

    Does it help against liver disease?

    According to adverts for SAMe: absolutely!

    According to science: we don’t know

    The science for this is so weak that it’d be unworthy of mention if it weren’t for the fact that SAMe is so widely sold as good against hepatotoxicity.

    To be clear: maybe it really is great! Science hasn’t yet disproved its usefulness either.

    It is popularly assumed to be beneficial due to there being an association between lower levels of SAMe in the body (remember, it is also produced inside our bodies) and development of liver disease, especially cholestasis.

    Here’s an example of what pretty much every study we found was like (inconclusive research based mostly on mice):

    S-adenosylmethionine in liver health, injury, and cancer

    For other options for liver health, consider:

    How To Unfatty A Fatty Liver

    Is it safe?

    Safety trials have been done ranging from 3 months to 2 years, with no serious side effects coming to light. So, it appears quite safe.

    That said, as with anything, there are contraindications, such as:

    • if you have bipolar disorder, skip this unless directed by your health care provider, because it may worsen the symptoms of mania
    • if you are on SSRIs or other serotonergic drugs, it may interact with those
    • if you are immunocompromised, you might want to skip it can increase the risk of P. carinii growth in such cases

    As always, do speak with your doctor/pharmacist for personalized advice.

    Summary

    SAMe’s evidence-based qualities seem to stack up as follows:

    • Against depression: good
    • Against osteoarthritis: weak
    • Against liver disease: unknown

    As for safety, it has been found quite safe for most people.

    Where can I get it?

    We don’t sell it, but here is an example product on Amazon, for your convenience

    Enjoy!

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  • Why Do We Have Pores, And Could We Not?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? We love to hear from you!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    ❝Do we really need pores, and why are they bigger on the face?❞

    Pores secrete sweat or sebum (there are different kinds of pores for each).

    If we didn’t have sweat pores, we’d be unable to sweat, which superficially may seem like a bonus, but it’d make us prone to overheating (like dogs, pigs, and other mammals that cannot sweat).

    If we didn’t have sebum pores (usually called hair follicles, which are supplied by a sebaceous gland), we’d be completely hairless, and also unable to supply our skin with natural oils that keep it healthy. So we’d have no hair and very unhappy skin.

    Which is ironic, because to believe beauty magazines, we must at all costs minimize our pores (and indeed, interventions like botox* can kill them).

    *Let’s give that its full name though:

    Botulinum Neurotoxin Type A in the Treatment of Facial Seborrhea and Acne: Evidence and a Proposed Mechanism

    Suffice it to say, we do not recommend getting injected with neurotoxins unless it is truly necessary to ward off a greater harm.

    As for being bigger on the face, they need not be, but sebaceous glands are more active and numerous there, being most active and numerous in the face/forehead—which is why oily skin is more likely to appear there than other parts of the body.

    If your facial sebaceous glands are too active for your liking…

    …there are ways to reduce that, a simple and relatively gentle way (relative, for example, botox) is with retinoids, including retinols or retinoic acids. Here’s some of the science of that; the paper is about treating acne, but the mechanism of action is the same (down-regulating the sebaceous glands’ action):

    The treatment of severe cystic acne with 13-cis-retinoic acid: evaluation of sebum production and the clinical response in a multiple-dose trial

    The potential side-effects, however were noted as:

    • Cheilitis
    • Desquamation of the skin
    • Pruritus

    Which, in translation from sciencese, means:

    • Chapped lips
    • Flaky skin
    • Itchiness

    Which aren’t necessarily fun, which is why with retinoids are best taken in very small doses at first to see how your skin reacts.

    Remember when we said what your skin would be like without pores? This is what would happen, only much worse.

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

    Did you arrive here from our newsletter? Don’t forget to return to the email to continue learning!

    Learn to Age Gracefully

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