PH agriculture envoy gives virgin coconut oil to Virginia front-liners
Staff at VCU hospital in Virginia with bottles of virgin coconut oil from the Philippine Embassy’s Office of the Agricultural Attache. CONTRIBUTED
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Raising awareness of the beneficial uses of virgin coconut oil and to celebrate National Coconut Day in the United States, the Philippine Embassy’s Office of the Agriculture Attaché, distributed Philippines-sourced Trader Joe’s virgin coconut oil to several pandemic front-line posts.
Dr. Josyline C. Javelosa, the Philippine Agriculture Attaché to the United States and the Americas dropped off Philippine VCO gifts for frontline employees at the USPS Fairfax branch and firefighters of the Burke Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department.
VCU Health, a hospital located in Richmond, Virginia’s capital, warmly welcomed the Embassy’s modest gesture to provide Trader Joe’s virgin coconut oil sourced from the Philippines to its personnel. Trader Joe’s is supermarket chain.
Personnel of VCU hospital may use the VCO as skin moisturizer to help protect their skin from viruses and bacteria or add this to their coffee for added energy, among other uses. VCO is also suitable for cooking and heats well to high temperatures.
National Coconut Day is celebrated on June 26 in the United States. The Coconut Coalition of the Americas founded National Coconut Day to celebrate the coconut and increase awareness of its benefits.
For thousands of years, coconut has been an essential part of the diet of people living in the tropics. Coconut meat contains about 20% coconut oil. In the Philippines, coconut oil is even being tested for its efficacy to help treat or prevent Covid-19, given the considerable scientific evidence for the antiviral activity of coconut oil, lauric acid (of which coconut oil has a high proportion of) and its derivatives; its general safety; and the absence of a cure for Covid-19.
Dr. Josyline C. Javelosa, the Philippine Agriculture Attaché to the United States and the Americas drops off Philippine VCO gifts for frontline firefighters of the Burke Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department. CONTRIBUTED
Dr. Fabian Dayrit and Dr. Mary Newport explain in a paper published at the Ateneo de Manila University’s website entitled “The Potential of Coconut Oil and its Derivatives as Effective and Safe Antiviral Agents Against the novel corona virus (nCov-2019), that
when coconut oil is ingested into the body, the body’s lipase enzymes release metabolites, which are the active compounds—mainly monolaurin and lauric acid.
Monolaurin is used by the food industry as an emulsifier and natural preservative against bacteria and is also the active ingredient in many dermatological preparations, Dr. Dayrit says. Together, monolaurin and lauric acid have the physicochemical property of being able to destroy the membrane of lipid-coated viruses.
The antiviral activities of lauric acid and monolaurin were first noted in a 1979 study and later in 1981. Because the virus that causes Covid–19 (SARS-CoV-2) is a lipid-coated virus, coconut oil seems promising, and thus the paper urges that clinical studies be conducted among patients who have been infected with nCoV-2019. Dr. Dayrit and Dr. Newport also recommend that VCO be considered as a general prophylactic against viral and microbial infection.
Dr. Dayrit is the president of Integrated Chemists of the Philippines and chemistry professor emeritus at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. Dr. Newport is an American medical doctor who became an integral researcher and advocate for using coconut oil, MCT oil, and exogenous ketones to treat Alzheimer’s disease.
