Coconut oil is filled with medium chain fatty acids; these fight free radicals when used both topically and internally. The skin, to prevent radiation damage from sun exposure and to fight free radicals from metabolic processes and toxins in the environment, utilizes medium chain fatty acids. This same antioxidant protection if found when coconut oil is used topically. Tropical cultures who base their diets on coconut and its product have known this secret about coconut oil for hundreds of years.
When used topically, coconut oil can lessen an even prevent sunburns while allowing skin to lightly tan. Tropical tanning oil companies know this secret, which is why they keep it a secret from their customers. Other sunscreen, face moisturizers, body lotion, and skin and hair product companies use vegetable oils that have been refined and are actually carcinogenic. Remember, free radicals cause cancer and speed up the aging process such as wrinkled skin, loss of elasticity, age spots, loss of skin tone, and tired looking skin.
How to use unrefined coconut oil for skin and hair care:
- Take three tablespoons every day as a dietary supplement. Mix them in your morning smoothie, smear them on toast, use them as a replacement for butter, margarine-which is made with vegetable oils, and other cooking oils.
- After bathing in the morning and evening, smooth it on dry, tired, or rough skin or any skin exposed to sunlight. Use it in replacement of sunscreen or under sunscreen when sun bathing or for outdoor activities, and smooth it on a freshly washed face an hour or so before bed to moisturized the skin.
- Use it as a pre-conditioner before washing your hair. Instead of expensive hot oil treatments, simply slather it on, comb it through dry hair and wrap the hair in plastic and then a hot towel. Leave on for up to 20 minutes and then wash your hair as you would normally.
- Use it for a personal lubricant if you are not using condoms. That skin needs moisturizing and anti-aging benefits too. But, like other oil based lubricants, it does not combine well with rubber or latex.
- Use it for an oil bath. Dissolve a few tablespoons in your next hot bath while it is running. Just be careful to not slip while getting in or out and wash the tub out when you are done.
Refined vegetable oils, such as used in cooking and baking and found on grocery store shelves are processed, refined and deodorized leaving little more than a bottle full of rancid, but deodorized so we cannot smell the rancid, free radical filled battles of aging oil. The free radicals from the vegetable oils are slathered onto the skin and hair or consumed in our foods causing the body to go into massive action trying to fight the damage from them.
Unrefined, organic coconut oil, on the other hand, is high in antioxidants that fight free radicals both internally and externally. When used topically and internally on a daily basis it can aid the body in fighting free radical damage by scooping up free radicals and aiding their removal from the body.
As a bonus, unlike vegetable oil, petroleum, and water based skin creams, lotions and body product, coconut oil imbibes the skin with moisture. It assists the skin at the cellular level to hold moisture and rebuild cell walls and the connective tissue between cells. Thus, it revives aging skin and slows the aging process.
