Countless Uses for Coconut Oil – The Simple, the Strange, and the Downright Odd Part 4 By Dr. Mercola

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Coconut Oil to the Rescue

Besides its usefulness in the kitchen and bathroom, coconut oil deserves a place in your medicine cabinet as well—again courtesy of its antimicrobial and anti-viral activity. For example, coconut oil may be helpful in the treatment of:

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toxins and debris it has pulled out.

Ear infections: Place a couple of drops into each ear canal. If the coconut oil has solidified, you can easily liquefy it by placing a small amount in a shot glass or other small container and placing it into a cup of hot water	Skin rashes and irritations, including chicken pox and shingles: Simply apply a small amount to the affected area
Fungal and/or yeast infections, such as athlete’s foot and ringworm. For fungal infections, you can mix in a small amount of oregano oil or tea tree oil	Bug bites and bee stings
Cold sores: mix in a small amount of oregano oil, and apply at the first signs	Frequent nosebleeds may be improved by regularly applying a small amount to the inside of your nostrils
Thrush	Hemorrhoids and piles: You may add a small amount of lavender essential oil for added healing power
Vaginal dryness	Perineal massage:13 Expectant mothers can use it to massage the perineum daily, starting about a month or so before your due date, to help reduce your chances of tearing and/or the need for an episiotomy

 

Coconut Oil—More Effective Than Permethrin for Head Lice

According to research published in the European Journal of Pediatrics,¹⁴ a combination of coconut oil and anise was found to be nearly twice as effective as the commonly prescribed permethrin lotion for the treatment of head lice. According to the authors:

“We designed a randomized, controlled, parallel group trial involving 100 participants with active head louse infestation to investigate the activity of a coconut and anise spray and to see whether permethrin lotion is still effective, using two applications of product 9 days apart. The spray was significantly more successful (41/50, 82.0%) cures compared with permethrin (21/50, 42.0%...). Per-protocol success was 83.3% and 44.7%, respectively. Thirty-three people reported irritant reactions following alcohol contact with excoriated skin. We concluded that, although permethrin lotion is still effective for some people, the coconut and anise spray can be a significantly more effective alternative treatment.” [Emphasis mine]

Isn’t it wonderful to see how nature provides us with so many effective solutions to so many of our ills? And does so in a way that is oftentimes more effective than our chemical drug concoctions! Another anecdotal Hawaiian head lice treatment¹⁵ is to first soak your hair in vinegar and leave it in to dry (don’t rinse). Next, coat your hair with coconut oil over night. I’d recommend sleeping with a shower cap to protect your bedding. The following day, the nits reportedly comb out easily.

Countless Uses for Coconut Oil – The Simple, the Strange, and the Downright Odd Part 3 By Dr. Mercola

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Hair’s Best Friend

Coconut oil is also known for its hair benefits.¹² Most women seem to prefer using it as a pre-shampoo conditioner. Simply massage the coconut oil onto dry hair and leave on for about an hour or longer. You could even leave it on overnight. Just wear a shower cap to protect your pillow. Then, wash and style as usual.

When applied in this manner, the coconut oil inhibits the penetration of water into the hair strands, which would otherwise cause the cuticle, or surface of the hair shaft, to rise, making it prone to damage and breakage. Furthermore, when applied as a pre-wash treatment, a small amount of the coconut oil is able to penetrate deeper into the hair shaft during the wash, when the hair fiber swells slightly.

This can also explain why so many rave about the oil's ability to prevent "the frizzies" in humid weather—this is another feature of its hydrophobic activity. More porous types of hair may find coconut oil particularly beneficial, such as African and chemically treated hair, as well as those suffering with any type of scalp problems, including dandruff.

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Oral Health Benefits

As mentioned above, coconut oil mixed with baking soda makes for very simple and inexpensive, yet effective, toothpaste. It’s also a great alternative if you want a fluoride-free toothpaste but don’t want to spend the extra money, since they tend to cost more than most regular, fluoridated toothpaste brands.

Another oral health technique where I believe coconut oil can be quite beneficial is oil pulling. This technique has significantly reduced my plaque buildup, allowing me to go longer between visits to the dental hygienist. (Adding fermented vegetables to my diet has been another game-changer in my oral health.)

Oil pulling is a practice dating back thousands of years, having originated with Ayurvedic medicine. When oil pulling is combined with the antimicrobial power of coconut oil, I believe it can be a very powerful health tool. Sesame oil is traditionally recommended, but it has relatively high concentration of omega-6 oils. Therefore, I believe coconut oil is far superior, and, in my mind, it tastes better. But from a mechanical and biophysical perspective, it is likely that both work.

Oil pulling involves rinsing your mouth with the oil, much like you would with a mouthwash. The oil is “worked” around your mouth by pushing, pulling, and drawing it through your teeth for a period of 15 minutes. If you are obsessive like me and want even better results, you can go for 30-45 minutes. This process allows the oil to “pull out” bacteria, viruses, fungi and other debris. The best time is in the morning before eating breakfast, but it can be done at any time. I try to do it twice a day if my schedule allows. When done, spit out the oil and rinse your mouth with water. Avoid swallowing the oil as it will be loaded with bacteria and whatever potential toxins and debris it has pulled out.

When done correctly, oil pulling has a significant cleansing, detoxifying and healing affect, not only for your mouth and sinuses but for the rest of your body as well. Candida and Streptococcus are common residents in your mouth, and these germs and their toxic waste products can contribute to plaque accumulation and tooth decay, in addition to secondary infections and chronic inflammation throughout your body. Oil pulling may help lessen the overall toxic burden on your immune system by preventing the spread of these organisms from your mouth to the rest of your body, by way of your bloodstream.

Dogma and Ritual Do Not Equal Spirituality by Tina Erwin

There are endless books about the spiritual path. There are wonderful guidelines about what it means to be spiritual. There are great teachers who demonstrate spirituality by their life mission.

And then there is religion, which is supposed to epitomize the building concepts of control and power. It would appear that the trappings of religion equate to a very profound structure. The pillars of that structure are dogma and ritual.

When the Great Ones walked the Earth, none of them built a church. When the Great Ones sought to show us the way, none of them specifically wrote anything down and demanded that it be followed other than the Koran and the Ten Commandments, which were literally written in stone so they could not ever be edited. None of them demanded dogma or ritual to show their power.

It was the followers of the Great Ones who built the structures, created the dogma and invented the rituals that would define a particular religion based on what the current, second or third generation leader at that time felt was appropriate. Some of the rituals were appropriate for that time and place in history but no one was ever allowed to question them, so they could not ever be revised to accommodate ever-changing times.

Ritual is a specific way of doing something at a specific time with unique tools following unyielding guidelines. Ritual is rigid, uncompromising and unforgiving. Ritual carries with it the energy of power and associated fear. If you don’t perform the ritual in the exact manner, then somehow you have done a terrible thing and ‘God’ will not forgive you. No one is ever allowed to question whether or not the ritual actually ever does anything particularly spiritual for anyone.

There are very profound rituals that create a certain frequency and that have often been corrupted from their original intention. The original ‘Mystery Schools’ back in the mists of time, taught the physics of how these rituals worked and why they worked. They had a very specific purpose and a very deliberate outcome if performed properly. This is where the concept of the hand gestures called mudras came from, the use of essential oils, incense and prayers. However, along the way, many rituals became completely corrupted.

The original Mystery schools also taught the basic tenants of spirituality. These were eventually corrupted into guilt producing, stomach wrenching dogma. Being spiritual was originally believed to be able to take place anywhere, whether it was in a field of flowers, by the bedside of the sick or at your dinner table. Prayer was always appropriate and never limited to a specific grandiose building of wood and stone.

The concept of forgiveness was corrupted into the power to forgive and that power was invested in certain people who lorded it over, literally, the followers of that religion. Believe what we believe or you are not ‘one of us.’ We will require you to confess your sins, and only we can absolve you. Power was and still is the key here. The ritual of confessing sins to another person was a corrupted form of an individual speaking directly to God. The priesthood of all believers was the original tenet, not give your spiritual power to another to judge.

The other problem with this concept, of often dogmatic ritual, especially when it comes to confessing one’s sins to another is the concept that one mortal can transmute the karma of another. Six Our Fathers and Five Hail Mary’s will not transmute anyone’s karma. Lovely prayers each one, but they do not have the power to absolve someone of a terrible karmic act. No mere mortal, no matter how elegantly they are dressed, can absolve the karma of another.

Each individual uniquely defines being spiritual; no one has a monopoly on that definition. Perhaps each of us might wish to look long and hard at the ritual and dogma that often confines us in our belief system. Doing something routinely because you are supposed to without remembering why you are doing it is not being spiritual.

Just for a month, let go of ritual and dogma. Experiment with spiritual freedom. Perhaps then each of us can feel what it must have been like to walk with the Great Ones and know the freedom in the delight in the divine because we could feel that the connection to the Divine genuinely lived within us!