When We Ask ‘Is MCT Oil Bad for Cholesterol?’ Are We Asking the Wrong Question at the Right Time?

MCT Oil: the one in which we say, no, MCT oil is not bad for cholesterol but the existence of that question suggests modern perspectives on wellness may be skewed.

Here at WillPowders, at our finest, we could change the wellness rating in your life for the better and we could also make a positive difference to the number of years you live in wellness.  At the risk of getting all philosophical, WillPowders live by the idea that, at the very least, we do you no harm!  At our best, we transform lives by helping people step off the dreadful treadmills that modern Western diets and ways of living have placed us on.  We do this by helping you hack your body’s fullest potential, allowing it to do what it's desperate to do for you, that is keep you well, given the right tools.  In fact, we are assured that the list of positive effects of MCT oil can bring about metabolic benefits without undermining your metabolic health.  

There are scientists who systematically review the findings of other scientists.  (We know!  The careers teacher never put that career option in front of us, either!).  A systematic review of a breadth of scientific studies on MCT oil and its effects on cholesterol was conducted in 2021 by five scientists.  The conclusions they reached in that review were that ‘MCT oil does not affect total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, or HDL cholesterol levels’.  LDL and HDL cholesterol are often referred to as ‘bad’ cholesterol and ‘good’ cholesterol, respectively.  The review led the scientists to be able to give very high confidence limits to the findings regarding the effects MCT has (or in this case doesn’t have) on cholesterol.   This is what they had to say, ‘the 95% confidence limits from our meta-analysis indicate that MCT oil is unlikely to cause meaningful changes in either total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, or HDL cholesterol’.   We like those figures!  Lovely jubbly!  QED!

The discussion on the fact that MCT oil is a saturated fat comes with a caveat since, ‘MCFAs [medium chain fatty acids] are less harmful in regard to changes in blood lipid concentrations than long-chain SFAs [saturated fatty acids]’ which means our knee jerk reaction of believing that all saturated fats are bad for our heart is quite simply wrong.   It’s forgivable because, for a long time, we have been taught to consider saturated fats as if they were all one homogenous, cookie-cutter type of fat which spells disaster for the heart.  If we are to move forward with how we adjust the fats we willingly put in our bodies, that misguided thinking needs to change.  

Due to the properties of MCT oil, our reaction to the fact that they are saturated with carbon atoms (which is what the ‘saturated’  in saturated fat means) requires a much more nuanced approach.  MCT oil does not behave like the ‘typical’ saturated fat that we’ve been led to believe will target your arteries and cling to them like limpets to a rock at low tide.  That’s because MCT oil benefits can be enjoyed without them entering the lymphatic system as other fats do.  MCT oil is broken down in the gut into medium chain fatty acids which are then transported straight to the liver via the hepatic portal vein.  From there the liver converts them to ketones to fuel the body and brain, with the MCFAs acting more like glucose than fat, without the risk of an insulin or sugar spike.  It’s for these reasons that the way we regard MCFAs needs to be more nuanced.  

• fat stored around the tummy 
• plus a high BMI 
• and increased waist circumference beyond 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men
• raised blood pressure 
• and signs of insulin resistance   

If we are merely asking if MCT oil is bad for cholesterol, which you now know it isn’t, then we are missing the idea that 1 in 5 Europeans will be diagnosed with this disease that marshals in cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.  It isn’t just cholesterol markers that determine our likelihood of succumbing to fewer years living in health, never mind the mortality risk.  

The same systematic study found that MCT oil, ‘does not affect total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, or HDL cholesterol levels, but does cause a small increase in triglycerides’.   However, the good news is that the ‘increase in the triglyceride level with MCT oil intake is consistent with only a small increase in the risk of heart disease, which is unlikely to be clinically meaningful on an individual level’.   Triglycerides are a type of fat found in the blood that can be stored and used for energy later.  This is not a type of cholesterol but it is the type of fat that we would not want in high quantities in our bodies, as it is yet another indicator of metabolic syndrome.  Triglycerides are usually present in high quantities in blood if we have a high carbohydrate diet.  Compare the risk of higher triglycerides from carbs to those of MCT oil and it’s a no brainer - the carbs are running amok with increasing triglyceride levels.  If you do the maths, lowering carbohydrates is more likely to reduce triglycerides more than the rise in triglycerides potentially caused by MCT oil (in a diet that has to contain other types of fat to avoid malnutrition) by levels which are ‘unlikely to be clinically meaningful on an individual level).  Add exercise into this equation as a triglyceride lowering activity and the benefits to the heart and whole metabolic system must surely outweigh that small, arguably insignificant ,and certainly offset, rise in triglycerides?  

With modern diets skewed towards higher carbohydrates making up the calories that were once filled with fat,  and our genes being practically palaeolithic, most ‘new’ fats, for example, trans fats, are a disaster for the lag in our genome which simply can’t deal with them.  But MCT oil seems to be welcomed with open arms by our bodies and brains.  It’s a case of the exception to the rule with this particular refinement of a lipid being good news for us all.

Couple this with the simple truth that our bodies were meant to move and our more sedentary lifestyles, which we have choices about, or our more sedentary jobs, which we might have to put up with in order to pay the bills, need to be counteracted with movement. If you want to cut down on the effects of longer chain saturated fatty acids and carbohydrates increasing triglyceride levels, enriching your diet with MCT oil and getting physically stronger through a movement of your choice might be the way to go.  

In a world where Big Food is still, unfortunately, the loudest voice, we need approaches that are wonderfully modern, like WillPowders MCT Oil, alongside age-old knowledge that our genetic lineage still belongs to our most ancient ancestry when homosapien stood up and walked towards a good fat supply!