Whole coconut oil and breath acetone (BrAce) observation

[amwassil]

My daily routine includes my morning keto coffee with coconut oil (and MCT oil) among several other ingredients. But I have not eaten coconut oil by the spoonful. @PetaMarie remember this comment ?

Periodically during the afternoon and evening of May17 I ate about a tablespoon of coconut oil every couple of hours or so. I was attempting to determine whether or not it would break a cold that was just starting to manifest. It seems to have done so but I’ll know for sure in a couple of days.

So to topic, I’ve been taking breath samples every 1 1/2 - 2 hours daily with my Ketonix. May15, 16 and 17 until early afternoon my BrAce registered consistently between 20-40ppm. At about 2:30pm on May17, I ate the first spoonful of coconut oil. About 15 minutes later my BrAce sample spiked to 58ppm. 1 1/2 hour later BrAce dropped to below 10ppm and stayed below 10ppm the rest of the afternoon and evening. For a couple hours it dropped below 5ppm. This was during the time I ate coconut oil every 2 - 2 1/2 hours. An hour after I ate the last spoonful of coconut oil, BrAce went above 10ppm again.

This intrigues me to try to figure out what happened. Any ideas?

[EDIT] I misremembered the exact sequence of events yesterday. On further recollection, I’m pretty sure that I began eating the coconut oil right after my lunch which I finished around 12:30 or so. That would put my first ingestion of coconut oil around 1pm, not 2:30. I would have had a least one more before I left for work at 2pm. So when I took the BrAce sample at 2:45 it had been about 1 1/2 - 2 hours or so since commencing the coconut oil feeding.

[Karim_Wassef]

MCT (medium chain triglycerides) in coconut oil can be metabolized much faster and easier than normal fats. Unlike longer chain fats, they don’t need a Carnitine shuttle to be transported into the mitochondria. So they act as a priority energy source and can increase ketones. This isn’t your endogenous fat turned into ketones. It’s the MCT increasing ketones.

So it’s a good source of safe stable energy but its not your fat being metabolized.

[carolT]

As to why they went down? Retest with blood and breath levels taken at the same time, maybe some urine too. We’ll find out where they went!

[BuckRimfire]

Sorry if this is not entirely on point, but: Last September, IIRC, I read a paper in which the authors compared feeding either coconut or MCT oil (I can’t remember which), either with or without passing the oil (and some water or water-based solution) though a mechanical emulsifier at ~1000 PSI. (This enormously increases the amount of oil/water interface area in the mixture.)

After feeding test subjects the oils they measured their blood MCTs (or maybe ketones; again, I can’t remember for certain). The emulsion led to a large rise within an hour or so, while the non-emusified oil had a much slower and lower increase.

Based on this, I’m a little skeptical that adding coconut oil to my tea or coffee really gives rapid jolt of available MCTs, but I still do it.

Unfortunately, I can’t find this paper again right now…

[amwassil]

I know that fat metabolism is complex. My understanding is that there are several alternate pathways and only one of them involves synthesizing acetoacetate. Since acetone is the result of acetoacetate ‘burn’ and ‘spontaneous breakdown’, is BrAce concentration affected only when acetoacetate is involved? Or do the other pathways ultimately result in acetone as well? I don’t know and will investigate. The people who sell breathalyzers say that BrAce is the best/only way to measure actual fat burn. They don’t seem to confine that to acetoacetate only. So again I’ll have to investigate to determine exactly what they’re claiming.

At any rate, for several preceding days I was burning acetoacetate steadily, as indicated by my BrAce readings. At 20-40ppm BrAce I was solidly in ketosis according to this graph, that shows the relationship between BrAce and β-hydroxybutyrate, 20-40ppm BrAce is the equivalent of about 2.5-3mM.

The above graph is lifted from this study, which is well worth a read:

Measuring breath acetone for monitoring fat loss: Review

Then I started to eat some coconut oil got a big spike in BrAce followed by a fast decline to less than 10ppm. That’s nearly 50ppm. Still solidly in ketosis, but something spectacular occurred! Since my Ketonix arrived I have discovered that BrAce is a very ‘noisy’ signal. I don’t find that surprising given that the device is measuring a very dilute concentration of a very volatile gas mixed with millions of molecules of other much more concentrated gases. Still, a change of 50ppm within a couple hours is huge.

My initial guess is that a lot of acetoacetate in my blood suddenly decided to go ‘poof’. That in turn released a lot of acetone which showed up as a big spike in BrAce. Now I happen to know from my understanding of thermodynamics that when something that contains energy ‘goes poof’ the energy has to go somewhere. I suspect in this case it went as heat into the blood.

I did experience a sudden rise in temperature. Not like a hot flash, but a distinct heating that was severe enough to make me feel uncomfortably warm. I thought I would soon break into a sweat and even bought a can of spray deodorant on my way to work to make sure I did not become offensive. The heat passed after a couple of hours fortunately. Unfortunately, I did not think to time this and correlate it to my BrAce readings. I will next time.

So somehow the coconut oil or it’s components initiated a sudden acetoacetate ‘burn’ that spiked my BrAce. By the way I consider the ‘spontaneous breakdown’ of acetoacetate to be just as much a ‘burn’ as when it delivers its energy packet to a specific cell. The only difference is the energy is released into the blood as heat.

I have a quite active job that requires me to be on my feet for 8 hours and walk a lot. I probably walk a mile or more during a shift. I also have to lift and carry lots of different items. So I burn a lot of energy at work. Yet, all during the shift yesterday my BrAce remained sub-10ppm and for a couple of hours or more sub-5ppm. Whatever my metabolism was burning, it apparently did so without generating BrAce. I have to investigate the metabolism of the various fats contained in coconut oil to see what I can see.

Quite an interesting experience overall.

[amwassil]

If you don’t already, use a blender. Drinking an oil slick can’t be very pleasant.

[amwassil]

I intend to replicate this under more controlled conditions: ie on a day off when I can record the data more completely. I’m not into pins and needles, so someone else will have to do the blood work.

[BuckRimfire]

Usually I slightly warm some whipping cream (so it doesn’t immediately harden the coconut oil), barely melt the coconut oil, mix 300 mL cream and 150 mL oil, then whip them vigorously with a stick blender. Sometimes the mix hardens on mixing and sometimes stays fairly liquid. I can’t figure out why. This then gets stored in a repurposed plastic yogurt tub in the fridge for use over the next week.

When spooned into coffee, it partially incorporates, but a little oil still floats on the surface. I kinda doubt any home kitchen method is going to work as well as the industrial-strength method used by that lab.

[carolT]

Bullet-style blender works great, you get frothy coffee. Just be careful of hot pressurized liquids that way.

[SlowBurnMary]

I quite enjoy my morning oil slick of a tblsp coconut oil + pine nut oil and HWC in my tea or coffee, it’s lip smacking good imho

Coconut oil is definitely thermogenic for me when I take in 2 tblsp or more per day. Thermogenesis is its own topic - as there is the sort that is just nervous system changes and the sort that is fat-burning or hormonal.

I have a low carb friend who’s taking 2 tblsp coconut oil per day for neurological assistance and has distinctly noticed metallic/medication tastes and a coated tongue (thus, uses a tongue scraper) indicative of heavy metal detoxification. This 29 year old friend was medicated on psychotropics like Ritalin and others throughout mid childhood to teens as well as had the common antibiotic overuse - as well as major surgeries & meds related to a car accident spinal injury and recovery - and knows the metallic taste of those meds.

The role of MCTs in restoring brain tissue and neural pathways (where many heavy metals can be stored) is a riveting subject. I don’t know about how the acetone relates to these other elements though.

[amwassil]

I use my old countertop Procter Silex blender and a standard mouth mason jar to replicate a Nutribullet. It works great and I make a liter. The only issue is that the rubber sealing ring slowly expands over several months from the heat. So it needs replacing once in a while.

[BuckRimfire]

Usually I slightly warm some whipping cream (so it doesn’t immediately harden the coconut oil), barely melt the coconut oil, mix 300 mL cream and 150 mL oil, then whip them vigorously with a stick blender. Sometimes the mix hardens on mixing and sometimes stays fairly liquid. I can’t figure out why. This then gets stored in a repurposed plastic yogurt tub in the fridge for use over the next week.

When spooned into coffee, it partially incorporates, but a little oil still floats on the surface. I kinda doubt any home kitchen method is going to work as well as the industrial-strength method used by that lab.

[amwassil]

May18: I decided to continue my coconut consumption while at work again today (3-11pm), but reduce it from what I ate yesterday to see what would happen. I expected a repeat of yesterday’s BrAce readings. BUT that did not happen! No big spike and no subsequent crash.

[amwassil]

I removed the plots of the moving average and trend from my iPod which I thought were probably pretty confusing. I was able to plot the entire day per my next comment.

[amwassil]

Here’s the moving average plot for the whole day of May18:

[amwassil]

Here’s the moving average plot for the whole day of May17 for comparison:

[amwassil]

The plots for both days superimposed for comparison:

By the way, this gives you a good idea of the magnitude of the ‘spike’ and ‘crash’ contrasted to May18, which was a fairly typical day.