I feel one of the biggest issues in healthcare is that since everything is so rushed, there's very little time for doctors to talk with their patients, and as a result, many of the most important parts of medicine get lost. Because of that, my goal was always to be able to reply to be able to correspond with everyone who reached out to me (e.g., through comments).

Since there are now over 220,000 readers here, it's no longer feasible for me to do that and still have the time to write. Because of this, I decided the best solution was to have monthly open threads where people could ask whatever they wanted on any topic (e.g., any lingering questions from the previous months) and I would make a point to always reply to them.

Alongside these open threads, I like to highlight a topic that I believe is worth exploring, even if it doesn't warrant a full article on its own. This month, I'm focusing on the often-overlooked wonders of coconuts as I often reflect on the small things I take for granted and how different life would be without them—and coconuts frequently make that list.

Note: one of the things that is extremely frustrating about nutritional guidelines is that they always tell you what you should not eat rather than what you should. One of the wonderful things about coconuts is how much easier having them be a dietary staple makes the rest of your diet.

Cooking Oils

As the years have gone by, there has been increasing awareness that seed oils (specifically their omega 6 fats) are not good for us, but unfortunately, even if we want to avoid them they are in almost every processed food (e.g., infant formula, due to outdated science from the 1960s is required to contain large amounts of seed oils). This touches upon a longstanding observation I've made—if something toxic is on the market place, in most cases, regardless of how much the public protests against its use, normally only way it ever gets phased out is if a less toxic substitute is found for it

As such, I've put a lot of thought into which oils could replace the high omega 6 oils we routinely use (e.g., soy oil). If we look at it from a standpoint of omega 6 content and omega 3 content, the following options exist: