Coconut Is Having a Moment & It’s Making Me Crazy
I’M NO LONGER ON MEDIUM. FIND ME HERE:
*NOTE* Trigger warnings for mental illness, panic attacks and eating disorders. Also, I’ve received many emails from folks who experience similar things when they encounter coconut. My situation has also significantly changed since this article was written and I’m currently working on an update article.
If the modern wellness community had an insignia, I don’t see how it could be anything other than a coconut.
There may be many diverging opinions about most other things in the wellness world, but there is one thing they appear to agree on is the sanctity of coconut. It would seem coconut is the healthy alternative to anything you can imagine. Put it in your coffee, use it instead of butter, use it instead of sunscreen and lotion, make candy out of it, make deodorant out of it, make toothpaste out of it. It can even be a stain remover or a label remover. If you’re looking to buy “clean” beauty or hygiene products, chances are you’ll find coconut there too. It’s in toothpaste, shampoo, soap, and mascara.
Coconut is everywhere.
It might seem like a good turn of events. Coconut is a nice, natural ingredient, very close to its original form. Why wouldn’t we want it in our lives?
But coconut makes me crazy.
No. Really. It makes me heart pounding, head spinning crazy.
There was a time when I ate coconut every day, multiple times a day. I spread it on my (refined sugar free, gluten free) banana bread, mixed it into my oatmeal, and poured it into my smoothies. And then my life fell apart. My days became ruled by overwhelming exhaustion and I begged my doctors for answers. When they failed me, I found myself on the doorstep of a naturopathic doctor, who suggested an elimination diet. For over a month, I cut out all of the major allergens from my diet: dairy, nuts, soy, corn, gluten, and eggs. At the last minute, I decided to add coconut to the list too. My diet was already so limited; what was one more thing?
When it was time to reintroduce the potentially allergenic foods, I decided to start with coconut, figuring it was the least likely culprit. So on a lovely August day, I ate half of a packet of coconut butter, then half of a contain of coconut yoghurt. (The other half of both went to my boyfriend, now husband.) Within forty five minutes I was in the throes of the most reality altering panic attack I’d experienced up to that point.
Out of nowhere, I felt the need to run away, to move quickly, to flee. From what, I had no idea; perhaps from myself. I hit the gas pedal hard as I went along back roads in my poor old Subaru, making it to seventy in a thirty-five MPH zone. (Thankfully, I knew these roads very very well.) The compulsion towards going quickly mimicked my heart rate. Little pricks of rationality came through and made me understand this instinct was bizarre. So when we got home, I locked myself in the bathroom instead. I curled into a ball beside the trash can, frozen. What felt like twenty minutes for me was actually two hours. Everything felt like it was the worst it had ever been and it would never be any better. It was as if I’d descended into the middle of a long, dark period of depression in a matter of minutes. I couldn’t configure coherent thoughts in my head, never mind trying to speak them out loud. For the first time, I thought about self harm and suicide. I looked out the window of the bathroom and wondered what a fall from that height would feel like.
At some point, I crawled out of the bathroom and into my boyfriend’s arms.
The verdict was clear: no more coconut for me.
“Coconut attacks” or “the Coconut Monster,” as we called it, became the new normal. Because, you see, coconut is everywhere. I could cut out coconut oil and milk, but it goes by other names. Cocamide, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Laureth-3, Lauramide DEA, Lauryl Glucoside, Sodium Lauryl Sulfate, etc. All of these — and many more — are coconut derivatives. They bother me just as much as the real deal, perhaps more so. They’re in most shampoos, toothpastes, soaps, lotions, and dish detergents. Then there’s palm, coconut’s cousin, and that’s just as unkind to me. By trial and error, over the course of years, I found all of the hidden enemies.
My coconut attacks follow a very specific pattern. They never deviate; they only vary in their intensity.
First, I find it very difficult to hold a conversation. Fitting words together to make sentences becomes painful; language is garbled for me. Around this time holding eye contact also becomes tricky. Soon, anger follows. I become incredibly pissed at pretty much everything, or — at best — I’m just very negative. I see threats at every corner. Then the heart palpitations begin, inspiring a “flight or fight” sensation. I lose my appetite. My body stops regulation temperature correctly and I am either illogically cold or hot. At the zenith of the attack, I start saying things and doing things that I feel like I have no control over. And they’re never nice things.
For reference, I am a very quiet, somewhat timid person usually. I’ve been made fun of for how quiet I am. If I got mugged, I would probably apologize to my mugger.
But during coconut attacks over the past four years, I have thrown countless household items, broken (mostly inconsequential) things, smacked my hand against a car door so violently that it was bruised for months, yelled, screamed, cursed myself, hit myself, harmed myself. During a particularly bad attack (I’d accidentally eaten palm, straight up), I passed out and smashed my head against the cold, wooden floor of my apartment.
Usually the attack ends with me, rocking in a corner, my husband crouched by my side. Crying became the next natural event. Either from frustration or bottomless sadness, I will start crying. Deep sobs producing fat, heavy tears.
And then a strange thing happened. My husband and I realized that the crying was not only the natural progression of things, it dispelled all of the sensations of the coconut attacks. I was left groggy and shaken, but able to think clearly and function normally.
So we began to use tears as the antidote.
When it becomes obvious I’ve had coconut — all the symptoms are there and we can trace things back to find that I’ve consumed some — we work together to get me to cry. Sometimes I can do it alone but often I need him to talk me through it. By now, we have some tried and true methods. I sob, I yawn deeply, and then in a split second the dark veil of the coconut attack is lifted. Everything returns to baseline.
It works, but it never makes it less confusing.
The first doctor I reported this to had no way of explaining it and wasn’t interest in hypothesizing. Instead of trying to find the root cause for this peculiar issue, he wanted me to take a high dose of antidepressants and ignore the coconut issue.
So I just kept going, without any medical assistance or support. My husband and I have stumbled through this medical anomaly, doing our own research, finding our own treatments, asking doctors for blood tests under other pretenses. When a coconut attack occurs, I/we deal with it the only way we know how.
The best explanation that I have for why this happens to me is that coconut produces a mini case of hyperthyroidism (I have a hefty family history of thyroid problems). In other words, it revs up my thyroid function. The thyroid is a butterfly shaped endocrine gland in your neck that controls of bunch of hormonal functions in your body. Namely, your metabolism and protein synthesis. The thyroid hormones are created by iodine and tyrosine, an amino acid. Hyperthyroidism occurs when the gland produces excessive amounts of thyroid hormones, hence the revving.
I’m not a doctor or even a student medicine, but here is the explanation I’ve had to cobble together for myself.
For starters, coconut is very high in iodine. In its non-virgin form (as a poor college student I didn’t have the money to procure virgin coconut products) it also increases levels of blood lipids in the body. High fat oils tend to do this. Elevated blood lipids create greater absorption of vitamin D. Increased levels of vitamin D in the blood lead to increased calcium levels which can cause irregular and/or racing heartbeat. (If you’d like to read more about that, visit this article.) Furthermore, symptoms of hyperthyroidism include nervousness, irritability, heart racing, hand tremors, and anxiety.
My thyroid has been tested and, at present, everything seems to be in good working order. However, I’ve never been tested during a coconut attack. So I’ve had to suppose that I’m just a strange anomaly.
Then I found out that I’m not alone. Not in terms of coconut attacks, nor in my skepticism about coconut’s universal benefits.
I found threads like this one, where people talk about eating coconut and having anxiety attacks that are startling similar to my own. People describe their heart palpitations, anxiety, & insomnia, all arising after they’ve eaten or come in contact with coconut. This reddit thread is similar. The New York Times also recently published an article calling coconut’s benefits into question.
At my first visit with a new GP, I carefully explained my coconut attacks. Even though I know how to manage them — avoid coconut and palm, cry when accidental consumption occurs — I am continually worried about long term effects. If we don’t know what’s causing it, we don’t know what permanent damage my be occurring.
When I finished my explanation, I held my breath for the disbelief that I assumed would follow. But immediately the doctor nodded and said, “That makes sense.” My make-shift theory about coconut temporarily changing my thyroid function seemed sound to him. However, aside from testing my thyroid he could recommend no other solution. There is a shockingly limited amount of research that has been done about the thyroid and autoimmune diseases; the preferred course of action is to radiate it or take it out if it begins to cause a problem. The data my doctor would need to assist me simply doesn’t exist.
So for now, I tip toe around coconut, always finding it lurking in the shadows in hand soap or cooking oil blends. The current craze over coconut makes it all the harder. It is the “healthy” alternative, so it is everywhere.
But if there is one thing the diverse wellness community shows us, it’s that — despite what some of them may claim — there isn’t One True Path to health for everybody. Something that is good for one person may not be good for another.
Not even coconut.
