MCT Oil

What Is MCT Oil?

Fats are named for the length of their carbon chains, and the ones concentrated in coconut and palm kernel oil are short by the standards of dietary fat. Mostly eight and ten carbons. This oil is that fraction, at 3,000 mg of medium-chain triglycerides per serving.

How It Works in the Body

Chain length decides the route. Long-chain fats need bile to break them up, are rebuilt inside the gut wall, and travel the lymph before they reach the blood. Medium-chain fatty acids are smaller and more at home in water, so they skip most of that and cross into the portal vein, arriving at the liver directly. There they enter the mitochondria without the carnitine shuttle that longer fats depend on, and are burned quickly. The liver turns part of what it makes into ketone bodies.

What It Supports

• Energy metabolism: These fatty acids feed straight into beta-oxidation, so they play a role in normal energy metabolism.
• Easy absorption: They are taken up with little help from bile, unlike longer dietary fats.
• Ketogenic eating: The liver converts part of them into ketone bodies, which suits a very-low-carbohydrate way of eating.
• Caprylic and capric acid: The oil leans on the eight- and ten-carbon fats, not the twelve-carbon lauric acid of whole coconut oil.

Who It May Suit

People eating a ketogenic or low-carbohydrate pattern, and anyone who wants a fat that asks little of the gallbladder. A serving is three softgels. The shell is bovine gelatin, so this one does not fit vegetarian or vegan eating.

Good To Know

The oil is drawn from coconut and palm kernel oil. Medium-chain fatty acids move through the gut quickly, and a large amount at once can sit badly with some people. Talk with your healthcare provider before use if you are pregnant, or if you have a condition affecting the liver or the gallbladder.