Coconut Water – Treat or Treatment?

itp, blood disorder, coconuts auto immune, platelets

Feature image from ITPANDME

As I learn more about the benefits and pleasures of coconut water I will continue to update this page.  But for now… Here is what I know

I started drinking a lot of coconut water in Bali.  It was everywhere, it was tropical, local and guaranteed to be sterile and safe to drink when you saw them open the coconut at your table.  I fell in love with the taste and found them so refreshing.

One day when I was buying coconuts at our local market, a woman who worked where we were staying, came over to speak with me.  She had seen the coconuts in my hand.  Her English was sparse and my Indonesian was non-existent, but she held her hands to her stomach and inclined her head.  With a pained face, she asked me, ‘Your tummy not good?  You have lady time?’

I smiled and shook my head.  My tummy was fine and it was not my ‘lady time’.  She could not understand why I was choosing to drink coconut water for no reason.  To her, it was medicine, to rehydrate the body, to calm the stomach, to relieve menstrual bloating and to give to ill children.

Now that I am back in Australia, I still drink a lot of coconut water, a few each week.  But always fresh from the coconut.  I make sure that I never buy it bottled.  The fresher the coconut water, the better. Once exposed to air and warm temperatures, it rapidly ferments and loses its nutritional value.

by Meg

Meghan Brewster is a writer and blogger. She is an ITP patient and launched ITP&Me in 2011. She is a coffee lover and a try hard dancer. @meghan_brewster

2 thoughts on “Coconut Water – Treat or Treatment?

    • Meg says:

      I am not sure of the particulars of coconut water and itp, but in indonesia when I was staying there, the family we lived with gave it to their children when they were sick or dehydrated. Poor families that could not afford purified water used coconut water to up mix baby formula. Other than that I am not sure. Let me know how you go!

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