Will rinsing my hands, mouth, and nasal passage with coconut oil dissolve the virus envelope and prevent infection

Indian Scientists’ Response to CoViD-19, (ISRC) (2020) Will rinsing my hands, mouth, and nasal passage with coconut oil dissolve the virus envelope and prevent infection. i wonder.... p. 75. ISSN 2582-1636

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Abstract

Since ‘like dissolves like’, a polar or charged substance can dissolve other polar substances, and nonpolar substances can dissolve other nonpolar substances. This means that polar lipids can dissolve the outermost layer (called the envelope) of a coronavirus, which is made up of a fat-like (polar) substance. Soaps can also achieve this. In other words, both polar lipids and soaps can form the “micelles” that are required to dissolve and break polar phospholipid bilayers, like those in cell membranes and the envelope of a coronavirus. Coconut oil, on the other hand, consists only of nonpolar fatty acids, which form globules (instead of micelles) when mixed with water. Even in ionised, charged states, these fatty acids do not form micelles efficiently due to their chemical structure. What about soaps that use coconut oil as a base? The oil in these soaps is ‘saponified’, or changed to a different chemical structure through a chemical reaction. So applying coconut oil to one’s hands would not affect SARS-CoV-2

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Indian Scientists’ Response to CoViD-19, (ISRC)

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