Good Thing in a Small Package Flaxseed, Its Proponents Say, Is One of Nature’s Miracle Foods

“There are certain things in nature that are unbelievably nutrient-dense, and have a wide variety of uses,” said Evans, business representative for the Herbarium, a Chicopee-based seller of herbal and nutritional products. “These include garlic, flaxseed, cayenne pepper, mushrooms, and bee products like honey. I have eight pages of notes on cayenne alone, and I am a very detailed notetaker. Like the egg, these are near-perfect foods.”

Take flaxseed, for example.

“Flaxseed has been a part of human and animal diets for thousands of years in Asia, Europe, and Africa, and more recently in North America and Australia,” said Kaye Effertz, executive director of AmeriFlax, a trade promotion group representing U.S. flaxseed producers, who told WebMD.com that, as flax gained popularity for its industrial uses, its popularity as a food product waned, but it never lost its nutritional value. “Today flax is experiencing a renaissance among nutritionists, the health-conscious public, food processors, and chefs alike.”

Flaxseed is high in fiber, omega-3 fatty acids, and phytochemicals called lignans, writes Mayo Clinic dietitian Katherine Zeratsky at the clinic’s Web site. “Flaxseed can help reduce total blood cholesterol and LDL (‘bad’) cholesterol levels — and, as a result, may help reduce the risk of heart disease. Flaxseed oil also contains omega-3 fatty acids, but it doesn’t have the beneficial fiber that the seeds have.”

And that cuts to a key point in the discussion — not only how much to ingest, but in what form. This month, The Healthcare News examines the benefits of flaxseed — whole, ground, and liquid — and why its proponents think it’s one of nature’s miracle foods.

A Tablespoon a Day

Zeratsky notes that the Institute of Medicine has established adequate intake amounts of between 1.1 and 1.6 grams of omega-3 fatty acids per day for adults. One tablespoon of ground flaxseed provides 1.6 grams of those fatty acids, which is why most devoted flaxseed users talk in terms of one tablespoon per day.

But it’s not just omega-3, Evans said. Not only does flaxseed contain more omega-3 fatty acids than fish oil, which is a popular source of omega-3, he noted, but flaxseed is also the rare food that provides omega-3, omega-6, and omega-9 fatty acids in the proper ratio for good health.

Evans said that, because of its unique makeup, flaxseed has demonstrated benefits in lowering cholesterol, alleviating some symptoms of diabetes and lupus, and improving the function of the digestive, excretory musculoskeletal, nervous, respiratory, and sexual systems in its users. How the seed is prepared, however, will alter its effects.

People who eat the seeds whole, for instance, will aid their digestion more than anything else. That’s because the seeds are tough to digest, so they tend to pass through the digestive system whole, yet they become mucilaginous and slippery, so they create a sort of laxative effect.

To get the fiber effects of flax, Evans explained, people should grind them — a coffee grinder works fine — and ingest it in that form. But while whole flaxseed will keep for months, ground flaxseed will spoil at room temperature within a week. The best way to receive most of the health benefits, he said, is simply to ingest a tablespoon of flaxseed oil per day; people can put the oil, or the ground-up seed, on oatmeal, toast, salad dressing, or other common foods.

“The nice thing is that they’re starting to flavor it,” he added, noting that flaxseed oil is now packaged in cinnamon or other tasty variations to help those who don’t like the taste. Evans personally doesn’t mind the nutty taste of raw flax, but he admitted that some find it too bitter for their liking.

Some of the benefits of flax are relatively non-controversial, and have been for many years. But then Dr. Johanna Budwig emerged to turn conventional wisdom about the role of flaxseed on its head, promoting it as a cancer-fighting agent when ingested as part of a strict diet.

Budwig, a German biochemist, is best known for her extensive research, beginning in the 1950s, on the benefits of flaxseed oil combined with sulphurated proteins in the diet, and has published a number of books on the subject.

She claims to have assisted many seriously ill people, including those given up as terminal by conventional doctors, to regain their health through a simple regimen of nutrition, the basis of which is very specific amounts of flaxseed oil blended with low-fat cottage cheese and eaten alongside other healthy foods.

One goal of the Budwig regimen is to remove hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils from the diet. Clifford Beckwith, a prostate cancer survivor whose Web site chronicles his own recovery and that of many others who switched to the Budwig diet, explains that these oils involve the removal of electrons so products will keep and not get rancid on store shelves.

“I’ve heard since that the worst food one can eat is margarine and that it is only one electron per molecule away from plastic,” he writes. “Not only do these foods have no real value, but a burden is placed on the immune system to get rid of the material. For this reason I bake my own bread so I can use lard, and we don’t stint on the butter. I even hate to eat in restaurants because of the use of hydrogenated oils.”

Budwig’s take is that, once the electrons have been removed, these fats can no longer bind with oxygen, and they actually become a harmful substance deposited within the body. The heart, for instance, rejects these fats, and they end up as inorganic fatty deposits on the heart muscle itself.

Clearing the body of these harmful elements, she claims, gives the flax a clear field in which to operate — whether the goal is reversing the growth of tumors or simply achieving lower cholesterol and improved general wellness.

Too Much Information

When asked why the benefits of flaxseed aren’t better-known, Evans partly blamed the Internet — not for providing too little information, but spitting out so much that people become confused.

“There’s so much out there,” he told The Healthcare News. “Where do you begin, when there’s a thousand articles to read about it?

“My standard rule when it comes to the Internet is to believe 50{06cf2b9696b159f874511d23dbc893eb1ac83014175ed30550cfff22781411e5} of what you read — and not buy their products. Deal with local people. There are a lot of companies out there trying to sell products, and people become overwhelmed with all the information. We have a better perspective on what’s BS and what’s the straight story.”

And perhaps some insight into why people lived healthy lives before the advent of pharmaceutical companies — thanks to some of the ‘miracles’ of nature contained in the most humble of packages.