Flaxseeds, are one of the richest sources of essential omega-3 fatty acids and have
roughly one hundred times more cancer-fighting lignans than other foods, and have shown to
be extremely helpful against prostate and breast cancers ; controlling triglyceride,
cholesterol, and blood sugar levels and reducing inflammation. They have also been shown to
be very effective for high blood pressure and were described as miraculous in this review
titled “Flaxseed: A Miraculous Defense Against Some Critical Maladies.However there have
been issues raised about flaxseeds 1) is they have been found to contain cyanide which has
been described as “deadliest poisons known to man“ and secondly are the estrogenic
effects of flaxseeds. Flaxseeds contain phytoestrogens, plant chemicals
that mimic estrogen in the body. Because of the estrogen-like activity of lignans in flaxseeds,
there has been some concern as we didn’t know whether they’re harmful or helpful
when it comes to hormonal cancers as breast cancer. This is because phytoestrogens act
like estrogen and may affect the production and breakdown of estrogen by the body, and
they affect the levels of estrogen carried in the bloodstream. So now let’s here as
Dr Michael Greger speaks first about the cyanide content of flaxseeds and then the estrogenic
effects of flax. The first clip comes from Vegains fantastic interview with Dr Greger
I highly recommend you head over and watch the interview in full. The second is from
Dr Greger’s August 2018 Q & A both links are in the description below….Cyanide actually
is the concern so when I was speaking in Sweden the Swedish government, if you go on the Swedish
government website they actually tell people not to eat flaxseeds. Obviously it was the
first question I got speaking Stockholm and in fact the Swedish publisher refused to publish
the book until I added an extra section explaining why flaxseeds won’t kill you. So after my
experience with that I actually scripted a small series of videos which should be coming
on the site soon. Cyanide is this naturally containing molecule that’s in a whole bunch
of things, in fact most common food crops contain these microscopic amounts of cyanide-
it’s the dose that makes the poison. So I do the calculations showing how much flaxseeds
you’d have to eat to get any kind of concern. Your body, we’ve evolved to detoxify cyanide
very rapidly but obviously there’s a limit. Bottom line eat a tablespoon of ground flaxseed
a day, there’s no risk of cyanide toxicity and for those interested in seeing the science,
as of course everyone should be, they should know that I have a video coming up soon where
I plot through the calculations and show that actually the flax researchers have it wrong
too, so on both sides of the debate they are messing with the facts. But when you look
at the facts a tablespoon a day is the way to go. Flaxseeds and estrogenic effect good
or bad? So flaxseeds have phytoestrogens just like soy-different set of phytoestrogens but
beneficial effects in terms of improving breast cancer survival for example. I have some really
dramatic videos where they randomized people, in fact they did, this is rare in dietary
studies, randomized double blind placebo controlled studies and you say well wait a second you
can double blind a pill- the real pill compared to a sugar pill that look identical but how
do you placebo control food? How do you get someone to eat fake broccoli and not realize
they’re eating placebo broccoli? Well what they did was they baked muffins, they had
a series of muffin studies, where they had muffins, one made with the exact same ingredients
but with or without flaxseeds and the person didn’t know the difference. This is ground
flaxseeds so you couldn’t even see the seeds and then you give muffins to breast cancer
survivors and see who lives longer and who has lower cancer recurrence rates etc. There
are some really extraordinary results not only with cancer prevention but also treatment
with flaxseeds. Check it out just type in flax on nutritionfacts.org and all my flax
videos will pop up or maybe I used the word flaxseed, one word? You have to check it out.