The Low-Down on Flax Seeds

[shelley]

The new wonder food, Flax Seeds and Flax Seed Oil, can be greatly beneficial if you do it right or totally harmful if you do it wrong.

The wondrous aspect of flax seed oil is its ratio of Omega 3's to Omega 5's and high content of linolenic fats (LNA) and linoleic (LA) fats. We need a particular ratio of these two in order for our blood and tissues to be healthy. Having the right ratio will regulate cholesterol, weight, metabolism, prevent and cure hemrrhoids, constipation, divirticulitis, IBS, rheumatism, arthritis, asthma, acne, depression, infertility and cancer, but having an incorrect ratio will exacerbate these same issues.

Men need twice as much linoleic acid as women for production of progesterone and a healthy prostate, and this fact is probably why men are twice as likely to get a heart attack than women are, and more prone to prostate cancer than we are to getting ovarian cancer. A lack of linoleic acid is impliated in breast cancer.

Ratio: Omega3 : Omega 6
LNA : LA

Modern diet: from 1 : 10
up to 1 : 50

Our needs: 1 : 2

Flaxseed oil 4 : 1

Udo's Choice 2 : 1

hemp oil 1 : 3
sunflower 0 : 65
safflower 0 : 75
corn 0 : 59
Olive oil 0 : 8
Canola 1 : 4
soybean 1 : 7

The problem with flax and indeed all nut/seed oils is they are goitregins, meaning they interfere with iodine absorption, so when you take these oils you should up your intake of iodine by using a trace mineral supplement, sea salt instead of table salt, take or eat kelp and other kinds of seaweed, caviar and seafood regularly.

The problem with using flax seed oil is it goes rancid very very quickly. Buy small bottles and only keep them for 2 weeks max. Store them in the freezer door. Only buy flax seed oil from the refrigerated section in a dark, opaque bottle. Never ever buy flax seed oil in capsules. Once rancid, it is cancerous.

Or make up Dr. Bruddig's Flax/cottage cheese dish. When the flax binds to the proteins in the cottage cheese they are much more stable and easier to digest. Recipe following at the end of this post.

The other problem with using the oil instead of the whole seed is you don't get the value of the lignans, a plant chemical that is highly beneficial and easily destroyed by pressing and exposure to oxygen and light. You also lose out on the wonderful fiber, which is fantastic for regulating and exercising the colon. So it's best to take in both oil and the flax seeds themselves, which must be ground up in a coffee grinder as we cannot digest them.

About 5-6 tablespoons of ground flax seeds has as much oil as 1 tablespoon of oil.

Flax seed oil must be eaten raw. The best way I've found to eat it is to add it to my Bob's Red Meal cereal after cooking it and serving it up in a bowl, along with rice milk and cinnamon. It's also excellent in my Protein Shake and basic vinagraitte salad dressing.

Dr.Johanna Budwig Blend:

Put in your blender:

1 cup Organic cottage cheese - low fat, soft freshly made cheese, best make your own, or use yogurt or kefir
2-5 Tbsp. of flaxseed oil or Udo's Choice
1-3 Tbsp. of freshly ground up flaxseed (electric coffee grinder ($15) works fine)
enough water to make it soft (don't add water if using yogurt/kefir)
dash of cayenne powder or about 3 drops of cayenne tincture

any other pungent spices you like - chili powder, red pepper flakes, garlic, curry, garam masala, basil ...

or make it sweet with honey and serve with fruit.

If you use cottage cheese, you get a somewhat thick spread that is great on crackers and tortillas.

The variations are infinite. For a single serving of a fruit smoothie, make it with 8 ounces of kefir, add honey, large handful of frozen mango or berries, 1-2 tablespoons of flax seed oil, teaspoon of ground cardamom, ground seeds optional, blend.

[J F]

I've just bought some Bob's Red Mill wholeground Flaxseed Meal. I wanted to add a bit to my UltraClear shakes along with some kefir and cinammon/nutmeg. Do I need to soak this first? I bought the meal rather than use flax oil as my doc highly recommended flax oil to me and I think it's too expensive to buy the stuff, hope I'm getting the right dosage and not too much, then throw out what I don't use of the oil after 2 weeks.

So, I bought the meal, hoping I could keep it in my freezer for longer than 2 weeks, and that in the ground meal form it would be more absorbable in my system. Isn't flax good for candida and gut issues as well?

[shelley]

that's a great product. Add it to everything you can, it's fine. Just don't keep it longer than a month, and you may need to refrigerate it after you open it for best results.

Yep, great for any issues regarding bowel health.

[bones]

which is better flaxseeds or flax oil? Is one better thean the other in certain health aspects?

[shelley]

It depends on which use, what your goals are.

If your goal is to have regular BMs and do some bowel management (cleansing and toning the bowels), then you really can't beat freshly-ground flax seeds and flax seed tea. There are also nutritional benefits to the whole seed, which is a plant chemical called Lignans that tend to get lost in the process of making oil.

The oil is great as an occasional substitute for olive. You cannot cook with it. It has more Omega 3's than olive oil. So if you are very low in Omega 3's (men especially need tons) then using the oil to make your salad dressings, or making Dr. Budwig's cottage cheese and flax seed oil dish, is very helpful. It's hard to eat enough seeds to get enough oil to make a difference.

[Doolange]

I missed this post last month Anyway, I have started to take 2 tablespoons flax seeds in 1 cup of kefir (non sweetened low fat) every day in the afternoon. Am I accomplishing what Budwig says? I also eat an avodacado right after that sometimes. Is this the right way to do it?

[shelley]

yep! the oil and dairy accomplishes the same thing whether it's cottage cheese or kefir. You don't really have to eat an avocado on top of all that for therapeutic reasons. You're already getting good oils and protein. Avocadoes are so rich with veggie oils and such a complete meal they're often best on their own or as the protein/oil source to add to veggies/salad to make the salad more balanced and weighty.

[jules]

shelley thanks for posting the recipe!

i;ve heard about the benefits of this combination recently and it sounds great if it would work with the kefir! though i heard that it has to do with some sort of sulphur compound in the cottage cheese?

are you sure this sulphur is also in the kefir?

here is a thread from another forum discussing these details:
http://www.rawfoodsupport.com/read.php?f=12&i=77433&t=77209

[jules]

http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/budwig_protocol_vi.html

2. Question re yogurt: did Dr. Budwig actually recommend the use of yogurt in place of cottage cheese/quark?

Answer:
I have never read that Dr. Budwig recommended or sanctioned the use of yogurt as a suitable substitute for Quark in the Budwig Diet. She was adamant on using quark (cottage cheese) right up to publishing her last book in Sept. 1999. That is not to say that she necessarily was opposed to yogurt, she just did not mention it as an option.

I do remain somewhat uneasy about the use of yoghurt in the place of quark. I have imitated how others say they use it, such as "30 turns with a spoon" (not even 200 turns with a spoon would do it right) and beating it with a whisk. On close observation with a magnifying glass I found that there are still tiny oil specks floating on top. That to me is not mixed enough. The dairy product needs a certain protein density to facilitate complete water solubility of the flaxseed oil. Some yogurts may have it, others don't. Not all yogurts are alike. Some are fortified with powdered milk or something else to raise the protein content. I am still of the opinion that if you want to use yogurt, strain it to come up with a yogurt quark as described in the following. I do it that way. It works well:

Feeling the pressure for alternatives, especially yogurt, I began some time ago experimenting to make Yogurt Quark. At first it didn't work out well because it didn't drain enough. Later on I tried it again and had great success with it because the yogurt I bought and used as a culture, probably had different bacteria in it. I read up on it and found that some advances had been made in the selection and combining of bacteria to combat post-acidification. That is a condition where Yogurt becomes more and more acid as it is stored in the refrigerator. Whether this change was the reason for better drainage of whey is not entirely clear to me, but I thought so.

Anyway, since sufficiently drained Yogurt is a type of Quark, and since in my opinion it has all the attributes (low fat, protein quality, quantity and concentration) of German Quark made from buttermilk, I believe that it can be used as a substitute for it. Other than that, I see no suitable substitutes.[/url]

[natesse]

Hi Shelley, everyone:

How can you tell if flax seed oil is rancid? Does it smell bad, look bad, etc.? I've had a bottle of organic flax seed oil in a black bottle in the fridge for about 2 months now. It looks fine, smells fine, tastes fine, and I've been using it.

Thanks.
Sharon

[shelley]

It's hard to tell actually. You can test it via kinesiology, use the arm-test method. Udo Erasmus recommends keeping flax seed oil for no longer than 2 months so you're about there.

[AgnesT]

I've been doing 2-3 flax seed meal/kefir fiber shakes each day and I love what it is doing to my bms! I feel as if I am going more and with greater ease! Very nice!!

[beachbuminthecountry]

[sariewarie]

My kinesoilogist said my body has too much testosterone, will eating flax seed help with this ?

[shelley]

The ratios stay the same for men and women, but men simply need MORE total fats overall. Men don't store as much fats as women so they need more in their diet.