Flaxseed Facts: Real Benefits & A Few Misconceptions - Ask a Nutritionist

Transcript:

Leah: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition's “Ask a Nutritionist” podcast, brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. My name is Leah Kleinschrodt. I'm a Registered and Licensed Dietitian and your host for the show today.

On today's show, I am answering a question that came in from one of our Dishing Up Nutrition Facebook page users. And so in case you didn't know, we have a special page on Facebook. It's called Dishing Up Nutrition, and you can request to become a member of this group. And it's a great place to leave questions or a suggestion that you have that you would like us to talk about. So you just go on Facebook and search for the Dishing Up Nutrition Facebook group, and we'd love to have you on there.

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So this person's question is, “I was listening to your podcast and learned that omega-threes in ground flax aren't as easily absorbed by the body. What are other health benefits of consuming flaxseed?” So that's an awesome question. I mean, and I'll talk about this in a second. I mean, most of us think about flax as being high in omega-3.

Do we get omega-3 benefits from flax?

So if we're not quite getting the benefits of the omega-threes from flax, then what's the point of eating flax? So let me back it up for just a minute and we'll address the omega-3 issue just in case some listeners haven't heard of that before. So, like I said, flax is touted as being high in omega-threes, and it is a big reason why a lot of people make it a point to eat flaxseed or to take flaxseed oil.

And you'll hear some of the same thing about omega threes in some other nuts and seeds. So things like chia seeds, hemp seeds, walnuts, and things like that. Flax is high in the plant form of omega threes, which is a short chain fatty acid called alpha linolenic acid. So I'm going to call it ALA for short from here on out so that I don't have to have that mouthful every time.

ALA is this very specific kind of fatty acid. It does have some anti-inflammatory and anti-microbial benefits all on its own, so that's great. But what the body does is it takes that ALA and it turns it into EPA and DHA, which those are the main longer chain omega-3 fatty acids that are found in our fatty fish like salmon, mackerel, and sardines.

And then we also, we even find some omega threes in grass-fed beef and in eggs. And many researchers and clinicians believe that the more potent anti-inflammatory effects, the cardiovascular benefits, the brain support benefits, these come from the omega threes, EPA and DHA, not from the ALA. So as humans, we only convert a very small percentage of that ALA into EPA, and then it's even a smaller percentage gets converted then into DHA.

So I'm talking like of the ALA that we get from flaxseed, only five to 8% of that ALA gets converted into EPA and only a half a percent gets converted then into DHA. For some reason, women seem to do this conversion process a little bit better than men. So the researchers think there's an estrogen component there, and there definitely is a genetic component as to how well people convert that ALA into EPA and DHA.

But to keep it simple, the common misconception is that if I eat flaxseeds and walnuts and chia seeds, this is equivalent to eating salmon or sardines in terms of the omega-3 content, and that's, that's just not the case. So it's not so much a matter of we don't absorb the omega threes from from flaxseed and some of the other nuts and seeds, it's just that there's actually different kinds of omega threes.

And as humans, we don't do a great job of turning the plant form of omega threes into the more potent and more usable forms of omega threes or the things that we think about when we hear about the benefits of omega threes. So yes, we do get omega threes from flaxseed, but then that goes back to the original question, well, if we don't eat flaxseed necessarily for the omega threes, like maybe I need to up my salmon game, or maybe I need to take a fish oil supplement or whatever end of the spectrum you're on there, then what's the point of eating flaxseeds?

Benefits of flaxseeds (#1: flaxseeds are a good source of fiber)

So there's a couple other points that flaxseed score, even if the omega-3 story isn't a slam dunk. So first of all. Let's not forget that flaxseeds are a good source of dietary fiber. Ideally, most of us are aiming for around 25 to 30 grams of fiber per day.

It's kind of a tall order, but that's what we're aiming for. For every two tablespoons of ground flax seeds, there's three grams of fiber. So it's not a ton, but it's getting us closer to that goal. Two thirds of that fiber is insoluble, so it's great for like adding bulk to the stool while one third is soluble fiber, so that has some other benefits.

Fiber helps with movement through the intestinal tract

So the fiber that is in flaxseeds can be helpful for increasing, like I said, intestinal bulk. So it can be helpful for moving things through that intestinal tract a little more efficiently. So it can help with constipation, it can help with irritable bowel syndrome, it can help with, if people are more prone to diverticula disease.

But fiber also feeds the colon gut bacteria. It slows gastric emptying, so it just slows how fast food moves through our digestive tract and slows the digestion of those foods, which helps us feel more full. It lowers our appetite and it also lowers the blood sugar impact of a meal. So all of those are good things.

Fiber helps decrease cholesterol levels

Fiber can help decrease cholesterol level. So that's where the soluble fiber piece of it comes in.

Fiber binds to toxins & excess hormones

And then fiber in general, just binds up more toxins , excess hormones we don't need anymore, we're trying to get rid of them. So these things, then they get bound up in those fibers and then we move them out of our body a little bit more effectively and they move out through our stool.

And so again, these are all good things. We want, we want that good dietary fiber. So that's where flaxseed can play a role there. Are there people whose guts that don't do great with a lot of added fiber from flaxseed or other sources? Yes, but in general, more fiber from a variety of different foods is going to be a good thing for a lot of different aspects of our health. So we're going to take a quick break and when we come back, I'll just finish up my thoughts about using flaxseed on a regular basis in the diet.​

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We're back. So we talked about flaxseed. Maybe we don't necessarily get the full benefit that we're thinking about from omega threes. It's still a great source of fiber so that there's one more point that I do want to make about flax seeds, and this is something it doesn't usually get a huge shining spotlight on it when it comes to flaxseed.

Are lignins helpful or harmful when it comes to estrogen levels?

It's also drummed up its fair share of controversy over the years also. And what I'm talking about are these little guys in flaxseed called lignins. So lignins are something called phytoestrogens. There's these little compounds that are made by plants that act like low intensity estrogens in the human body.

So the main one that's in flaxseed is this little lignin called SDG. It's got a huge long name that I'm not even going to try to pronounce. There's a few other minor ones also, but this SDG is the main one. And so our gut actually takes this SDG, it gets metabolized by the bacteria in our gut, and then that bacteria turn it into something that's a little bit more usable in the body.

And again, these are longer chemical names. I'm not even going to take an attempt at pronouncing. So those, those kind of like that next step that SDG gets absorbed into the gut, then the controversy comes from what happens next. So because these lignins act like weak or low intensity estrogens in the body, the question becomes now is this a helpful thing or is this more of a harmful thing?

And you know, I was poking around in the literature and poking around on some research studies and the conclusion I came to is, I'm not sure anybody truly has all the answers around this topic. On one hand, yes, we don't want to be accumulating extra estrogens that we don't need or that we don't detoxify really well, which honestly, the more I'm in practice, I think that's more of the problem that I see is like we are under these big loads of estrogen and we don't detoxify them really well.

So yes, we don't want too much extra estrogen. There is thought that lignins and flaxseed can mildly bolster estrogen levels and decrease hormone symptoms related to perimenopause and post menopause. So that might be a case where you would want maybe some of those mild estrogen types of effects.

Although there was a 2019 review paper that was published in the journal, Nutrients, that really discussed the need for more rigorous clinical studies in that particular area where they did see some benefits for some women. But in really when they aggregated all that data, it kind of came out as a wash and there wasn't any really noticeable effect in general.

And then on the other hand, these low intensity estrogens might actually be helpful because they can replace higher intensity estrogens at the level of binding to the cells in the body. So I think of this like if you are at a busy Costco parking lot, it's a Saturday or a Sunday, and so you're just, you're waiting for that car.

You see that car up in front of you that's backing out and you're thinking, oh, great, I can finally find a spot. But as soon as that person backs out, somebody else kind of swoops in and grabs that spot from you. So that is a similar effect that these low intensity estrogens can have. They can kind of swoop in and steal a spot on that cell that a higher intensity estrogen could have slipped into.

So this is a good thing if those higher intensity estrogens are coming, if they're more of xenoestrogen so coming, they're, they're foreign estrogens to the body and they're coming from synthetic sources. So things like chemicals that are in our skincare and our beauty products, plastics from the environment or from our cleaning chemicals or, or plastics that we might be using in our kitchen.

And, you know, we get exposed to a lot of different chemicals and a lot of different xenoestrogens throughout the environment and throughout our day. And then especially if these higher intensity estrogens or these more harmful estrogens are creating more hormonal symptoms for us.

So some women have really terrible PMS symptoms or terrible period symptoms. Endometriosis is a big area where we look at this kind of thing. And also cancer risk. So then actually, if we can swap out some of those higher intensity estrogens for a lower intensity estrogen, that actually might have some therapeutic effects or it might have some beneficial effects. There is research out there that says that the lignins and the antioxidants that come along for the ride in flaxseed have been shown to decrease the risk of breast cancer and prostate cancer.

So again, I think there's a lot of different sides to the same coin here. And are these lignins a slam dunk, harmful, or helpful? My guess is it's probably neither, but probably erring a little bit more on the side of helpful than harmful. And so I tend to think if someone is consuming flaxseed in their whole food form, so for most of us, that that's using ground flax, ground up flaxseed, and we're using them in fairly reasonable quantities, like one to two tablespoons a day;

I saw a couple of studies when I was looking through the data and there were some studies that were using eight or 12 tablespoons over the course of a whole day, so that I'm not encouraging. But if we're looking at one to two tablespoons per day, say we're throwing it into a smoothie or on a great salad, maybe you're adding it to a little bit of your steel cut oats, or maybe you're adding it to a protein muffin recipe.

Those I wouldn't, we could certainly make the case that there's a place for that ground flaxseed in those scenarios. And then we just also want to make sure we're getting a variety of other nuts and seeds and vegetables in the diet; things that also help us detoxify some of those estrogens. So when we kind of take a look at that whole big picture and get 30,000 feet up, I'd be willing to hedge my bet that there's nothing to worry about in terms of those phytoestrogens with the lignins, and that actually you're probably more often than not landing in the net positive.

Recap

So there you have it. That's flaxseed in a nutshell; kind of pun intended there, I guess. So it, with the flax, we've got, yes, we do have a little bit of the omega-3 benefit in there. Probably just not as much as what we think about if we're taking either a fish oil supplement or we're making a point to eat some of those fatty fish in our diets.

We've got the fiber that's in there and then we've also got these lignins in there. So hopefully that was helpful just doing a little bit deeper dive into flaxseed. I want to thank you all again, so much for listening to Dishing Up Nutrition’s “Ask a Nutritionist”, and just a reminder, if you have a question for us, you have two options to drop us a line. You can join that Dishing Up Nutrition Facebook community by searching Dishing Up Nutrition on Facebook.

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