Transcription
In a previous video, we looked at the concern with eating flaxseed, and that was the discovery of its cyanide content. In that video, Dr. Greger recommended no more than 1 Tbsp of ground flaxseed per day due to the potential risk of cyanide toxicity. In a recent Q&A on nutritionfacts.org, he explained why he's now changed his recommendations once again. We're right to ask, do the benefits outweigh the risk?
So, just before we hear that clip from Dr. Greger, I want to briefly touch upon the fact that one of the most things about flaxseed is that they contain anywhere from 75 to 800 times more lignans than most other plant foods. And lignans are potent health powerhouses, primarily because they act as versatile phytoestrogens and antioxidants. When you consume lignans, your gut bacteria convert them into active enterolignans that provide three incredible benefits.
Number one, hormonal regulation. Because of their structural similarity to human estrogen, lignans can gently block or supplement estrogen activity. This helps alleviate menopausal symptoms and reduces the risk of hormone-sensitive cancers, such as breast and prostate cancer.
Number two, cell protection. As antioxidants, they neutralize harmful free radicals to reduce oxidative stress and inflammation, guarding your cells against damage that leads to chronic disease.
Number three, cardiovascular support. Lignans improve heart health by reducing blood pressure, lowering LDL cholesterol, and supporting healthy blood vessels.
But now, let's hear what made Dr. Greger change his recommendations.
>> The concerns about limiting flax didn't have to do with heavy metal exposure, but has to do with cyanide exposure. So, most major crops actually are cyanogenic. They actually produce cyanide. Our bodies developed all sorts of ways, five different ways to detoxify cyanide within our bodies, but obviously there's a limit, and the limit is for human consumption. So, you take people and they gave people massive amounts like, you know, cups of a flax seeds and did not get into kind of danger levels with cyanide exposure and never was able to kind of create any symptoms of cyanide exposure. But the concern is that kind of on a chronic basis. Well, yeah, okay, yeah. So acutely you need a lot of flax and doesn't seem to do anything. But maybe every day if you ate it every day. So I talk about how they actually developed this this no effect level for chronic exposure and it basically came down and said, "Yeah, you should stick to under two tablespoons or stick to one tablespoon a day." And that was based on some found that at 100 times that human equivalent dose, there was some issue with uh in rodents. And so they add like a hundredfold as a safety factor. Basically take the lowest dose that caused any adverse effects in rodents and you convert that to how much that would be in human dose and then you divide it by 100. And so that's where you get basically get the one tablespoon a day. We don't actually have any evidence that there's harm. In fact, people eat lots of flax have all sorts of benefits. One benefit would be lowering LDL cholesterol which would outweigh any long-term effects of that increased cyanide exposure from uh ground flax seeds. So I tweaked the daily dozen to be maximally LDL cholesterol lowering. What happened with the flax recommendation is I upped it to three tablespoons a day because that is the minimum dose that's shown to significantly reduce LDL cholesterol. And that is the goal of the book. Why? Because LDL cholesterol is the primary driver of our number one killer. So we want to get it as low as possible for as long as possible. And so one way to do that is to eat lots of flax. So it's like a tablespoon of flax with each meal. >>
Next we'll talk about the study that showed that chia seeds cause inflammation. To watch that video, you can click the middle of the screen now, but it will also be pinned to the top of the comments below.
>> Mhm.