Canada now allows a health requirement on the labels of products with flaxseeds, saying that we know with sufficient certainty that flaxseeds do indeed help lower cholesterol levels. The products must contain at least two tablespoons of ground flax and be relatively healthy in the first place, so they can’t boast well-nigh the cholesterol-lowering effects of flaxseed-enriched meatballs or something.
Such claims are based on studies like one that I review in my video Benefits of Flaxseed Meal for Weight Loss: a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial that supplemented research subjects’ diets with flaxseeds. How do you come up with placebo food? There are placebo sugar pills for drugs, but how can you slip spoonsful of flax past someone? The researchers made special products—snack bars, muffins, bagels, and more—so the study participants would unknowingly be getting tablespoons of either ground flaxseeds or the control, whole wheat. And they did this for a year. No one knew who got which until the lawmaking was wrenched at the end. Their findings? The dietary flaxseed group saw a 15 percent reduction in LDL cholesterol as early as one month into the trial, but it only fell significantly lower than the whole-wheat group in those on cholesterol-lowering drugs. In whole-wheat group participants not on drugs, their cholesterol went down, too, diminishing the efficacy of the flax in comparison. You can see charts at 1:12 in my video. That’s why supplies placebos are so hard.
Are There Any Benefits of Flaxseed for Weight Loss?
In flipside trial, the researchers conducted an “open label” study, where the participants were enlightened they were eating flaxseeds, considering they couldn’t come up with an inert placebo for flaxseed. Whole-wheat flour is a whole grain and could be salubrious in its own right, for instance, whereas white flour could make the tenancy group squint plane worse. So, for this study, the researchers randomly assigned overweight participants to receive either lifestyle translating and daily ground flaxseeds or just the lifestyle translating vacated as the tenancy group. And, not surprisingly, soul weight, waist circumference, and soul mass alphabetize decreased significantly in both groups. (Even without lifestyle advice, simply enrolling people in a study where they know they’re going to alimony getting weighed can get them to lose weight.) However, there was “a significantly greater reduction in [the] flaxseed group in comparison with controls.” And not just by a little. As you can see at 2:21 in my video, the tenancy group that just got lifestyle translating lost nearly seven pounds and well-nigh an inch off their waist, while the group receiving the same translating plus spoonsful of flax a day—so, in effect, given increasingly supplies to eat—lost increasingly than 20 pounds on stereotype and cut nearly four inches off their waist over the same period. Those are no-go numbers for an intervention that widow rather than urgently removed calories from the diet. Was it just a fluke?
How well-nigh using flaxseed supplementation for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease? Thanks to the obesity epidemic, “it is the most worldwide liver disease and now recognized as a major public health problem in trendy society virtually the world.” The most worldwide rationalization is a high-fat diet, but flaxseed fat may be better, compared to lard. Lard? Well, that’s not very helpful. Let’s put it to the test.
As with the last study, participants received lifestyle modification translating with or without flaxseeds. They were told to mix the flaxseeds with water and juice and drink it lanugo without breakfast. And? Their soul weight went down, withal with liver inflammation, and scarring and fat inside the liver in both groups, but the results were largest in the flaxseed group. And again, there was that no-go 20-pound weight loss for the subjects told to add something (flaxseeds) to their diet, as you can see at 3:36 in my video. So, maybe that first study wasn’t a fluke—or maybe they both were.
There have been dozens of randomized, placebo-controlled trials of flaxseeds and weight loss, and, as you can see in the graphic unelevated and at 3.54 in my video, most were increasingly equivocal. Those two recent 20-pound weight-loss studies towards to be the outliers. But still, without putting all of the studies together, you do see a significant reduction in soul weight, BMI, and waistlines pursuit flaxseed supplementation in randomized controlled trials, though one should expect increasingly like 2 pounds of weight loss rather than 20 pounds
