How Flax Seed Improves Your Health

How Flax Seed Improves Your Health
How Flax Seed Improves Your Health

More and more, health-conscious individuals are turning to flax seed and it’s inherent flax seed oil as a natural, affordable solution. Are you frustrated in your search for a natural food supplement? One that can help you feel healthier and lose weight? without side effects?

Flax Seeds Benefits the Entire Body!

Flaxseed is claimed to benefit every molecule in the body! It improves the quality of hair, nails, and skin, as well as helping to regulate bodyweight, lower cholesterol and blood pressure and prevent arthritis and cancers.

What is Flax Plant?

The flax plant, an ancient crop, yields the fibre from which linen is woven, as well as seeds (linseed or flaxseed) and oil. The oil, also called linseed oil, has many industrial uses, it is an important ingredient in paints, varnishes and linoleum for example.

Flax is a grain crop which has several substances that can be healthy. It has fiber, omega-3 fatty acids and lignans. You can add flax to your diet by either using the flaxseeds or flaxseed oil. Both will add the essential omega-3 fatty acid, alpha linolenic acid (ALA) to our bodies. We need this fatty acid and are unable to make it on our own. This fatty acid may help reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease and sudden cardiac death. It is believed that flax’s fatty acids, as well as fiber, help in lowering blood cholesterol.

Flaxseed has been a part of human and animal diets for thousands of years in Asia, Europe, and Africa, and more recently in North America and Australia, says Kaye Effertz, executive director of AmeriFlax, a trade promotion group representing U.S. flaxseed producers. As flax gained popularity for its industrial uses, however, its popularity as a food product waned, but it never lost its nutritional value.

What does Flax Seeds look like?

Flax seeds are slightly larger than sesame seeds and have a hard shell that is smooth and shiny. Their color ranges from deep amber to reddish brown depending upon whether the flax is of the golden or brown variety. While whole flaxseeds feature a soft crunch, the nutrients in ground seeds are more easily absorbed.

Today flax is experiencing a renaissance among nutritionists, the health conscious public, food processors, and chefs alike!

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Can Flaxseed Prevent Heart Disease

Flaxseed and Heart Disease!

Did you know that some research on statin drugs show only a 1% reduction in arterial plaque? Instead of spending thousands of dollars on a prescription drug, you should at least consider a healthier and far less expensive dietary supplement like flax seed.

The American Heart Association found that women with increased dietary intake of the isoflavones and lignans found in soy and flax decreased their risk for atherosclerosis and arterial degeneration. Flax is by far the richest source of lignans, according to the Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

Can Flaxseed Prevent Cancer too?
Recently small studies of cancer patients in America who consumed flaxseeds have produced some encouraging results. In one study men with prostate cancer who ate an ounce of ground flaxseed a day as part of a very low fat diet were able to slow the progress of their cancers between the time they were diagnosed and the time of surgery. A similar study of women awaiting surgery for breast cancer found that those who ate a flaxseed muffin daily had a slower tumour growth rate. Various studies of animals, too, suggest some anti-cancer benefit from flaxseed.

How Do I Store Flaxseeds?

Whole golden flax seed which is clean, dry and of good quality, can be stored at room temperature for up to a year. For optimum freshness, ground flax seed should be ground as needed. Unused ground flax seed can be refrigerated in an airtight container if it will be used in just a matter of days, or it can be stored in the freezer for about a month.

Ground flax can be added to your morning juice or chocolate milk – usually a heaping tablespoon or two with your favorite beverage. Or you can sprinkle ground flax on cereals or yogurt.

Understanding why you eat certain foods is essential in maintaining life-long health habits. Certainly, pleasing taste and visual appeal is one reason we make food choices. Yet, choosing foods that keep our body working as a finely tuned machine is also the goal that healthy-minded individuals strive to achieve.

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Flaxseed Essentials

Flaxseed Essentials
Flaxseed Essentials

Despite all the concern about fat in our diet, the body does require healthy fats and oils to function. The problem is that most people are getting the wrong kinds of fats in their diet and are lacking the good, healthy fats. Besides being an energy source, healthy fats and oils are nutrients used in the production of cell membranes, as well as in several hormone-like compounds called eicosanoids.

These compounds help regulate blood pressure, heart rate, blood vessel constriction, blood clotting and the nervous system. In addition, dietary fat carries fat-soluble vitamins.

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