You have probably heard a lot about how some fats or oils can be “good” and some can be “bad.” For example, trans-fats have received a lot of press lately about how damaging they may be to our health. On the flip slide, olive oil is always popular in the news about its role in the Mediterranean diet and how healthy it is for us to use it in our cooking. Another “good” fat that you might not hear about as much as olive oil but that in my very humble opinion blows it out of the water in terms of healthful properties is flaxseed oil.
Flaxseed oil, which is a rich golden colored oil, is the world’s richest source of omega-3 essential fatty acids, or EFAs. Specifically, it contains about 50 to 60 percent of the omega-3 called linolenic acid. It also contains a nice amount—20 percent or so—of the EFA called omega-6, or linoleic acid.
In case you are scratching your head at this point and thinking “Uh, so what? What’s up with these EFAs and this omega stuff has me confused?” it’s okay. At first, the whole EFA/omega-3 and 6 combo can definitely seem like Greek. Let’s back up a bit and explain first why EFAs are so important.
EFAs are very important to our health, and they are not something that our bodies can produce on their own. In other words, if we want to get any EFAs at all and enjoy their health benefits, we have to get them from the food that we eat, or in supplement form. In a perfect world, we would get enough from our diets, but most of us don’t live in this world. Many nutritional experts estimate that the majority of us are low in EFAs.
The ways that EFAs may help our health are incredibly far-reaching. Literally dozens of health issues have been linked to a deficit in them, and just as many have been found to improve once enough EFAs are back in our bodies.
For example, many people have taken supplements with EFAs to help with skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis, as well as just your basic dry and itchy skin. Still others have seen improvements in other health issues like asthma, depression, and even attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The EFA omega-3 in particular has been found to help with cardiovascular health. This is one reason that we hear to increase the amount of fish that we eat—many types of fish are also naturally rich in omega-3 EFAs.
Increasing the amount of EFAs that we get in our diet may help studies of EFAs have found that they may help to lower cholesterol by as much as 25 percent and triglycerides by as much as 65 percent. Taking an EFA-rich fat like flaxseed oil has been shown to cause a decrease in the “bad” or LDL cholesterol and an increase in the “good” or HDL cholesterol. Researchers have discovered that this happens because omega-3 EFAs actually help to break down the cholesterol that is found in the linings of our blood vessels.
In the second portion of this article, we’ll look at numerous studies that have been conducted on flaxseed oil and its proven positive effect on our health.
References:
Murray, Michael and Pizzorno, Joseph, Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, 1998
http://www.cancure.org/budwig_diet.htm
http://www.wholehealthmd.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=17E09E7CFFF640448FFB0B4FC1B7FEF0&nm=Reference+Library&type=AWHN_Supplements&mod=Supplements&mid=&id=9111FA8F4A9D40BD8CF8E62A8F7574EB&tier=2