Alternative Health Blog

It is not surprising that South Dakota State University is a leading research center for analyzing the health value of flax seed. The National Agricultural Statistics Service reports that North Dakota is the top state for flax production, followed by Montana, South Dakota and Minnesota.

What’s surprising is that a distinguished professor at South Dakota State, Chandradhar Dwivedi, so clearly points to flax meal as superior to flax oil for health purposes. You can buy high-quality flax meal (grinded flax seeds) for less than a dollar per pound. Go organic, maybe it sets you back three to four bucks for a bag that lasts for weeks, even months.

Flax oil, in contrast, is pricey—roughly a dollar or so per ounce—because it is more concentrated and extracting oil from flax seeds is a more costly proposition. It would benefit flax producers if flax oil were the optimal nutrition methodology.

What Dwivedi found is that flax meal offers something you can’t replicate in flax oil. In animal studies, Dwivedi shows evidence that both flax meal and flax oil can help prevent colon cancer cell growth. The next step was to compare flax meal and flax oil.

“I did research first on flaxseed oil, which has roughly 58 percent of [healthy] omega-3 fatty acids,” says Dwivedi, head of pharmaceutical sciences in the College of Pharmacy at South Dakota State.  “It prevented colon cancer development in mice.

“Then I got further into flax research and looked at flaxseed meal. Flaxseed meal has omega-3 fatty acids, just as in flaxseed oil, but at the same time it has a chemical known as lignan. Lignans also have been reported to be cancer chemopreventive. Flaxseed meal has lignan plus omega-3s. It's much better than flaxseed oil.”

Dwivedi has presented his findings at Flax Institute meeting. He says flax producer organizations are willing to fund the next wave of flax meal studies. The goal is to see whether the lignans in flax meal might not only prevent cancer but be used to treat it in patients already diagnosed with colon cancer.

Here’s insight into how scientific research and intution can intersect. Dwivedi originally started his flax research because his family cooked with mustard oil when Dwivedi growing up in northeastern India. As child in India, he remembers that most of the cooking was done with mustard oil.

It turned out in that area of India the rate of cardiovascular disease and cancer was much lower than even other areas of India. So Dwivedi and his family associated mustard with enhanced health. He applied the folk theory when he became a researcher, discovering omega-3 fats make up about a quarter of mustard oil.

Problem: The mustard we use as a condiment in the U.S. has been processed to remove the omega-3 fats. We are taking out the best part of the plant.

Dwivedi realized this limitation and looked for another plant source of omega-3s to protect the heart, colon and other major organs. He thinks he has found it in flax.

Bob Condor blogs for Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.