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Dr. Weil shares if women should be adding flaxseed to their diet regiments.
Dr. Weil:
Flaxseed is, I think a very good addition to the diet. It’s a, first of all it’s cheap. You don’t want to eat whole flax seeds; they pass through undigested. You want to grind them and preferably grind them fresh, just a few days’ supply at a time; keep in the refrigerator. Eat a tablespoon or two a day; very good sprinkled on salads or cereal. You can bake them into things.
Flaxseeds are very high in fiber, which is good for digestion. Flax is a source of omega-3 fatty acids. It’s not exactly the kind the body wants from fish, but it’s a precursor of the EPA and DHA, useful addition to the diet, and for women, flax is a source of estrogen-like compounds called lignins. These are plant estrogens, which probably are protective against hormonally driven cancers, useful for men too by the way, probably help lower risk of prostate cancer. But I think flaxseed--it’s a very good addition to the diet for all those reasons.
About Dr. Weil, M.D.:
Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D., was born in Philadelphia in 1942, received an A.B. degree in biology (botany) from Harvard in 1964 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1968. After completing a medical internship at Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco, he worked a year with the National Institute of Mental Health before writing his first book, The Natural Mind. From 1971-75, as a Fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, Dr. Weil traveled widely in North and South America and Africa collecting information on drug use in other cultures, medicinal plants, and alternative methods of treating disease. From 1971-84 he was on the research staff of the Harvard Botanical Museum and conducted investigations of medicinal and psychoactive plants.