Flax seeds are great for your health but did you know that the most beneficial part actually comes from the shell? Today on the show Bob Gilpatrick and Rollie Culp discuss lignans, the most beneficial part of flax seeds and what they can do for your health. Learn how the waxy coating of flax seeds can be turned into one of the most beneficial polyphenols a human can find. Discover how lignans can help alleviate symptoms of menopause and enlarged prostate issues while simultaneously increasing immune system function and improving mood. Sit back, relax, and get ready to live forever young!

—

Watch the Podcast Here

Listen to the podcast here

Lignans For Life

Episode 5 Of Exploring Herbalism Series

Thanks for reading this episode. Flaxseeds are great for your health, but did you know that the most beneficial part comes from the shell? On the show, Bob and Rollie discussed Lignans, the most beneficial part of flaxseeds, and what they can do for your health. Learn how the waxy coating of flaxseeds could be turned into one of the most beneficial polyphenols a human can find. Discover how lignans can help alleviate symptoms of menopause and enlarged prostate issues while simultaneously increasing immune system function and improving mood. Sit back, relax and get ready to Live Forever Young.

—

Welcome to the show. I’m here with Rollie.

One of the things that we always talk about here is how you can take your health to the next level like sports players and regular people, how to elevate your health. When we talk about foundational nutrition, there are a lot of different things that we talk about. Once you have your foundational nutrition set, you want to start to optimize your health.

One of the things we want to talk about is lignans, which is one of those products that we offer that helps to optimize your health. Since we’ve been talking about herbalism, we wanted to have this be one of our last episodes of exploring herbalism series. We’re going to be talking about lignans, what they are, how they work, and why you need to have them.

A lignan is in a class of plant chemicals that are called polyphenols. To this date, there are 27 different known lignans, similar in chemical structure, but each one is a little bit different. They come from plants. There are many different types of plants that have lignans in them and there are many parts of the plant where there are Lignans.

What’s been discovered is that the waxy part or what’s called the hull, that’s on the outside of the seed and has the most concentration of lignans. In the case of which plant, it turns out that flax has the highest concentration. There are lignans in all of the seeds and you can make oil from that seed or even eat the seeds and get lignans. When you go to the effort to knock the wax off the seed and use only that as a ground-up powder to consume, you get 70 times more lignans than you would if you were to consume the oil or the seed itself.

Flax Seed Lignans: There are 27 different known lignans, similar in chemical structure, but each one, a little bit different and they come from plants. There are many different types of plants that have lignans in them.

If you’ve ever seen a seed, especially a flaxseed, they’re not very large.

They’re very small and it takes an effort to get the wax off.

Do you sit there and scrape it with a pencil? How are you getting it off?

I used to scrape it with a scalpel and because lignans are so beneficial, they would go to all that trouble. At the time, because of the labor costs, they were very expensive. Now, they have these machines that tumble the seeds and the wax off. It’s now much less expensive and you can get a lot more of them with a lot less effort. Now, you can get a whole jar of lignans for about $60. It used to cost many hundreds of dollars.

You’re not sitting there scalping it off with a scalpel. You’re having a mechanical thing help with the process. It does make it more affordable but when you think about how much powder one little seed must create to get a jar that big, that’s a good amount of effort.

There are mountains of flaxseeds that have had the wax knocked off of them that are put into fields and become part of the soil again. They don’t need that many seeds now. The best thing to do when you take these lignans that are in powder form is to take them with probiotics. A lignan that comes from a plant is a plant lignan and it needs to be converted into an animal lignan or in this case, a mammalian lignan, and it does it with the help of bacteria. It happens in your gut, so you want to take probiotics with your lignans in order for you to be able to make that conversion.

The things that you get from plants are plant-based and to make the conversion in your body, you have to have an accurate count of good and bad bacteria. When you take probiotics, especially the ones that we have that include the metabolites, it will help to convert that into a mammalian lignan a lot quicker.

People might ask, “Why would I go to all this trouble? Why would I pay to take these lignans?” There are many different benefits. There are many types of lignans in the flaxseed, in the hull. Also, the same lignan has many different benefits. For example, one of the things that lignans do is they are a phytoestrogen. Estrogen is a hormone that both men and women have in their bodies. They attach to cells through receptors and you can have good and bad estrogens attaching to your cell.

You can have too many natural estrogens attaching to your cell, but you can also have estrogen lookalikes or phytoestrogens that are toxins. It will come in, attach to a receptor for estrogen and then into the cell. That’s how toxins can cause cancer. When you use lignans and take them by mouth, they tend to also attach to estrogen receptors, thereby blocking the toxins and also allowing all the nutrients of the lignans to get into the cells, including antioxidants.

When you talk about estrogen receptors specifically, I was reading a little information about how that works, especially with lignans. It’s a game of musical chairs. You only have so many estrogen receptors. All these bad toxins and additional estrogen come, and they try to catch these available limited seats. If you fill these up with toxins and plastic, you don’t have enough for the good estrogen to come onto. By taking the lignans, it helps to block that and provide estrogen that can adapt to what your needs are. A lot of women who use lignans say it’s helpful in reducing hot flashes, symptoms of menopause and is like a mood enhancer because it will adapt to what your body needs as far as that goes.

There are many thousands of women that use lignans specifically for that purpose, for pre-menopausal symptoms, menopause or even post-menopausal symptoms. It works well. The people that we know that use them swear by it like, “If I could only use one nutritional product, it would be it.”

We have a woman who works here and said, “If we ever don’t have lignans, I’m not coming to work. I’m not coming back because I need them.”

Flax Seed Lignans: When you take probiotics, especially the ones that we have that include the metabolites, that’ll actually help to convert that into a mammalian lignin whole lot quicker.

There are lots of research done by Dr. Christine Horner and Dr. Lillian Thompson. They and many other doctors have studies that show the benefits of lignans in regard to hormonal cancers, particularly breast cancer. It’s a very good thing to know about both as a preventative and if you have cancer. It can’t be used for all different types of hormonal cancers.

There are different types of breast cancer and it only works for certain types. There are certain types where you don’t want to take it. You don’t want to go by what we’re saying is, “Take lignans if you have cancer.” You have to check with your doctor to find out what type and whether or not an estrogen-binding plant phenol is going to be beneficial.

Similarly, if you have an immune system issue where you have an overactive immune system that attacks itself, then you want to be careful with these as well because lignans are good at boosting immune health. If you don’t have an issue with an autoimmune disorder, they’re great. They will make you defend against pathogens, viruses and things like that. If you have an autoimmune disorder, you want to be careful because it can make it much stronger and could make your issue worse. If you have an autoimmune disorder, you want to be careful using lignans and things that boost your immune system.

You definitely want to check with your doctor or rheumatologists because there’s a lot of evidence that using lignans helps with lupus. There’s also evidence that it doesn’t work at all with other autoimmune diseases and might make it worse. That’s why you want to bring your lignans to your doctor and say, “Here are the studies that show that it helps with lupus.” The good thing about testing products that are powderize is you can start with a small grain and touch it to your mouth. You can always have your physician check your blood work along the way and see if you’re getting good results from it. If not, you can always stop.

The other thing that there are a lot of studies on is how lignans are beneficial for your heart health. We know that in many people that take lignans, their LDL cholesterol will come down and their HDL cholesterol will go up. It’s that balance of the so-called good cholesterol, the HDL and the LDL that is the ratio that you’re looking at to see whether or not you have a cholesterol problem. We know that in many cases, lignans will lower LDL and increase HDL.

One of the things we always talk about is inflammation. One of the things that lignans are good at and one of the compounds in it is known as SDG or Secoisolariciresinol Diglucoside, that’s very beneficial. It’s a great antioxidant. By reducing inflammation, you’re going to live longer like we talk about. You’re always constantly fighting and battling toxins and repairing your body.

If you’re eating poorly and it’s causing inflammation and overloading your body, you’re going to fall into chronic inflammation territory. When that happens, we start seeing chronic diseases. By including very powerful antioxidants in your diet, the new technology of herbalism allows us to take these concentrated lignans and get the benefit of inflammation reduction. In a lot of men, it’s beneficial.

That is another reason why it helps with your heart is because your heart is very susceptible to inflammation. In regards to men, it tends to help their prostate. A lot of times, as people get older, they will find themselves getting up multiple times per night to go use the bathroom. It interrupts their sleep and it has a negative effect on their health because they’re not sleeping well.

When men take Lignans, what happens is it reduces the amount of times they have to get up in the night to use the bathroom. If you wake up at 4:00 AM and you want to go use the bathroom, it’s a good idea. Your body’s detoxing through your urine primarily. That’s a good thing. It gives a fresh start, go back to sleep and we have a whole another show on how to get good sleep and particularly how to fall back asleep.

It’s on LiveForeverYoungRadio.com. It’s called Sleep Tips. We’ve done a good job of giving you an idea of the things you can do with your environment that help get your sleep in a better position. If you don’t sleep well, you’re not repairing well. There is so much that happens when you’re sleeping.

That’s a good show. Watch it all based on the research we’ve done and the studies we’ve seen about it. That’s a good one. If you are a man that’s having this problem, you want to get some lignans and try them out right away and know that it could have that benefit for you. In addition, it’s going to be good for your heart and bones.

It’s good for your mood, too, because as you get older, sometimes you get a little impatient.

We know that lignans help people with depression, anxiety and even bipolar disorder.

Flax Seed Lignans: By including very powerful antioxidants in your diet, the new technology of herbalism allows us to take these concentrated lignans and get that benefit of inflammation reduction.

It’s a crazy amount of things that they help with. A lot of people don’t hear a lot about lignans, but the ones who know about Lignans swear by it.

It is a best-kept secret, but the good news is with a small jar and a scoop, you just put it in a glass of water. It doesn’t taste bad at all. It has a neutral earthy taste, but it’s not dirt, something bitter or anything like that. Mix a small amount in a glass of water and drink it. You can experience any or all of these benefits that we’re talking about.

If you’re using them with some of our other powdered products like Boomer Boost, Barley or even our Probiotics. You can mix them all and put them in one simple-to-use drink.

That’s what I do in the morning. I put all the powders together in one place. I put it in a shaker bottle and drink it in my car on the way to work.

I finished it up when you get here. I see you still got some left when you get here.

Rollie, thanks very much. Thank you, everybody, for reading. We’ll see you at the next show.

Important Links:

• Tips For Better Sleep – Previous episode
• Boomer Boost
• Probiotics