If you or someone you love has diabetes, you’ve probably seen many supplements suggested for naturally improving symptoms. Some supplements are more effective than others at relieving diabetes symptoms, though, and flaxseed oil is one of them. Whether you’re a firm believer in supplements or a skeptical newcomer, it helps to understand the science behind how a supplement can improve health issues before deciding if it’s right for you or your loved one. Below, we’ll take a look at how flaxseed and diabetes are connected and break down the specifics of the condition to better understand the benefits of flaxseed oil for diabetes.
History of the Mighty Flaxseed
Flax plants are believed to have originated in Egypt and have been grown and harvested for thousands of years for medicinal, textile and industrial uses. The use of flax for medicinal purposes can be traced back as far as Pliny the Elder, a first-century Roman naturalist who mentioned the plant in his work Natural History. Flax is also mentioned in both the Bible and Homer’s Odyssey and flax cloth has even been found in pharaohs’ tombs in Egypt. Flaxseed itself has gained popularity throughout the years for myriad health benefits, ranging from its fiber-rich nature to potentially anti-cancer properties. Flaxseed oil supplements are widely taken for reasons we’ll discuss below.
Is Flaxseed Oil Good for Diabetics?
To get a better understanding of how flaxseed and diabetes are related, let’s first discuss the function of insulin in a diabetes diagnosis.
Insulin Sensitivity
The word, “sensitive,” doesn’t always have very good connotations. However, when it comes to insulin, “sensitive” is exactly what we want our bodies to be. Insulin is a hormone secreted by the pancreas to help the body properly process food. When you eat, the food stimulates an increase in blood sugar. This blood sugar spike then communicates with the pancreas, telling it to release insulin. The released insulin acts as a guide for blood sugar, helping it get where it needs to go. It either guides the blood sugar to your cells for immediate energy use or to the muscles, fat and liver to be stored for later. Once insulin has done its job in getting blood sugar where it needs to be, insulin levels dissipate until the next time the hormone is called into action. If your body responds effectively to insulin’s prompts (higher insulin sensitivity), there will be less strain on your pancreas and on your body overall.
Insulin Resistance
When the body’s cells fail to listen to insulin, blood sugar doesn’t get where it needs to be and can’t be converted to the energy needed by the body. When this happens, the pancreas overcompensates by producing an excessive amount of insulin, causing the organ to work significantly harder. If the overabundance of insulin makes up for the cells’ stubbornness, the body can continue to function without much disruption. Unfortunately, if the cells become too hard-headed, they won’t accept the blood sugar that insulin tries to deliver, leading to a high blood sugar level. This condition is referred to as insulin resistance, and can also lead to prediabetes, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and other hormonal conditions.
What Causes Insulin Resistance?
Many factors can contribute to insulin resistance, including stress and inflammation, genetic factors and nutritional choices.
Chronic stress and inflammation go hand-in-hand with their contribution to insulin resistance. Both stress and inflammation cause the body to release cortisol, the hormone necessary for counteracting stress and calming inflammation. This all sounds good, right? Unfortunately, when this usually helpful hormone continuously floods your body, it raises blood sugar, making your pancreas work harder and affecting how well your cells respond to insulin.
Risk factors for insulin resistance can also be inherited, making it even more important to make good choices regarding your health. Often, this condition is made worse by consuming a consistently poor diet. For example, eating too many simple carbohydrates, such as white bread, pasta and potatoes, causes blood sugar to rise rapidly. Over time, the pancreas has to produce increasingly more insulin to keep up with poor food choices and cell receptors can become numb to the hormone, leading to insulin resistance. Eating an unhealthy diet can also lead to chronic inflammation, which will ultimately wreak havoc on all of your body’s systems.
Benefits of Flaxseed Oil for Diabetes
Keeping what you’ve just read about insulin sensitivity and resistance in mind, let’s take a closer look at how flaxseed oil can help.
Flaxseed oil contains high levels of lignans, which are plant antioxidants that can reduce inflammation by supporting the body’s immune system and decreasing the number of inflammatory proteins in the body. Lignans can also support a healthy hormone balance, which is good news for someone with diabetes (remember, insulin is a hormone). While adding a flaxseed oil supplement to your daily regimen is no substitute for a healthy, balanced diet, it can be an effective aid in reducing inflammation in the body and helping to prevent high blood sugar, insulin resistance and diabetes.
Flaxseed oil also contains a high concentration of alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which is an Omega-3 fatty acid responsible for preventing heart attacks and strokes and lowering blood pressure by thinning the blood. As one of the most potent sources of ALA, flaxseed oil contains about 8 grams of essential fatty acid in one tablespoon. Because heart disease and stroke are commonly comorbid with diabetes, flaxseed oil supplementation may hold promising benefits for those suffering from the condition.
How Much Flaxseed Oil Should I Take?
The Cleveland Clinic recommends around 1,100 milligrams of flaxseed oil for women and 1,600 milligrams for men per day. To put this amount in perspective, most flaxseed supplements contain around 1,000 milligrams per soft gel, so one or two gels per day should be sufficient for reaping all the benefits of flaxseed oil for diabetes.
Potential Side Effects
As mentioned, flaxseed oil can act as an anticoagulant to prevent blood clots. This means that taking the supplement may cause you to bleed more. If you are planning to have surgery, it would be prudent to discontinue use a couple of weeks before the operation. You should also be careful to not take an excessive amount of oil, as it can cause stomach upset. If you take medications for high blood pressure, discuss how to safely take this supplement with your doctor before including it in your supplement regimen to prevent low blood pressure (hypotension). Similarly, taking flaxseed oil can lower blood sugar levels, so if you take a medication that is intended to lower blood sugar, you should also consult your physician prior to supplementing with this superfood.
Summary
In conclusion, the potential benefits of flaxseed oil for diabetes include:
- Reduced inflammation
- Lower blood sugar
- Healthy hormone balance
- Heart disease and stroke prevention
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