My long post just got lost in cyberspace.
Anyway...
The links I give below are only to the abstracts. I have access to the full texts through our university subscriptions, so I'm not sure which papers I've accessed through a subscription and which are free (that's also why I don't quote anything
).
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Originally Posted by momtomany1  It would appear that Dr. Atkins was not aware of any negative health effects. Is all this information too new for him to have been aware of it? |
Most of it yes. Some, no.
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Originally Posted by mitzimarie Well, if they were consuming the seed as a seed, and not ground, they were probably unaffected because the seeds pass right through you... you don't get the benefits, so you probably don't get the detriments, either. I can't tell from the text whether the "actual seeds" were ground, or not. |
The results do not come from a controlled study, but from statistics based on the answers given to a questionnaire by women in the Quebec Pregnancy Registry. There is no info regarding how much oil they consumed or how much flaxseeds, or whether the flaxseeds were grounded or not. I'm not sure if the information exists or not, but it's not in the paper. However, I assume that those pregnant women who cared enough to take flaxseeds, also knew that they need to ground them in order to get the full benefits. Just a guess...
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Originally Posted by momtomany1 The results concering premature birth go on to state that basically seeds were fine, but caution is needed with oils. I think it is important to point this out. |
Dr. Atkins also recommended flaxseed oil, in addition to fish oil and borage oil (Chapter 27). In my opinion, when it comes to things like pregnancy, one should be aware of the latest research results, regardless of whether these results go in line or against what Dr. Atkins wrote.
The info on Mayo Clinic, concerning the correlation between flaxseed intake and hyperglycemia is not really accurate. The study they are talking about, published in 2002 by Kris-Etherton et al., analyzed the effect of omega-3 intake on blood sugar, but it was mainly concerned with EPA+DHA supplementation from fish sources. An increase in blood sugar levels was observed "usually only in patients with impaired glucose tolerance and diabetes" (probably most of us fall into at least one of these categories). They found a "moderate" increase for intakes > 3 g of omega-3 per day, a "low" increase for intakes in the 1-3 g/day range and a "very low" increase for those who consumed < 1 g/day, but they do not say how they defined "moderate", "low" and "very low" (or at least I couldn't find this in the paper). Somehow, in the whole "flaxseeds have omega-3" story, someone extrapolated these results to flaxseeds. But the study did not look exclusively at flaxseeds or flaxseed oil. This is the link to the article:
Fish Consumption, Fish Oil, Omega-3 Fatty Acids, and Cardiovascular Disease -- Kris-Etherton et al. 106 (21): 2747 -- Circulation
Another study (from 1993) looked at the effects of flaxseeds and flaxseed oil in 50 healthy female participants and found a decrease in the postprandial glucose response. The link to the abstract:
High alpha-linolenic acid flaxseed (Linum usitatis...[Br J Nutr. 1993] - PubMed Result
More recent studies did not confirm the association between omega-3 supplementation and fasting glucose levels in patients with type 2 diabetes (e.g. Hartweg et al., 2008,
Omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) for type 2 diabetes mellitus). The mean omega-3 dose was 3.5 g/day.