I classify flaxseed oil as a drug, because that is how it works against cancer. Most people who hear that flaxseed oil has anticancer properties assume it to be a safe natural product without harmful side effecs that will protect them from cancer. Many start taking it regularly just as a precaution. What they don't know, and what the oil industry doesn't publicize, is that the anticancer properties of flaxseed oil are a result of free-radical damage to cancerous tissues and not to any healthful properties of the oil itself!

Flaxseed oil and other polyunsaturated oils create so many destructive free radicals in the body that they can actually kill cancer cells.4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11

The theory behind this process is that cancer cells are diseased and, therefore, weakened. Free-radical reactions will further weaken and kill these cells. Although free radicals affect the entire body, including healthy cells, the weakest cells will die off first. This is the same type of process that happens in chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy drugs are highly toxic and affect the entire body. The cancer cells, being abnormal, are less capable of resisting these drugs, are the first to die. The entire body is poisoned in the process, but normal cells are better able to withstand and recover from the drugs. Flax-seed oil is used in exactly the same manner and is, therefore, no different than chemotherapy drugs.

The most obvious drawback to chemotherapy are the side effects. While chemotherapy drugs attack the entire body, the strongest effects take place where cells grow (he fastest such as the bone marrow, the intestinal lining, the hair follicles, and the mouth, sometimes causing a variety of severe side effects. The side effects from flaxseed therapy can be just as damaging. This is not a harmless nor a natural remedy for cancer.

The effects of free-radical damage from flaxseed oil are not immediately evident. Your hair doesn't fall out after a couple of months of treatment like it might with chemotherapy. The damage caused by free radicals may not surface for several years. By this time, the effects of degeneration may be attributed to any number of factors and thus divert the blame away from the real cause.

Researchers know that it's the free-radical chain reactions that kill the cancer because when antioxidants, such as vitamin E, are given at the same time, flaxseed oil has no anticancer effects. The vitamin E stops the oxidation of the oil within the body and thus prevents the formation of free radicals. Without free radicals roaming around inside the body tearing up the cells, the cancer remains unharmed.12,13

It's interesting to note that vitamin E is also known to have anticancer properties. But it works in a totally different way, supporting the body's natural healing mechanisms rather than poisoning it.14 Our cells naturally contain antioxidants to protect them against renegade free radicals, but if free-radical exposure is excessively high, as it can be when large amounts of vegetable oils are consumed, they will exhaust the cells antioxidant reserves and cause cellular damage.15

While polyunsaturated oils can be used to fight cancer, they have also been shown to cause it as well. Studies have shown that oils rich in linoleic acid (omega-6) promote the growth of cancer cells while fish oils can depress or stimulate tumor growth depending on the dose.16 Too many omega-6 derived prostaglandins (PGE2) encourage breast cancer.17,18

Free-Radical Cures

The concept of using free radicals from polyunsaturated oils to fight cancer has been applied to other pathologic conditions. Flaxseed oil has been used successfully to kill the microscopic parasites which cause malaria. It has been noted that individuals who have low antioxidant reserves. for one reason or another, are known to be more resistant to malaria. Exposure to substances that produce free radicals provides ammunition to attack and kill the parasites. While having an antioxidant deficiency is not desirable because it allows free radicals to damage cells, it also allows those same free radicals to destroy troublesome microorganisms. In people who do not have an antioxidant deficiency, flaxseed oil can generate enough free radicals to overcome the body's reserves and kill the parasites which cause malaria.19

Polyunsaturated fat-induced free radicals have also been shown to be toxic to other microorganisms. Researchers have shown it to inhibit the growth of Helicobactor pylori bacteria which is credited with causing 90 percent of all stomach ulcers.20

Take a moment and consider this: if free radicals can kill rapidly growing cancer cells and microorganisms roaming around our bodies, what do they do to our own cells? It is assumed that normal cells are not affected by free radicals because they contain antioxidant bodyguards. But these reserves can be quickly depleted by repeated free-radical attack. It is assumed that cancer cells lack adequate antioxidant defenders and so are more susceptible to the destructive action of free radicals. The lack of antioxidants in diseased cells, however, may have been one of the reasons why cancer developed in the first place. Free radicals can interrupt the cell's ability to function normally, causing it to become cancerous. This may be one reason why linoleic acid from vegetable oil promotes cancer (see references above). Flooding the body with more free radicals to treat any illness seems crazy. It may provide some help immediately, but in the long run it could cause serious physical degeneration and illness.

Inflammatory Disease

Flaxseed oil has also been recommended as an aid in treating a variety of inflammatory diseases. Since PGE3, which is synthesized in the body from flaxseed oil, has an anti-inflammatory effect, it makes sense that it would also help reduce inflammation caused by inflammatory illnesses. Some of the inflammatory conditions that flaxseed oil has been recommended for include arthritis, allergies, psoriasis, chronic bronchitis, and colitis.

Inflammation in itself is not a disease; it is a natural and essential process in the body's effort to fight disease and speed healing. The inflammatory process is an important part of our body's system of healing itself. Normally, inflammation speeds healing.

Chronic inflammation is caused by a chronic health problem. Inflammation is the body's healing response to that problem. Inflammation, however, promotes swelling and the buildup of pressure which increases pain. Reducing inflammation reduces the pain, but it also hampers the body's ability to heal itself. Anti-inflammatory medications do nothing to heal the condition, they only lesson the pain. It's nice to reduce pain, since most of us don't like it, but in doing so you also reduce the body's ability to heal itself. Also, since pain is removed there is a tendency to overuse the injured tissues causing further damage and encouraging more inflammation. More anti-inflammatory medications are needed and the cycle continues with the diseased or injured tissues getting worse and worse. The reason anti-inflammatory medications are used is because there isn't anything else medically that can be done to relieve the symptoms. So it's a catch-22 situation.

The production of PGE3 is only part of the reason why flaxseed oil reduces inflammation. A far stronger anti-inflammatory mechanism is actually at work here. The effectiveness of flaxseed in suppressing the body's inflammatory response mechanism is related to the destructive action of free radicals.21,22

Yes, free radicals again. Much like its effect on cancer, free radicals attacking the cells will suppress the body's ability to respond to injury and disease, thus reducing inflammation. Contrary to popular opinion, researchers have shown time and time again that flaxseed oil and other poly-unsaturated oils depress the immune system and hamper the body's ability to heal.23,24,25,26,27

Flaxseed oil and other polyunsaturated oils (i.e., linoleic acid, gamma-linolenic acid, DGLA, AA, EPA, and DHA) suppress the production and activity of our white blood cells-the work force of our immune system. In fact, these oils can even kill them.28 These are the cells that attack and clean out invading microorganisms, cancer cells, toxins, and other harmful substances from our bodies. They are vital to our health and must be present in large enough numbers to repel attack from viruses and bacteria. When we get an infection, the body's inflammatory response kicks in, stimulating the increased production of white blood cells to fight the invaders. The more white blood cells we have surging through our veins, the stronger will be our defense and the quicker our recovery. Vegetable oils, therefore, slow our recovery from both acute infectious illness as well as from chronic disease. Inflammation is reduced, not by PGE3, but primarily by this destructive action of free-radical stress on the immune system. It suppresses the body's ability to heal itself and in so doing, inflammation response is reduced.

Depressed Immunity

Oil manufacturers and the health care providers who believe their propaganda claim that flaxseed oil and other polyunsaturated oils will stimulate the immune system. They may even be able to cite studies to prove their position. Sounds good, but it's only partly true.

Polyunsaturated oils have both a stimulatory and depressive effect on the immune system. We never hear about the depressive effects-that doesn't sell products. The stimulatory effects aren't that wonderful either, and can be misrepresented as being beneficial. Let me explain.

Studies show (see references above) that essential fatty acids interfere with the normal production of certain substances produced by the white blood cells in the process of fighting an illness. It's like a prankster turning the water hose off while firemen are spraying down a raging fire. These oils hamper the normal function of the white blood cells. In this respect they depress the immune system's ability to function at the level for which it was designed.

At the same time these oils also act as a stimulant, the same as any toxin or disease-causing germ might. The body recognizes a harmful substance and is stimulated into feverish activity to protect itself. This is how polyunsaturated fatty acids "stimulate" our immune system. They are not strengthening the immune system, they are stressing it! Why would the white blood cells start producing substances to protect the body when they encounter polyunsaturated oil? Think about it. What causes the immune system to kick into high gear? It does so in response to a threat to health. When the body senses a threat from any toxic substance it signals the immune system into increased activity. To say flaxseed oil is good for you because it stimulates the immune system is like saying small pox and bubonic plague are good for you because they, too stimulate the immune system.

When we consume polyunsaturated oils, it is like eating a group of arsonists who run around our bodies lighting little fires (starting free-radical chain reactions). The fire department, or our immune system, is called into action to douse these potentially lethal fires. The firemen (the white blood cells) are stimulated into action, but if their hoses are turned off by free-radical pranksters, they are ineffective in accomplishing their mission.

To credit flaxseed oil for stimulating the immune system is like crediting arsonists for calling out the fire department and then sabotaging their water hoses. The overall effect of eating any polyunsaturated oil is to burden and depress the immune system.
The immunosuppressive effects of vegetable oils have been known for many years. Ray Peat, Ph.D., explains that "Vegetable oil is recognized as a drug for knocking out the immune system."29 At one time "vegetable oil emulsions were used to nourish cancer patients, but it was discovered that the unsaturated oils were suppressing their immune systems. The same products, in which vegetable oil is emulsified with water for intravenous injection, are now marketed specifically for the purpose of suppressing immunity in patients who have had organ transplants. Using the oils in foods has the same harmful effect on the immune system."30 Unsaturated fats not only suppress the immune system but can even kill white blood cells.31

You have to be very careful when someone tells you some substance "stimulates" the immune system. Does it stimulate it like bubonic plague or small pox or does it support it like vitamin C? There is a world of difference. The first stimulates it into action to defend itself while the second does not "stimulate" it but strengthens it, making it work more effectively.

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