Flaxseed oil, also known as flax oil or linseed oil, is made from flax seeds that have been ground and pressed to release their natural oil.

This health-promoting oil has a wide variety of uses, ranging from cooking to skin care.

This article will explore some of the top benefits of flaxseed oil and a few simple ways to use it. Johanna Budwig, Ph.D. (1908 – 2003) was a well-known German biochemist who devised her cottage cheese and flaxseed oil diet in 1951. She claimed that multiple daily helpings of this mixture (three tablespoons of flaxseed oil blended with six tablespoons of low fat (2%) cottage cheese and two tablespoons of ground flaxseeds) could both prevent and cure cancer. The Budwig diet eliminates animal fats, salad oils of any kind, meats, shellfish, processed foods, soy, most dairy products, butter, margarine, and sugar. She believed that the blood of seriously ill cancer patients is deficient in two types of fat, lipoproteins and phosphatides (or phospholipids) and that these deficiencies allow cancer cells to grow and multiply. She reported that when she looked at blood samples from cancer patients, she saw a strange greenish-yellow substance. She interpreted this finding as the cause of the weakness and anemia that often accompany cancer. She then claimed that when patients ate her mixture of flax and cottage cheese, this substance disappeared along with the malignant tumors.

There is some evidence that flaxseed oil may help reduce the growth of cancer cells.

In one animal study, mice were given 0.3 ml of flaxseed oil for 40 days. It was found to prevent the spread of cancer and the growth of lung tumors (9Trusted Source).

In another small animal study, flaxseed oil was shown to block the formation of colon cancer in rats (10Trusted Source).

Furthermore, test-tube studies have produced similar findings, with several studies showing that flaxseed oil reduced the growth of breast cancer cells (11Trusted Source, 12Trusted Source).

Still, while these findings are promising, more research is needed to determine how these results may translate to humans.

SUMMARY:Some test-tube and animal studies show that flaxseed oil may reduce cancer cell growth, although in addition to Dr.Budwig diet, additional research in humans is needed.