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Soup that contains flax is healthier for you constantly being honed, yet what they have discovered so far is that certain ingredients make flax more palatable. Raisins and cinnamon, for instance, combine to mask flax's bitterness." With years of painstaking background work complete, it was time to move on to the heart of the research – clinical trials with patients who had cardiovascular disease. "We knew from the animal work that flax seems to reduce atherosclerosis, arrhythmia and help relax arteries," Pierce says. "So we wanted a population of patients with those types of problems." They found a good match in the patients under the care of Dr. Randy Guzman, Director of the I.H. Asper Clinical Research Institute and Vascular Research at St. Boniface Hospital and an associate professor of surgery in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Manitoba. His patients suffered from peripheral arterial disease, a condition that clogs arteries and blocks blood flow. "These are patients with arterial problems outside of the chest – or cardiac area – and instead, they often have problems in their lower extremities," says Guzman. "The same plaques that block up the arteries that feed blood to the heart can block up other arteries, like in the legs." About 80 per cent of the patients were on medication for high cholesterol while 75 per cent took medication for high blood pressure. Because these patients are considered to be very ill, even though Unlocking flax's health benefits Flax has tremendous potential to reduce the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. But unlocking the benefits of this remarkable little oilseed can be tricky. For example, just eating flax seeds will not reduce your risk of stroke or heart attack. That's because flax seeds are not easy to digest, and chances are they will pass through your system without imparting any health benefits, according to Dr. Grant Pierce. Flax seeds do become easier to digest when they are ground or processed into flax oil. In Pierce's study, some hypertensive participants consuming just over 30 grams of milled flax a day for six months experienced blood pressure reductions of 15 mmHg systolic and seven mmHg diastolic. 24 WAVE You can find ground flax seed in numerous products, including bagels, cereals, snack bars, and even some types of tortilla chips. You can also add flax to your foods at home. The Flax Council of Canada has a number of suggestions on its website. They include: • Add ground flax seed to cereal, salads or yogurt. • Drop some ground flax seed into your soups, stews and chillies. • Use ground flax seed when making muffins and cookies. For more information about flax seed, including nutrition facts and recipes, visit the Flax Council of Canada website at www.flaxcouncil.ca they're under medical care and making efforts to improve their health, Pierce says they were ideal candidates for the clinical phase of the study. "They have a high incidence of heart attacks and strokes. They have a lot of arrhythmias, and they have all the characteristics that made us think, 'Hey, this is exactly the group that flax seed may help.'" Although the study set out to measure cholesterol levels, with the hypothesis that flax would reduce blood cholesterol over the course of a year, Pierce says they discovered an unexpected and pleasant surprise. Patients' blood pressure fell. "Approximately 75 per cent of the patients who came into our trial were hypertensive," Pierce says, adding their average blood pressure was 158 millimetres mercury (mmHg) systolic over a diastolic of about 81 mmHg. "These patients were already on anti-hypertensive drugs and still their blood pressure was poorly controlled, partly because they had so many things going on with them that the physician can't keep up in treating all of the problems." After a month into the trial, their blood pressure decreased and continued to fall until the six-month mark when it stabilized. By the end of the study, the average study participant's blood pressure decreased 15 millimetres mercury (mmHg) systolic and seven mmHg diastolic.

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