Seth's Blog

The following comment was left a few days ago:

I was doing SLD using flax seed oil for two weeks before my last dental appointment.  My pockets that were 4′s and 5″s magically changed to 2′s and 3″s.  I had my dentist print both the reports because I was so grateful that they stopped talking about some really painful sounding root work.  My brushing and flossing were totally unchanged.  I was expecting the result because of what I’ve read on the blog, but nothing this good.  I am convinced that taking flax=reduction in gum inflammation, at the very least. [emphasis added]

Take that, “decline effect” (big experimental effects, when the experiment is repeated, get smaller)!

The  commenter sent me the records of the two cleanings. At the pre-flaxseed-oil cleaning (April 28, 2011), he had 24 sites (13 teeth) with pockets of depth 4 or 5. At the cleaning after he started flaxseed oil (July 28, 2011), he had no sites with pockets of depth 4 or 5.

You can find many similar reports here.

In response to this post, which went up three months ago, a reader named Tara has just written:

I started taking 2 TB of flax oil daily about four days ago and now my gums are barely bleeding at all after I brush and floss. My gums were red, swollen and would bleed after I brushed and flossed and are now pink and healthy looking.

I’ve had this problem for years and I could not understand why it would keep happening even though I was consistent with my dental routine. I take the berry flavored Barlean’s flax oil mainly because it tastes good and so I look forward to taking it- if it was gross I would not be consistent with taking it.

Anyhow, thanks for the information! I wish dentists would look into this but they probably won’t so I’m glad that you do.

I agree about the Barlean’s, by the way. Their Omega Swirl flaxseed oil does taste good. The Omega Swirl webpage does not list healthy gums as one of its benefits. Instead it lists a bunch of benefits, such as “Heart Health” that are nearly impossible to verify.

Someone recently told me something fascinating about flaxseed oil: It made it much easier to kneel on the floor.  Before he started taking it, his knees would hurt after a few seconds. Now they don’t. I don’t remember my knees hurting quickly but I consume 66 g/day of ground flaxseed (= about 2 T flaxseed oil) and can kneel without pain for minutes.

The tiny fact reflected in Tara’s comment — an easily-available supplement (flaxseed oil) quickly cures a common problem (bleeding gums) but hardly anyone knows this — is  a devastating comment on our health care system.

1. Dentists haven’t managed to figure this out. Flaxseed oil is not an obscure supplement. Dentists are not making money giving people much worse advice (“floss regularly”).

2. Nutrition professors haven’t managed to figure this out. Omega-3 is not an obscure nutrient. Nevertheless, the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines says omega-3 fats are “essential” but says nothing about how much you need. Inflammation is believed to be the cause of many diseases, including heart disease. By getting this one thing  (minimum omega-3 intake you need to be healthy) right, the USDA could do a world of good. Instead they tell people to eat less animal fat (“consume less than 10 percent of calories from saturated fatty acids”).

To be fair, professional researchers are starting to figure this out.  A 2010 study of 9000 people found that “participants in the middle and upper third for omega-3 fatty acid consumption were between 23 percent and 30 percent less likely to have gum disease than those who consumed the least amount of omega-3 fatty acids.” With the right dose, I believe gum disease becomes 100% less likely. But at least they noticed a connection.

I am pleased by these results:

After a possibly overzealous dentist told me I need a gum graft [which may cost $3000], my husband encouraged me to start taking flaxseed oil. A few people online have reported that flaxseed oil dramatically improved their gum health, and we figured it was worth a shot.

My initial dose of flaxseed oil was two tablespoons a day, and my gums stopped bleeding and hurting within three days. This is pretty huge for me, because my gums have been bleeding since I was in junior high. [Emphasis added.] At the same time, I added using a Sonicare toothbrush and flossing a little more vigorously. Considering that I had tried these things in the past without the flaxseed oil and they only made me bleed more, I feel like the flaxseed oil is the difference maker.

I have subsequently reduced my flaxseed oil dose to one tablespoon, which I feel is more appropriate for a woman my size. I haven’t gained any weight from the flaxseed oil, which was a bit of a surprise. Taking it in the morning seems to help curb my appetite by at least the 130 calories it consumes.

The online reports she mentions are from this blog. A recap: Because of the Shangri-La Diet, one evening I took four or five flaxseed oil capsules. The next morning, I was surprised to notice that putting on my shoes standing up, which I’d done hundreds of times, was much easier than usual. This suggested that the flaxseed oil had improved my balance. I started to carefully measure my balance and varied my flaxseed oil intake. My measurements showed that variations in amount of flaxseed oil really did affect my balance. They also suggested the best dose. My balance improved up to a dose of 3 tablespoons/day of flaxseed oil. So the best dose was about 3 tablespoons per day. I blogged about this.

Tyler Cowen, inspired by my results, started taking 2 tablespoons/day. A month later, he no longer needed gum surgery. Knowing nothing about my flaxseed oil intake or Tyler Cowen’s results, my dentist told me my gums were in excellent shape, better than ever. My sister’s gums showed similar improvement. Tucker Max noticed his gums stopped bleeding after he started taking flaxseed oil. He’d had bleeding gums most of his adult life. Nothing else had helped. He also found training injuries healed faster. When he stopped drinking flaxseed oil, his gums soon got worse. Carl Willat noticed dramatic gum improvement. Joyce Cohen had excellent results (her gums were “in great shape — better than ever”). Tim Beneke and Jack Rusher had similar results. Gary Wolf, on the other hand, didn’t like the mental effects. A recent epidemiological study found a weak correlation between inflamed gums and omega-3 intake.

What have I learned? Above all, that such a pattern of results is possible. These results suggest there was/is a big hole in the usual nutritional ideas. Tyler Cowen, me, my sister, etc., were eating a conventionally “good diet” yet there was a lot of room for improvement, both in brain function and overall inflammation level. (I’m sure flaxseed oil heals gums because it reduces inflammation.) And improvement wasn’t hard — there was a simple fix. In other words, omega-3 deficiency is very common. The conventional deficiency diseases, such as scurvy and pellagra, were/are rare. They appeared only under extreme conditions with very limited diets (e.g., prison, long sea voyage). Yet just as scurvy and pellagra are easily cured, there is a simple cure for omega-3 deficiency: about 2 tablespoons/day of flaxseed oil. (Perhaps ground flaxseed is an even better source.)

Other facts support the idea of widespread omega-3 deficiency. When gums are very red, and bleed very easily, it’s called gingivitis. According to this article, ” estimates of the general prevalence of adult gingivitis vary from approximately 50 to 100%”. Heart disease is common. There’s plenty of evidence that heart disease is caused by inflammation (gated). For example, it’s well-known that inflamed gums correlate with heart disease. Statins may reduce heart disease — to the mild extent they do — because they reduce inflammation.

I also learned that psychology can help improve general health (too much inflammation causes all sorts of problems, as Tucker Max’s experience suggests). My background in experimental psychology made it easy for me to measure balance.  I also found other mental tests were sensitive to flaxseed oil. These mental tests were like an animal model in the sense that they made helpful experiments (e.g., different doses) much easier. My friend Kenneth Carpenter, in his book about the discovery of Vitamin C (gated), stressed the importance of an animal model of scurvy. Once the best dose of flaxseed oil (for me) was known, it turned out to be easy to take a dose that produced dramatic improvement (in others).

The idea that psychology and self-experimentation can improve overall health is new. I presented my flaxseed oil results at a meeting of the Psychonomic Society a few years ago. After my talk, one member of the audience, a professor of psychology at Illinois State University, angrily complained that my talk was “pop culture” — not even pop psychology — and said I shouldn’t have been allowed to speak. He thought I had made elementary mistakes.

Flaxseed oil better than fish oil. Bad results of flaxseed oil.

My friend Carl Willat writes:

Last June I went to the dentist for a checkup and cleaning, fully expecting my gums to be in great shape since I had been diligently using my Braun Oral B electric toothbrush.  To my surprise and disappointment the hygienist told me the pockets had actually become deeper and that she was seeing bleeding in many places, to the point where she was recommending I have my roots planed, a painful and expensive procedure I had undergone once before many years ago. So of course I went home and started taking the flax seed oil and ground flax seed ["a couple of tablespoons a day of oil, plus random amounts of ground flax seed"] as you had recommended.  I also started using a Sonicare toothbrush at that point so it’s hard to figure out the degree to which either variable might be responsible, but today she said my gums were much better, and had hardly bled at all during the measurement of the pockets. All talk of root planing was forgotten.

According to this, root planing costs $400-$1600. After Tyler Cowen started drinking flaxseed oil (2 T/day), he no longer needed gum surgery.

It is hard to get well-preserved flaxseed oil in Beijing (it goes bad at room temperature) so I now take 66 g/day ground flaxseed instead of 2 T/day flaxseed oil. I add it to yogurt twice/day. I don’t know if ground flaxseed is healthier or less healthy than flaxseed oil but it is much less trouble. Preservation is no problem (flaxseeds can be stored at room temperature) and ground flaxseed requires zero willpower to eat with yogurt. I had to push myself a little to drink the oil.

A few years ago, after I started taking about 3 tablespoons/day of flaxseed oil, my dentist told me my gums were much healthier. They were less red, more pink. Friends and blog readers who took flaxseed oil in similar amounts noticed the same thing. Tyler Cowen’s gums improved so much he no longer needed gum surgery.

An epidemiological study in the November Journal of the American Dietetic Association reports correlations between omega-3 intake and periodontitis (an extreme form of inflamed gums). The more omega-3, the less periodontitis. I’m sure that sufficient omega-3 intake cures periodontitis so this study has methodological interest for me. One interesting point is that the study reached a correct conclusion — contrary to the nihilism of John Ioannidis. Another is that the correlations were weak. The risk of periodontitis was only 20% lower in the group (quintile?) with the highest omega-3 intake. Although there were 9000 subjects, there was no significant correlation with linolenic acid, the form of omega-3 found in flaxseed oil.

Thanks to Sean Curley.