Research

Hormonal

Daily consumption of 10g flaxseed mucilage for 6 weeks improves insulin sensitivity in obese postmenopausal women, evidenced by reduced serum C-peptide and insulin release during an oral glucose tolerance test and an increased Matsuda index.

If you are an obese postmenopausal woman, adding 10 grams of flaxseed mucilage to your daily diet (e.g., in breakfast buns) for 6 weeks can significantly improve your insulin sensitivity. This benefit occurs independently of increasing the abundance of common 'good' gut bacteria like Faecalibacterium, suggesting the mechanism may involve other metabolic pathways or short-chain fatty acid production not captured by simple bacterial counts.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
The intake of flaxseed mucilage over 6 weeks led to a reduction in serum C-peptide and insulin release during an oral glucose tolerance test (P<0.05) and improved insulin sensitivity measured by Matsuda index (P<0.05).
Lena Kirchner Brahe et al. · British Journal Of Nutrition · 2015

Why this rating

Randomized controlled trial with a specific population, though the sample size is modest (n=58) and duration is short (6 weeks).

Source

Dietary modulation of the gut microbiota – a randomised controlled trial in obese postmenopausal women

Lena Kirchner Brahe et al. · British Journal Of Nutrition · 2015

DOI 10.1017/s0007114515001786

rct · n=58Cited 172×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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