Are you a woman who eats soy, drinks soy milk, munches edamame or takes soy isoflavones as a supplement thinking it will help you with hot flashes, night sweats and other inconvenient and uncomfortable menopausal or perimenopausal symptoms?
As it turns out, the risks of soy to hormone health are significant. It is not the middle aged health panacea for women that is is promoted to be! If your doctor is harping on the benefits of soy to alleviate your discomfort, find a new doctor!
Studies show that even small amounts of unfermented soy has the potential to disrupt female hormonal balance. This amount is only 45 mg isoflavones – a bit more than a single cup of soymilk!
“Women taking soy isoflavone tablets to alleviate hot flashes and prevent bone loss at the time of menopause might want to reconsider,” says Silvina Levis, M.D., the director of the osteoporosis center at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine.
A recent study published in the August 2011 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine examined 248 menopausal women over a 2 year period to see if 200 mg of isoflavones per day were a help in alleviating the symptoms of menopause including bone loss.
200 mg per day is equivalent to twice the highest intake through food sources in typical Asian diets.
At the end of the 2 year period, women taking a placebo versus women taking the isoflavone supplement showed no differences in bone loss or menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes and night sweats.
In fact, nearly half (48%) of the women taking isoflavones experienced hot flashes compared with just 31% of women who took the placebo!
Yes, you read that right. Soy actually makes hormonal problems worse, ladies! Even worse, soy consumption causes precancerous breasts over time as identified via breast thermography imaging.
Stay. Far. Away.
Studies Showing That Soy Messes Up Your Hormones
Soy Wake Up Call #1
A 1991 study found that eating only 2 TBL/day of roasted and pickled soybeans for 3 months to healthy adults who were receiving adequate iodine in their diet caused thyroid suppression with symptoms of malaise, constipation, sleepiness, and goiters (Nippon Naibunpi Gakkai Zasshi 1991, 767: 622-629)!
Still think munching on edamame is a healthy habit?
Soy Wake Up Call #2
Six premenopausal women with normal menstrual cycles were given 45 mg of soy isoflavones per day. This is equivalent to only 1-2 cups of soy milk or 1/2 cup of soy flour! After only one month, all of the women experienced delayed menstruation with the effects similar to tamoxifen, the anti-estrogen drug given to women with breast cancer (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 1994 Sep;60(3):333-340).
Soy Wake Up Call #3
Dietary estrogens in the form of soy foods were found to have the potential to disrupt the endocrine system with the effects in women similar to taking the breast cancer drug tamoxifen (Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine 1995 Jan;208(1):51-9).
Soy Wake Up Call #4
Estrogens consumed in the diet even at low concentrations were found to stimulate breast cells. The effect is much like the pesticide DDT which increases enzymatic activity leading to breast cancer. (Environmental Health Perspectives 1997 Apr;105 (Suppl 3):633-636).
Soy Wake Up Call #5
The soy isoflavones genistein and daidzein appear to stimulate existing breast cancer growth indicating risk in consuming soy products if a woman has breast cancer. (Annals of Pharmacotherapy 2001 Sep;35(9):118-21).
Soy Wake Up Call #6
Direct evidence that soy isoflavones genistein and daidzein suppress the pituitary-thyroid axis in middle-aged rats fed 10 mg soy isoflavones per kilo after only 3 weeks as compared with rats eating regular rat chow. (Experimental Biology and Medicine 2010 May;235(5):590-8).
Soy Bottom Line
In conclusion, soy messes with your thyroid and disrupts the delicate balance of breast tissue and it doesn’t take very much soy at all to start the snowball down the hill to hormone imbalance with only a cup or so of unsweetened soy milk per day representing a significant risk.
Think you don’t eat much soy?
Next time you go shopping, just for grins check the label on everything you buy.
Surprise!
Soy is in EVERYTHING!
The scary truth is that if you eat processed foods (even organic), you are eating plenty of soy. Worse, you are probably consuming far more than you know even if you don’t drink soya milk or eat soy protein bars.
If you are still unconvinced and need more information, check out this article on the over 170 studies on the adverse effects of soy isoflavones from 1950-2010.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
References
Soy No Help for Hot Flashes, Bone Loss
If you ever want to have kids stop drinking soy milk now. Soy is usually GM and GM foods in lab animals cause birth defects and infertility. I suffered infertility for many years. Fortunately I was wise enough to get off of it but it still took many years for my body to heal enough to conceive.
Is soy milk bad for someone who is 19 yr old female
Sarah, What do you recommend for hot flashes? I have been having them for about three years now and have tried everything and nothing seems to work! What about tofu is that bad for you?
great post darling! i especially like the farmer’s market suggestion. it’s one of the few ways to really find out how and where and by whom your food is being grown/raised — small scale, organic, seasonal, pastured.. it’s great! of course, none of this stuff is a given, but like you said — talk to the vendors! and if you’re lucky, you can still have the convenience of getting your veggies, fruit, bread, eggs, meat, and dairy in one place!
Hi Sara,
I enjoy your articles very much, thank-you for doing so much research on important subjects that I am concerned about but just don’t have the time. This article interests me very much right now because I have recently entered menopause and have to deal with the hot flashs. I have figured out that sugar will generaly bring on a hot sweaty flash very quickly, so even though I have been trying to keep my sugar intake to a minimum, I watch it even closer now. Is there anything else that you would recommend in dealing with the symptoms of menopause? How about an entire article? or do you have one that I may have missed?
Thank-you very much. Diana
I was heavily into soy in me late 20’s early 30’s. I ended up with menstrual problems and infertility. By the time I realized I was dealing with infertility I had stopped eating soyt but the effects were ongoing. I slowly gravitated to a very WAPF (though I had not heard of WAPF at the time) making my own food but I was still eating lowfat. My menstrual problems lessened with the changes in my diet. I realized that I had gotten underweight and started on a very high (traditional) fat diet. Exactly one month after starting that high fat diet to my great surprise I got pregnant. I continued to eat that way through my pregnancy and had a super healthy and smart little boy.
Ashley
Just trying to understand. I’m not a huge consumer of soy but will eat/drink it occasionally. If soy is so bad for you, why is everyone always saying that women in Asia are so healthy because one of the things their diet includes is soy?
Just like what this certain woman had said on her comment that soy had worked on her menopause symptoms and she barely no longer feel hot flashes during night time and she even thinks of it that only works on 1 out of 4 woman who’s been taking soy. You can’t expect that it’ll be effective as it was on other people.
Thanks for the excellent post on soy and the dangers therein.
I am estrogen dominant and recently quit taking microgestin, which was being used as an HRT. I am now using natural Progesterone cream and have been for the past two months. Do you have further recommendations regarding balancing my hormones and getting through it successfully? (without caving and running back to the allopath that put me on them in the first place) Also, how long would you imagine it may take to become regulated and what tests should I have done?
Thanks so much for taking time to read this, for your great blog and for sharing your opinion on my query.
Best,
Jen
Wow.. we live in a crazy world.