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
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I don’t know how I would get through the menopause without Soy Isoflavones. I take NON GMO Soy Supplements. I have tried all sorts of remedies but always go back to Soy.
I have tried stopping them and after a few weeks feel absolutely awful. PMS comes back and Anxiety.
I do agree that there are different qualities of supplements and it is worth paying a bit extra for the NON GMO type.
Well, as a healthy man drinking chocolate soy milk like everyday, I find your article a little biased since you only show the negative studies while there had been many showing benefits of soy…
http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/soy
It can be in fact a fantastic plus useful bit of facts. I am joyful you embraced this beneficial data here. Remember to keep us knowledgeable like that. Appreciate your revealing.
I started drinking soy milk over 15 yrs ago. I’m perimenopausal now. Coincidentally, I stopped having my barely 1 cup a day for about a week (I was having almond milk) and got hit with joint and muscle pain. When started drinking soy milk again, the pain went away…Cow’s milk and high fat dairy products contain estrogen and who cares that over 60% of our estrogen consumption is from dairy sources. Hundreds of studies show conflicting results (and dairy is heavily subsidized). Bottom line: some people may benefit from dietary soy supplements, but we still don’t know who are those people.
Wow, awesome blog format! How long have you been running a blog for?
you make blogging look easy. The total glance of your web site is fantastic,
let alone the content material!
I think when we use the words always and never we run a risk of making a big mistake. And while you don’t really use those words, and, while I’m sure you wrote this with nothing but the best of intentions – to make blanket statements such as you do, “Soy a big fat 0…) without specifying conventional soy versus organic (non-gmo) soy – fermented versus non-fermented, etc. in the title, is a bit misleading to those skimming headlines. Yes, we’d like everyone to read everything we write, but informational article headlines should not be like those of the Nat’l Enquirer. Nor should one have to delve into the comments to find details that should have been included in the original copy.
Why would you would want to mis-lead anyone on such a subject is beyond me, You don’t seem to be offering any alternative to the soy – just blacklisting most of it outright. One has to go to the comments to find the 1 in 4 women are helped data as well as the fermented info about miso and tofu being helpful.
The book “Estrogen – The Natural Way” is a very well written book and cookbook, backed by doctors (who you wouldn’t think would even TOUCH the subject of non rx for symptoms of anything), and very sound advice as well as the author’s own testimony.
I myself find relief in monthly menses symptoms by dropping sugar and including 1/4 block of tofu and/or miso in my daily diet the week before it starts. I’ve tried just dropping the sugar, and while it helps, it doesn’t seem to be as effective as doing both. Considering many of the symptoms are linked to the drop in estrogen upon the beginning of menses, replacing it naturally just makes sense to alleviate those symptoms.
So, as I begin to enter my late 40’s and peri-menopause, you can be sure I’ll be looking up some of those 250 recipes; incorporating into them my raw dairy (in lieu of the soy milk just b/c I think raw milk is probably a better bang for my buck and I love the taste; and trying to reduce more sugar as I go – in order to avoid the HRT route so many before me took; keep my great health, figure and keep the symptoms to at least a minimum.
You might better serve your regular readers, and anyone just skimming headlines, to be a bit more diplomatic or risk being mistaken for someone with an axe to grind or alternative motives.
try just f traditionally and properly fermented GMO free soy and youre all good, lso Maca and onw world whey are also excellent for easing menopause…im taking both in prep im earlrly peri menopause
Soy is the worst because of the GM aspect but almond is not great because of the sugar and other additatives. Try raw milk from grass fed cows or make your own coconut milk (super easy and cheap). Real Food What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck is a great resource on nutrition! I highly recommend it. It is a lot of fun to read and your local library may have it. The key is to eat only what your great grandmother(s) ate. New foods such as imitation milks are generally bad for you.
Okay so soy is bad but what about almond milk