Hot Tips

Phytoestrogens: TO SOY OR NOT TO SOY

PHYTOESTROGENS are important plant compounds to understand if you are in menopause and experiencing hot flash symptoms. The following is reprinted with permission from Dr.Andrew Weil’s wonderful resource book, Eating Well for Optimum Health. If you have had estrogen receptor positive breast cancer, as I have, and if you are hot flashing, as I am, you need to pay attention to wise advice such as this. He writes: “Yet another category of protective phytochemicals are phytoestrogens, compounds in plants that can interact with estrogen receptors on cells in the human body. This is a chemically diverse group, including the isoflavones in soy and lignans in flax* and other oil seeds. We still have a lot to learn about them and how they work. One theory is that phytoestrogens attach to estrogen receptors but activate them only weakly. Soy isoflavones may have enough estrogenic activity to prevent hot flashes in menopausal Japanese women, but by blocking access to the receptors they may also protect those women from other, stronger estrogenic agents, including environmental toxins and the growth-promoting hormones used in animals raised for food.

The epidemiological evidence for health-protective effects of soy is promising. Populations that eat a lot of it have low rates of breast cancer, menopausal problems, and prostate cancer. Still, there are many different phytoestrogens, and we do not know if all of them are protective or whether introducing them into the diet before puberty is wise or how they interact with prescribed hormones and drugs. As an example of the uncertainty, let me mention a kind of patient I see frequently: a woman with estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer who is being treated with the estrogen-antagonist drug Tamoxifen following surgery. Tamoxifen can cause unpleasant side effects, including hot flashes. The patient finds that increasing her intake of soy foods mitigates the side effects of Tamoxifen. We do not know if it is also mitigating the therapeutic effects.(of the drug) The dose of soy might be critical. Some test-tube research suggests that low doses of soy isoflavones might stimulate cells with estrogen receptors to divides and proliferate, while high doses might block them. Again, we don’t know writes Dr. Weil.

"My guess is that the benefits of soy outweigh the risks. I also think one of the healthiest dietary changes Westerners could make would be to substitute soy foods for some of the animal foods they now eat. I believe that soy isoflavones can protect most people ----men and women----from hormonally driven cancers as well as from coronary heart disease. They might even reduce the risk of osteoporosis.” pp. 139-140

“I believe the phytoestrogens in soy protect estrogen receptors from excessive stimulation by the body’s own hormones and foreign-like substances. Therefore, I recommend eating soy to women at risk or breast cancer as well as those who have had it. You can eat three or four servings of soy foods a week, preferably less-processed ones made from organic soybeans.” p. 274, Eating Well for Optimum Health by Andrew Weil, M.D.

* - See our Recipes page for more information about Flaxseed

 

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"Information supplied by FLASHionables, Inc. is not intended, nor should it be construed, as a substitute for medical advice. Always consult your health care provider to make sure your complaints are menopause related and follow his or her advice before changing your dietary regimen."