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RE: Food Supplements #4: Soy isoflavones - A natural saviour for menopausal women?
2 things that I've heard, but am too lazy to do my own research about:
This claim heavily relies on some epidemiologic studies that compared populations with high (usually from Asia) with low (Western) soy consumption, and found the former to have reduced rates of ovary, uterus and breast cancer.
These studies (among other things you mentioned) do not take into account, that those cultures traditionally eat fermented soy products. ( Not sure what that does to the phytohormones )If it does work as an estrogen supplement, what does that do to a male body ?
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sco (64) 6 years ago
- Fermented soy is tofu. In the soy bean, isoflavones are found as glycosides, that means bound to a sugar. For example genistin, which is genistein glucoside (genistein bound to a glucose molecule). What happens during fermentation is that the sugar is cleaved and the isoflavones are then found in their original form again. I'm not sure which difference this makes for us humans, as the same should happen in our stomach anyway (there are lots of bacteria there that also cleave sugars from molecules to eat them). If anything, it should have stronger effects to eat the "pure" isoflavone...
- I'm not aware of any literature on genistein and men. But that's an interesting question I have to look up. High doses are for sure not very healthy for you. If there are estrogenic effects of isoflavones consumed with soy on men, I can't tell. Probably not, as the reached concentrations are too low for that, but I'll cross-check it.