[Lotus]

Lotus, will you explain this in a simpler way? Please...POM

Sure, well the study explains the history of soy, the benefits, metabolism and composition. It's really a remarkable look into the basis of phytoestrogens.


Soybean (Glycine max, L.) has been part of Southeast Asia culture for almost 2 millennia. However, only in the second half of the 19th century has it started being used in the Western world coinciding with the Chinese migration to the USA. Today, USA, South America, especially Brazil, and Northwestern Europe, account for almost 90% of the world total soybean production. At first, the nutrition value of soybean was attributed to its high quality protein content thus attracting considerable interest for its use in human diet. Nowadays, it is known that soybeans are a rich source of phytochemicals, and many of those compounds have important beneficial effects on human and animal health.

Among the important phytochemicals in soybeans for human health, phytoestrogens, mainly, isoflavones (genistein and daidzein) and lignans, are the most widely studied. Nevertheless, saponins and phytosterols have also been the subject of research on soybeans. This chapter will discuss these phytochemicals compounds, their chemical structures, and their relationship with the major biological functions, scientifically proved, and their health benefits.

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Phytoestrogens are non-steroidal compounds found in plants. They demonstrate estrogenic and/or antiestrogenic activity and constitute a diverse group of compounds that have similar chemical structures and biological activity of estrogens.

The phytoestrogens can be divided into four main classes: isoflavonoids, flavonoids, coumestrol and lignans. Nearly all food vegetables have phytoestrogens although the amount and concentration of the compounds vary significantly. Some vegetables are high in phytoestrogens content such as flaxseed, which are a rich source of lignans; soybeans and chickpeas have high concentrations of isoflavones. Lignans can also be found in cereals, vegetables, and fruits (Kuhnle et al., 2009), whereas isoflavone-containing foods, may be specially related and limited to grains and soy products such as tofu, soy beverages, soy flour, and soy flakes among others products, due to its high consumption. Discussions about the chemical structure and major properties such as the main biological functions will focus particularly on this type of phytoestrogen.

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Also: the first illustration shows the anti-proliferate of Diosgenin (a phytoestrogen in soy, Fenugreek and others).

Diosgenin,

In the body, the steroid hormones are synthesized from cholesterol, which is first converted to pregnenolone, and then to progesterone. Various enzyme systems convert the progesterone to the male and female hormones or to cortisone. Before the 1940s, steroid hormones for medical administration were derived entirely from the glands of animals, a very expensive and inefficient source. The chemist Russell E. Marker experimented with the conversion of plant sapogenins to progesterone, and in 1943 moved to Mexico City where he isolated diosgenin from D. mexicana. Using a chemical manipulation completely unrelated to biochemical processes, he developed an efficient way to commercially produce progesterone from diosgenin. In 1952, other chemists found a way using bacterial conversion (via Rhizopus arrhizus) to synthesize cortisone from progesterone, again through a pathway unrelated to normal synthesis in the body. Thus in the 1940s and 1950s, virtually all steroid hormones for medical use were derived from diosgenin from Mexican wild yams.