[sfita]

Hi again Isabelle
you wrote earlier
[normal Asian diet contains a stalling dose of soy. That would explain why Asian women don't get breast cancer, and why they have so much difficulty growing big.]
[But because it slows the thyroid, many people lose weight on it, so their breasts don't grow.]
isnt (and correct me if iam wrong) slow thyroid decrease basal metabolic rate and as a consequence that leads to wieght gain?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothyroidism#Early

[Isabelle]

Thank you, Mochaccino,

The individual differences are staggering indeed. The authors chose to make that the overall conclusion of the study. For us NBE folk, this has a practical consequence: if you don't grow on soy, try flax. If you don't grow on flax, try hops. And so on, for all the different classes of phyto-estrogens.

[Isabelle]

You're right, sfita,

Thank you for pointing that out. I got it wrong because I was thinking of people with Hashimoto's, but they too have clearly distinct periods of weight gain on hypothyroidism, and weight loss on hyperthyroidism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyroid
It looks like stalling is a better explanation of poor growth on soy.

About the powder, I would think it would be better to start on soy milk then, and switch to powder when you are certain that you can grow on a higher dose.

I'm still surprised the starting dose is so low, though. 15 ml is so little. Eve M used both powder and milk, and she grew. I could be wrong, of course. I based it all on two numbers in Table 2:
http://www.cancersupportivecare.com/estr...tml#table3
I'll look for an independent source to calculate the right dose for soy.

[chiquitabella]

Hi Isabelle-
I'm confused by the potential negative health effects of too much soy and the low incidence of breast cancer in Asia.Does soy have other negative health consequenses?
I just bought some soy milk so I am hoping for a boost because I've not been happy with my results lately.

[Isabelle]

Hi chiquitabella,

The negative effect of too much soy is stalling: the anterior pituitary gland measures the increase in sex hormones, and stops the production of Luteinizing Hormone, so the production of estrogens in the ovaries stops. This stops breast growth as soon of the dose of any estrogen or androgen becomes too high.

This may scare some, but stalling has a positive effect on health for some people. If someone develops an estrogen sensitive cancer, like breast cancer, stalling will stop the growth of the tumor. This is why I assume (it's just a hypothesis) that a stalling dose of soy in a diet will decrease cancer in a large group of people.

A negative side effect of soy consumption is hypothyroidism. Make sure you get enough iodine, from kelp or enriched kitchen salt, and l-tyrosine.

Make sure you start with a low soy dose: check the labels of breakfast cereals, soups, sauces, and prepared meals. Soy is in everything nowadays.

[sfita]

in a study posted earlier in this thread:
http://www.cancersupportivecare.com/estr...discussion

Of the foods, herbs, and spices tested, the most potent ER-binding products were soy milk, licorice, and red clover. Licorice and red clover, but not soy milk, also had high levels of a PR-binding component(s) which had potent progestin antagonist properties based on their ability to block progesterone induction of alkaline phosphatase, an end product of progestin action.
In summary, we have shown that many of the foods, and spices commonly consumed by humans as nutrients or phytomedicines contain phytoestrogens and phytoprogestins with both agonistic and antagonistic properties. Generally, most phytoestrogens were found to be estrogen agonists, whereas all phytoprogestins were progestin antagonists, consistent with their tradional use by phytotherapists.

and since human body needs progesterone for breast development wuoldnt these herbs make us estrogen dominant because it blocks progesterone receptors ?
and if it is correct what herbs consedered as progesterone agonists?.

[Isabelle]

Hi sfita,

I use fenugreek myself. In my experience, it stops ED symptoms. Fenugreek was not tested in this study, but another diosgenin containing herb, wild yam, was. What intrigues me is this sentence: "None of the saliva from women reporting consumption of diosgenin containing herbs was found to possess any progesterone bioactivity despite high levels of PR-binding components in some of them (20%-30%)."

So what prevents ED? Is it really necessary to have progesterone bioactivity, or is binding to the progesterone receptor sufficient? I did find other literature reporting higher levels of progesterone in serum after fenugreek use. When in of doubt, believe blood testing, not saliva testing.

I have used red clover for only a limited time period ten years ago, and I drink no more than two cups of licorice or mint-licorice tea a day. I did go up to eight cups of fennel seed tea a day in June, and that caused symptoms of progesterone dominance. You can try it for yourself. I still have a bag of powdered fennel seed just in case, but I suffered ED just once in the last five months, and just increasing fenugreek helped.

[Isabelle]

Here's the USDA list of isoflavone contents in foods:
http://afrsweb.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Pla...lav_R2.pdf
Alfalfa is much lower than I thought. Many processed soy foods are very high.

[Isabelle]

Soy has an estrogenic effect at 150 or 300 ppm genistein in the diet, but not at 15 ppm:
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/conten...5045.short

In the USDA list in the above post, the genistein contents in the soy milk samples is around 1 mg per 100 g, or 10 ppm. So even drinking soy milk all day is an ineffective dose.

The genistein contents in the soy flour samples are around 90 mg per 100 g, or 900 ppm. That dilutes to 150 ppm if soy meal is 1/6 of the diet. The ineffective dose of 15 ppm is then 1/60 of the whole diet. Eve M took 1,000 mg a day. I'm sure that was nowhere near 1/6 or 1/60 of her diet.

So according to this publication, the effective dose is very high. The research on humans is very different: one to three cups of soy milk is effective, or even high.

In the cosupplementation study, 6 mg genistein was used three times a day:
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/139/12/2293.full
18 mg is 1/5 of 90 mg, so it corresponds to 20 g soy meal, 20 times more than Eve M used.

So the doses from literature vary over a wide range, with Eve M's dose in the middle.

[Isabelle]

I must admit again that Eve M's program is very balanced. Even the doses are right. My favorite study
http://www.cancersupportivecare.com/estr...tml#table3
is about 200 ml soy milk (1 cup = 237 ml) and 2,000 mg of the dried, powdered herbs.

Eve M drank about 1/2 cup on average, and added the rest as 1,000 mg soy meal. Since the USDA (2nd post above this one) lists soy meal as 100 times stronger than soy milk, Eve M's doses add up to 200 ml soy milk or 2,000 mg soy meal, just as in my favorite study.

The co-supplementation study
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/139/12/2293.full
probably over dosed the soy. Soy isoflavones supplements are just too strong. Some of the observed effects could be artifacts of the high dose. The people who were tested did very well on soy alone, but may have stalled when hops and flax were added.

Soy meal is three times stronger than tempeh, and tempeh is three times stronger than tofu. So the daily doses are 6 and 19 g. That fits with traditional Asian recipes, but you can expect to stall if you try a tofu steak or burger

Eve M's flax seed dose is only 1,000 mg. There may be an allowance for all the lignans from whole meal and multi grain bread, which maybe add another 1,000 or 2,000 mg. I'll look for a good list of SDG in grains. Whole flax seed is only 20 % oil, so people using the oil could be over dosing the lignans.

My tape day is not tomorrow, but next week Monday. After that, I will align my flax and oats doses with Eve M's. And two weeks later, start soy.