Is Soy a Healthy Choice for You ?

Are Soy Foods and Products a healthy diet choice and a good - safe alternative to Hormone Replacement Therapy?

Professor William Helferich has spent a decade evaluating the health effects of isoflavones, a class of plant estrogens present in high concentrations in soy. Much of his work has focused on a single isoflavone, genistein, which occurs in varying concentrations in soy products or ingredients such as tofu, soy protein isolates, soy flour and some estrogenic dietary supplements.

Genistein is of interest because it is the most active of the soy isoflavones, and because it activates estrogen receptors in cells, including some breast tumor cells.

Dozens of studies of the role of human and plant estrogens in breast cancer have yielded seemingly contradictory findings. Some found that feeding genistein to female rats prior to puberty reduced the number of chemically induced mammary tumors. Other studies showed that estradiol, a primary human estrogen, spurs the growth of existing estrogen-dependent breast tumors.

Helferich and colleagues demonstrated that – like estradiol – dietary genistein stimulates the growth of estrogen-responsive tumors. They also found that dietary genistein interferes with treatments, such as tamoxifen, that target estrogen receptors in breast tumors. (About 70 percent of women with breast cancer have estrogen-responsive tumors.)

“The resolution of this paradox may lie in the timing of estrogen administration,” Helferich said. Exposure to genistein, an estrogen, before puberty causes mammary gland differentiation. “A differentiated cell undergoes less proliferation and therefore is less likely to progress through the cancer process,” he said. “However, if the estrogen is administered to an animal after the development of an estrogen-responsive tumor, the growth of this tumor will be stimulated,” he said.

Today Helferich is most concerned about the use of genistein and other isoflavones in supplements sold as “natural” alternatives to hormone-replacement therapy. He notes that midlife women who consume these products perceive them as natural and safe. But women aged 50 and older are also most at risk of developing breast cancer. Helferich is evaluating the biological activity of some of these products, which are available in many forms, do not require a prescription, and in most cases are consumed without the knowledge of their physicians.

Helferich notes that the incidence rate of breast cancer in women aged 50 and over in the U.S. dropped significantly after use of hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) declined in 2002 and 2003. While purified genistein is not as potent as HRT, Helferich said, it still poses a risk to midlife women because the amount consumed is much higher. The labels of many products that contain this and other isoflavones lack vital information about what is actually in their products, he said, and because these are natural products, the consistency from batch to batch is difficult to control.

“Women are participating in an ongoing experiment with an unknown outcome,” he said. “You can’t identify what dose of isoflavones you’re getting.”

But genistein is only one component of soy, Helferich said, and studying its effects in purified form may lead to misleading conclusions about the health consequences of soy in the diet. In fact, studies have shown that foods like soy flour have a very different effect.

“The complex mixture found in soy flour doesn’t make the tumor grow,” Helferich said.
“Whole soy contains a lot of biologically active ingredients, but together they may have multiple effects that can reduce the negative outcomes. When the whole food is consumed you get a very different effect than if you consume the concentrated constituents individually.”
All this research points to a very simple truth, Helferich said: The whole soybean is healthier than many of its individual chemical parts.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070516133004.htm

Keep in Mind Folks that we are individuals. Our body and our chemical makeup is important and is different for all of us. Use your Intuition, Learn all You can. Knowledge Really is Power and no one person knows what is best for you personally.

Soybeans and Cancer

Can Soy Promote Cancer in Your Body ?

Highly purified soy supplements and foods made with soy that are marketed and Sold in the United States may stimulate the growth of pre-existing estrogen-dependent breast tumors, according to a study done at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"Soy has been correlated with low rates of breast cancer in Asian populations, but soy foods in Asia are made from minimally processed soybeans or defatted, toasted soy flour, which is quite different from soy products consumed in the U.S.," said William G. Helferich, a professor of food science and human nutrition, in a study presented online May 6 in advance of regular publication by the journal Carcinogenesis.

"Isoflavone-containing products consumed in the U.S. may have lost many of the biologically active components in soy, and these partially purified isoflavone-containing products may not have the same health benefits as whole soy foods," he said.

Soy isoflavone products are marketed as dietary estrogens to women over age 50 as a natural alternative to hormone replacement therapy (HRT), but this is the age group in which most breast cancers occur.

Seventy-five percent of breast cancer cases are diagnosed in women over 50, and the majority of these cases are estrogen-dependent. For these women, Helferich said, consumption of highly processed isoflavone products may pose a risk.

Helferich used an animal model that has been used extensively to evaluate breast cancer therapies such as tamoxifen. "The results of this preclinical investigation are especially relevant to postmenopausal women with estrogen-responsive breast cancers who are looking for alternatives to HRT," he said.

In the study, mice were fed equal concentrations of the soy isoflavone genistein, allowing Helferich to determine the influences that various bioactive soy compounds had on genistein's ability to stimulate estrogen-dependent breast tumor growth. "As bioactive compounds were removed, we observed an increase in estrogen-dependent tumor growth," he said.
If genistein had been the only biologically active compound, all diets would have resulted in similar tumor growth, but that was not the case, he said.

A soy flour and mixed isoflavones diet and a mixed isoflavone diet each contained equal amounts of genistein, but differed in the amount of other bioactive components originally present in the soy flour. Tumors neither grew nor regressed in animals fed these diets. "The minimally processed soy flour used in these diets is more like the soy foods in the Asian diet," Helferich said.

"Dietary soy products that contained isoflavones in more purified forms were associated with greater tumor growth. These products are similar to the materials used in isoflavone-containing dietary supplements, which is how many Americans consume these compounds," he added.
Other researchers contributing to the study were Clinton D. Allred, Kimberly F. Allred, Young H. Ju, Tracy S. Goeppinger, and Daniel R. Doerge.

Soy Beans and Hormones

What you need to know about Soy and Cancer. If your Cancer, your Tumor is Estrogen - Hormone Fed than you need to stop using soy products. I always thought soy was good for me, I stopped drinking Cow's Milk and went for soy to be healthier and now since a family member has gotten a tumor in her breast that is cancerous and is hormonally fed, I have learned that SOY is now to be avoided for it feeds this particular type of cancer.

Soybean Information from Dr. John Lee, who is a Great Source for you to learn about your hormones, test your hormone level and understand the role hormones play in your life.

About Soy Foods
DON'T GO OVERBOARD WITH SOY
A Cautionary Tale
by John R. Lee, M.D.

Soybeans also contain potentially healthful compounds called phytoestrogens (also known as isoflavones), such as genestein, diadzein and others that are weak-acting estrogens.

Phytoestrogens occupy estrogen receptors and thereby reduce the effect of one's potentially more potent endogenous (made in the body) estrogens. This may well be the reason for the lower incidence of breast and prostate cancer in Japan. However, seen in context with the whole diet, large doses of these phytoestrogens are not as healthy as smaller doses combined with all the other factors found in the traditional Japanese diet.

Soybeans contain enzyme inhibitors that can block protein absorption as well as uptake of the enzyme trypsin, leading to thyroid deficiency and retarded growth. They also contain hemagglutinin that decreases the ability of red blood cells to properly absorb oxygen and distribute it throughout the body. These can be removed from soy products, but the usual attempts to do so (by pureeing the beans, soaking in an alkaline solution, and then cooking them in a pressure cooker) will, at the same time, make the beans’ proteins difficult to digest.

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