SOY RESEARCH NUTRITIONAL SEMINAR MONDAY, APRIL 29, 2002 Get ready for an onslaught of advertising hype about

soy products. The government has given the green light to the soy folks to make claims related to heart disease and other health concerns. Claims will include that it is designed to make you younger, save you from heart disease, solve all you female hormonal problems, lower your cholesterol and protect you against cancer. Isolated, high dose isoflavones from soy are anti-thyroid agents. That means they can be toxic to the thyroid gland and can cause thyroid problems, including goiter and hypothyroid. Soy phytoestrogens are potent antithyroid agents that cause hypothyroidism and may cause thyroid cancer. In infants, consumption of soy formula has been linked to autoimmune thyroid disease. Low thyroid is a major cause of osteoporosis, heart disease, menopausal symptoms-the very problems purported to be helped by mega-dose-isoflavone supplements. Phytoestrogens have chemical structures similar to that of the hormone estrogen. While soy seems to protect against the development of some breast cancer, there is some concern based on test tube and animal studies that soy may stimulate breast tumors once these tumors are established. Until this issue is clarified I recommend that women with breast cancer not use soy foods or soy supplements as part of their cancer treatment plan. Soy foods contain high levels of aluminum, which is toxic to the nervous system and the kidneys. INFANTS AND SOY No infant should drink soy milk. In adult premenopausal women given a daily dose of 60 mgs of soy, hormonal changes occurred that were similar to taking the powerful hormone drug tamoxifen. The required amount of isoflavones is 1mg per kilogram of body weight. Yet infant formulas will give infants more than six times that amount. This is dangerous: 1)Little girls entering puberty at age eight 2) Infants developing thyroid disease before age one. These are all documented findings. There are no isoflavones in breast milk or cows milk. The use of soy based formulas in the US has doubled in the past ten years, now accounting for 25% of all formula sales. Soy formula should actually be reserved as the formula of last resort for infants because of the powerful hormonal effects it may cause. The amount known to cause hormonal changes in women is 45 mgs. The dose for infants using soy formula is 38mgs pound for pound six to 11 times greater than the adult dose! Babies fed soy-based formula have 13,000 t0 22,000 times mores estrogen compounds in their blood than babies fed milk-based formula. Infants exclusively fed soy formula receive the estrogenic equivalent of at least five birth control pills per day! MEN AND SOY All prostate cancer patients taking 100 mgs of soy isoflavones twice daily had an increase in the PSA. Many had significant increases. Aside from the cancer connection, many researchers link soy with aging of the brain and thinking/memory problems.

IN CLOSING If you want a little soy, fine. If you want to munch on soybeans or use soy as a condiment, fine. But overuse of it can be detrimental to your health. Eat a little soy it is a good food, stay away from powerful phytoestrogen products made from soy that contain huge amounts of imbalancing isoflavones. All the above information was compiled from Health & Healing December 2001 Vol. 11, NO. 12 Soy Alert Healthy Traditions Network Chapter/ Weston A Price Foundation 6752 Redford Circle, Troy, MI 48098 (Soy Alert is a project of the The Weston A. Price Foundation located in Washington DC) Health Alerts Volume 17, Issue 1/ Volume 19 Issue 1-January 19, 2002

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