How Eating More Soy Can Alleviate Your Menopause

Soy is a powerful weapon against cancer, heart disease and osteoporosis

(Mirror Daily, United States) – A new study shows how eating more soy can alleviate your menopause, especially bone afflictions.

This new study and its findings are important, because bone illnesses such as osteoporosis occur largely in women who are going through menopause. And it seems like adopting a stir-fry diet rich in soy is the answer. The main responsible for healthy bones in women is the hormone called oestrogen, but its levels decrease drastically when a woman enters her menopausal years.

The hormone can be mimicked, though by a compound called isoflavone, which is to be found in certain kind of foods, like tofu, soy flour, soy milk or soy beans. They are also highly effective when it comes to cancer, as it was proven several times.

The results of the study have been presented during the annual meeting of the Society for Endocrinology in Edinburgh. It has also showed that, apart from benefits with osteoporosis, menopause related afflictions and cancer, soy and mostly the type that contains isoflavones, can also combat and decrease the risk of cardiovascular diseases.

For this particular research, 200 women in the phase of early menopause were recruited, interviewed and studied. A part of those, who had been subject to soy and isoflavones, had significantly less blood protein markers for bone loss, than the women who did not include soy in their diets. They were all tested after a period of six months.

For us to understand, they were given 66 milligrams of the isoflavone supplement, which would translate in the day-to-day life into an oriental diet high in soy foods. The average “western diet” only allows our bodies to get approximately 16 mg of isoflavone, which, evidently, is a lot less by comparison.

In the United Kingdom alone, around three million people suffer from osteoporosis and some 300 000 of those end up in the hospital each year with broken bones cases because of the disease. The fractures most often occur in wrists, spines and hips.

Because of osteoporosis bones may become so weakened that they can break with the smallest effort or even spontaneously. The disease is also accompanied by severe pain and the inability to function normally and to do day-to-day activities.

As far as prevention goes, it might be linked to a supervised and healthy diet during childhood as well as efforts to avoid those types of medications that can lead to osteoporosis as a side effect.

Image Source: www.shawnharper.net

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John Birks

John holds a diploma in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. He covers the technology, social media, green business, eco-travel, politics, arts culture.