The Food Medic - S9 Ask Dr Hazel: Will soya disrupt my hormones?

Starting point is 00:00:00 What's better than a well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Grocer $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Hello and welcome back to Ask Dr. Hazel, our mini episodes that drop each week in between our main episodes. I'm your host, Dr. Hazel, and I'll be answering all your burning questions.

Starting point is 00:00:43 Thank you to everyone who sent in a question already and if you would like to submit a question of your own to the podcast on any topic related to health, fitness, nutrition, please send your voice recorded questions to info at thefoodmedic.co.uk. So let's jump into this week's question. Hello the Food Medic team and thank you very much for the great podcast. I'm vegetarian and soy is a great source of protein that I consume quite often, I'd say. I've heard very mixed information about the amount we should take, or rather limit, during a week time. On the side, I hear that soy product may bring some hormonal issue, and on the other hand, I also read or heard that this was actually not true so I'm a bit lost in between all of that so I was wondering what's the truth behind that

Starting point is 00:01:33 can soy really bring hormonal imbalance or not and is there really a limit of the number of soy product we should take during the week time. Thank you very much for your help. So this week's question is around soy and whether it will disrupt hormones. This is a really common concern and a question which I've had to address lots of times despite this myth being covered a lot through the research and through other nutritionists and health professionals but it does come up so let's address it today. So like you mentioned soya is a great source of protein absolutely and it's a great food source to include in your diet. The concern when it comes to hormones and soya is related to plant compounds in soya called phytoestrogens, which are basically plant estrogens. Now, these compounds have a structure that's similar but not identical

Starting point is 00:02:36 to estrogen, and they can mimic the effects of estrogen in the body by acting on the oestrogen receptors. So they act like oestrogen but with a much weaker effect and they do not change the hormone levels of oestrogen in the body and that's really important. Now a lot of people when I talk about this will quote a case study from a couple of years back of a man who was drinking three litres of soy milk every day and developed gynecomastia or what's often called man boobs. Now this was not replicated in intervention studies and most people aren't consuming the levels that this man was consuming every single day and so from the, we know that there's actually some health benefits to consuming moderate amounts of soy daily. And it's unlikely to disrupt your

Starting point is 00:03:33 hormones, whether you're a man or a woman. So my advice to you is that yes, continue to consume soya, especially if you're vegetarian, because it's a really good source of protein a complete protein and also there are added benefits to including soya in your diet so I hope that was helpful and cleared up that myth

The Food Medic - S9 Ask Dr Hazel: Will soya disrupt my hormones?

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.