When women transition into menopause, they frequently have to deal with a number of side effects, including hot flashes, night sweats and mood swings. Hormone replacement therapy can help with these symptoms by returning estrogen and progesterone closer to pre-menopause levels. This type of therapy increases your risk for breast cancer, however, so many menopausal women prefer to try natural treatment alternatives, including consuming soy products.
Estrogen and Menopause
Menopause occurs when the body starts to make smaller amounts of the hormones that are related to menstruation. These hormones include estrogen and progesterone. The typical symptoms of perimenopause, the time leading up to menopause, occur because of the lower levels of these hormones in your body.
Phytoestrogen Effects
Some foods contain natural chemicals, called phytoestrogens, that have effects in the body similar to those of estrogen. The effects of phytoestrogens are significantly milder than the effects of estrogen, however. Reports of reduced menopause side effects in parts of the world where foods that contain phytoestrogens, such as soy products, are a large part of women's diet suggest that consuming phytoestrogens might be helpful for women going through menopause.
Benefits of Soy
Although the phytoestrogens in soy, called isoflavones, appear to lower cholesterol slightly, more research is needed to determine whether they are helpful in reducing the symptoms of menopause. Both consuming soy and taking a placebo usually lessen certain symptoms to a limited extent, but soy only sometimes has a greater effect than the placebo. Consuming soy foods may help to limit the severity and the number of hot flashes you have during menopause. The effect, when it occurs, tends to be mild, however. Soy consumption doesn't seem to help with other common menopause symptoms, such as headaches and anxiety, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
Possible Risks
Because phytoestrogens act like estrogen in the body, some concern exists about increased cancer risk from consuming levels of soy as high as those recommended to help with menopause symptoms. The effects of soy consumption on cancer risk are still unclear, according to the "Boston Globe." Some animal studies have shown a protective effect from higher levels of soy consumption, whereas others indicate that consuming a lot of phytoestrogens from soy might increase breast cancer risks.
Recommendations
If you want to try consuming soy-based phytoestrogens to see if they help with your menopause symptoms, you should stick with those found in whole foods. The safety of taking the high doses you find in supplements such as genistein, isolated daidzein, isoflavone supplements and soy extracts still isn't clear, according to Creighton University.
Consuming an average of 40 to 80 mg per day of soy isoflavones from whole foods such as tofu, soy milk, soybeans or soy nuts appears to be safe and may help to minimize your menopause symptoms. Multiplying the grams of soy protein by two will give you an estimate of the amount of isoflavones a soy food contains.
