Hi everybody this is Monica Reinagel and you're listening to the

nutrition divas quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous and I hope you

had a nice Thanksgiving holiday last week.

Today I have an interesting question from a listener about soy and its possible effects on

estrogen levels, particularly in kids.

Okay, where do I begin?

First of all, soy does not contain any estrogen.

Soy does contain isophlavones, which are sometimes referred to as phytoeestrogens or plant

estrogens because the molecules are very similar in shape to estrogen molecules. So similar in fact that they can fit

in to specially shaped estrogen receptors on the surface of our cells. Eating soy does not affect estrogen levels in the body, but it may affect estrogen

activity in the body in mostly beneficial ways. Phytosecogens may help mitigate the effects of too much circulating estrogen, for example,

by occupying some of the estrogen receptors on our cells and thereby dampening the effect of the estrogen.

And this may explain why soy intake appears to be protective against breast and other estrogen-driven

cancers. This protective effect seems to be the most noticeable in

pre-Menopausal women and that makes sense because estrogen levels are higher

before menopause and although pre-manopauseal breast cancer is much less common,

it also tends to be more aggressive, so it's especially good to prevent it.

Further studies into this have found that the soy intake early in life

before girls hit puberty appears to have the greatest protective benefits.

And finally, although breast cancer survivors were once told to avoid soy, just in case it might have some astrogenic effects,

it now appears that moderate consumption of soy actually reduces the risk of occurrence in breast cancer survivors.

Now, over at the other end of the spectrum,

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