SOY STORIES

LOW ENERGY, LOW LIBIDO ON SOY
            I’m an over-50 natural bodybuilder who was always looking for a good source of protein. I also shied away from all fat except some olive oil. I won the Mr. Oregon over-50 title and of course thought I knew what I was doing. I reached a point where I had changed my protein intake to pure soy protein isolate, because it was inexpensive and at first made me feel good. I was also drinking soy milk and my wife and I were both eating a lot of fake soy foods.

            In the spring of 1998, I spent three months away from home in Hawaii, running a gym and testing whether we wanted to move there. I was eating what we are told is the “perfect” diet, oatmeal, nuts, raisins, some fish and a lot of soy protein isolate. When I came home, I had reached a point where my energy levels were so low I would often spend a day or two doing nothing. My libido was also at an all-time low, and this was unusual and depressing. I didn’t have a clue what was wrong, until my wife accidentally ran across your articles on soy foods. She followed up by visiting the Weston A. Price Foundation website. We decided that we had been following the wrong drummer. Far from doing everything right, we had been doing a lot that was wrong.

            We quit soy cold turkey! We adopted the principles of eating advocated by the Weston A. Price Foundation. Today my old self is back: energy levels, libido and thought processes. I am a personal trainer who now preaches the traditional ways of eating, including a lot of natural saturated fats (with no increase in body fat or cholesterol levels!).    W.W.

OFF SOY AND MUCH HEALTHIER
             We have been off soy now for over a year and we are so much healthier and better for it. We have discovered that once off of soy, there’s no turning back. The body then starts rejecting and reacting to all other neurochemicals and additives. We are down to bare basic natural foods when we can find them. Again, keep up the good work. You are our voice out there.   M.W.

FROM SOY TO COCONUT OIL
            I’m a very fit, active person. I weight train, hike, do low-impact aerobics and climb stairs. I believed and followed the low-fat/pro-soy dogma, but I didn’t understand why, even if I ate my head off, I wouldn’t feel satisfied. Upping protein and switching to whole grains helped, but something still wasn’t right. When I started to eat the way I do now fully and finally (traditional foods, prepared in traditional ways with ample traditional fats) it made a huge difference. Now I feel satisfied with fewer calories, and I don’t crave nutritional garbage anymore (an amazing thing for a former hard-core hard candy addict). If I know that I won’t be able to eat for 3 or more hours, I eat 1-2 tablespoons of coconut oil. It’s quite amazing how sustaining that is. I store the oil in the fridge, so it’s easy to break off chunks and eat them out of hand. For a treat, I sometimes dust a piece with a little stevia powder. A dip into finely chopped ‘crispy nuts’ is also nice.   R.A.

A BIG MISTAKE      
            I was so glad to read your report on the problems with modern soy foods. I have felt as though I have been losing my mind since 1998 that was the year I purchased a three-month supply of soy isoflavone supplements from a vitamin catalog.

            After two weeks on the capsules, I noticed that my gums were all puffy, swollen and bleeding. Prior to this I never had any dental problems. My wisdom teeth became infected and I was advised to have them removed. Big mistake! I have battled TMJ ever since. After two months on the capsules, I had excruciating chest pain. My doctor thought it was
heartburn and treated me with increasingly higher and higher doses of Prilosec, then Prevacid.

            By that time, I had quit the soy capsules. My gum condition resolved but not the chest pain. A GI doctor did an endoscopy of my esophagus and found nothing wrong. A 24-hour pH monitor was negative for acid reflux. I changed doctors and finally found one who gave me a simple chest X-ray.

            He was alarmed to find a growth in my chest the size of a baseball! I went in for an MRI and ended up with a thoracotomy at age 40. I had a huge benign cyst that had suddenly grown on the outer wall of my esophagus. (That’s why it was missed by the endoscopy.) I lost a rib to the surgery and I’m now in chronic pain from the operation and the removal of my wisdom teeth.   I am convinced that the downhill slide of my health all started with those stupid soy isoflavone capsules! They should have been outlawed from the consumer market. I regret the day I was bamboozled  into taking them for heart and bone benefits. Please keep up your fight against soy propaganda. A.B.

A SOY TRAGEDY      
            Our six-year-old daughter has small developing breasts and strong underarm odor. The diagnosis is premature sexual development. I consumed soy products, especially soy milk, for twelve years, including during the time I was pregnant and nursing. Our daughter then consumed soy directly for three years. When she was three years old, I noticed an underarm odor but didn’t pay much attention to it. At two years old, she suffered a leg stress fracture, but that did not set off alarm bells. Both our girls weighed thirty pounds at a year old so they tend to be chubby, but when she was 4 1/2 years old, it was clear that our daughter was starting to develop breasts.

            It finally hit home when I read the Soy Alert! articles. Her endocrine system had received soy estrogens from the beginning and was grossly out of balance. My husband and I have felt much grief with this situation. Searching the internet, my husband turned up lots of information pointing out just what I’ve read in these pages about the dangers of soy.

            Now we are consulting with a physician in our area who knows about the soy problems and the principles of good diet. He has given glandular supplements to my daughter but so far this has not arrested her premature development.

            I was also affected by the soy. My hormones have been on a roller coaster and I found I had virtually no iron in my bone marrow. I was severely anemic. After two months of iron supplements, I hemorrhaged, making matters quite serious. I read about the importance of vitamins A and D and immediately started taking them, which stopped the heavy periods. And I realized how important it was to me that my physician know about the principles of good nutrition, so I switched to the physician we were consulting for our daughter. It has been almost nine months but I am getting better, building myself back up. My hormonal swings are much less extreme and my energy is slowly returning. Fifteen years ago I kept two Jersey cows. After I sold them and moved, I didn’t know where to find good raw milk and I knew I couldn’t stomach the store-bought variety. One of the biggest and most far reaching mistakes in my life was to turn to healthy soy milk. It has turned out to be a poison in our family. J.H.

PHYTATE HELL
            Dr. Andrew Weil just did another paean to soy in his most recent newsletter including the statement, "Until we have stronger research about possible drawbacks, I will continue to recommend consumption of whole soy foods (such as tofu and soy milk) in sensible amounts. In addition, I see no reason for infants now using soy-based formulas to discontinue them. However, I should note that we don’t yet know about the long-term safety of isoflavone supplements, which may provide higher amounts of these compounds than soy foods. " Pretty weasel-worded.

            Several years ago, I was diagnosed with acidosis, and although I tried valiantly to correct the problem via diet, nothing worked. I felt like death warmed over and had all kinds of inexplicable aches and pains. I cut back on meat and carbs and was eating huge salads every day. What I didn’t know was that certain recently introduced foods that I thought were the epitome of healthful eating were robbing me of vital minerals, and who knows what else. In my never-ending quest for good health, I had begun eating what I thought was a modified macrobiotic diet. Brown rice (unsoaked) and soy milk every morning and sometimes miso soup with tofu at other times during the day. A triple phytate whammy! My cholesterol plummeted to 135 and when I questioned my then doctor (via letter) whether that was not dangerously low, I never received a reply. It was not until I learned about traditional diets that I understood the problem. I am now back on eggs (organic) cooked in butter (organic) along with toast slathered with butter and whole cream (organic) in my coffee every morning. Salads are drowned in olive oil. Recent cholesterol values were so stunning, my current doctor remarked that he had never seen such wondrous numbers. S.R.

FRAZZLED BRAIN            
            My mother was flying into the Portland, Maine airport for a visit. This is an hour-and-a-half drive from my house but with only one exit, it’s a no-brainer. I picked her up and proceeded down the highway home. After some time, I looked at her and said,
You know that exit should be coming up soon.

 This is an exit with a huge sign because if you miss it, it takes you inland and north. Well, I kept looking for the exit sign and by the time I saw one, I thought to myself, uh-oh! I’m in trouble! I had driven a good half hour past the exit I should have taken. I was not too familiar with the area but I had a fair idea of where I was. To make a very, very long story short, four hours later we arrived home! I was frazzled! My mother couldn’t figure out what was wrongwith me. Back roads that led to nowhere I knew, road map on my mother’s lap, frequent stops to look at the map I just couldn’t figure out where I was going. All I could do was to continue following the sun until it went down. By the time it was getting dark, I spotted something familiar and found my way home. During the same week, while out shopping, I got lost again, twice!

My cognitive awareness and mental acuity were lost. My words would jumble when I tried to speak coherent sentences. Often, right in the middle of a thought or sentence, I would get lost in outer space. Like mini-seizures, what soy was doing to my brain was frightening. Reading and comprehending became almost an impossible task. My first love is writing but now I couldn’t write without countless mistakes. I used to proofread my husband’s scientific journal articles, and now I could barely spell. I couldn’t remember sequences of numbers as with telephone numbers or writing a check. I can’t tell you how many movies I would watch where I couldn’t follow the dialogue, remember characters’ names or figure out the plot. Now when I watch them again, it’s like seeing them for the first time.  I had been eating soy for three years. As soon as I stopped, my mental acuity returned! The hypo-thyroid symptoms started to melt away and once more I could read, write, comprehend, speak in complete sentences and express myself coherently. It’s nice to be back! L.B.

IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN        
            Thank you for your work in alerting people to the dangers of soy. If only I had known 20 years ago. But perhaps I can tell you something that will help others. I was diagnosed as clinically depressed and had chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia for 17 years. The doctor said it was all in my head.

            Years later I went to a complimentary practitioner and he said to give up the soy as it showed strong in the allergy tests. I had no soy for two weeks. Energy was coming back, my mind was clearing and I felt like I had a future again. One Saturday at bedtime I drank the little box of soy milk to see what would happen. I went to bed to read and dozed off.

 (I now recognize the dozing off not as sleep but as an allergic reaction.) The next morning as I tried to get up I fell back onto the bed and was very weak and spacey and even the next day I had little energy.

            It was hard to believe that soy could cause such a reaction so I did it again a few days later. Driving to work an hour or so after eating some soy product I began to be so sleepy I could not see the road. At the office I sat at the desk and passed out. After a half hour the worst passed but I was incredibly tired all day. My mouth tasted tinny, my ears felt stuffy and I had no appetite except later a craving for sweets.

            I did not consciously eat any more soy but once in a while I would get it inadvertently, like in a corn muffin. I now read all labels carefully. If I have any tamari sauce flavoring, I get spacey and weak and sleepy and know it will peak in an hour and lessen and then coffee and passive work is all that will do until a night’s sleep. I am limited as to where I can get a meal because so many places use soy oil for cooking. I can literally go to sleep at the whel. Many times I have pulled over and lain my head on the opposite seat for half an hour till the worst is passed. For years I believed I was going senile at a youthful time and missed a lot of activities and creativity that I could have enjoyed because of this farce of telling us that soy is good for us. I think it is a serious allergen and people need to know. S.M.

NAUSEOUS AND FORGETFUL            
            I have been a soy consumer for approximately four years now, mostly tofu and soy milk sporadically. Over the course of the past three months I had increased my soy consumption substantially. Last week I had to have a D & C due to thickened endometrial lining with the subsequent frequent menses. I’ve also noted that I’ve felt nauseous and forgetful. I have a hard time retrieving the names of people I have known for years. And I’ve recently had bronchitis which led to atypical pneumonia in the past month.

            I now believe that my second son’s ADHA could have been from the soy formula he consumed as an infant. I have two children, both boys.The oldest just graduated from high school with honors. He received four scholarships for college. He was an excellent, well-rounded student. He never consumed soy. My youngest has ADHA. He struggles in school with C’s and D’s.

            I have a lot of soy products that I’ve stocked up on through a co-op that I belong to. I have to decide to either throw it all away or donate it to charity. I just want to thank you for the information I’ve received through the Weston A. Price Foundation. If not for your website, I’d still be poisoning my system with soy. Now, I’m boycotting and sharing the information. S.M.

NOT SUCH A GOOD IDEA  
            I am an inmate at Rockview State Correctional Facility. Approximately one year ago our institution changed the diet given to inmates to include alternative meals.

 Of course, they feed us as cheaply as possible this is a prison, so the alternative meals were quite a surprise. Bean burgers, cottage cheese and lots of soy products chili, faux scrambled eggs, tofu, barbecue, etc. I was ecstatic. Finally something genuinely healthy, filling and better than the D grade meat they feed us. I immediately started eating the alternative meals and liked the soy products. I was convinced for many years that soy was a wonder food and flabbergasted we expendable inmates would be fed it, but I chocked it all up to political correctness and the institution’s continuing placation of the various minority religious and gang groups, such as Muslims, which don’t eat various foods, such as pork or beef.

            I lift weights, jog, stretch, etc. and consider myself in pretty good shape. The alternative meals made me healthier and feel even better. I thought. It was so gradual, I didn’t make the connection. Stomach problems aches, pains, multiple bowel movements at ever increasingly inopportune times, and finally bloody stool all the time. I was scared. I thought I had colon cancer or was dying. The medical department had me scheduled for a scopology in a real hospital, outside the prison.

            One year ago I read an article about soy not being all it’s cracked up to be and thought, no way, and promptly forgot about it. Approximately five months ago another anti-soy article in a health magazine, and another publication had a soy-bad story. I started to wonder, could I have been duped, all my life thinking soy was a health wonder? For goodness sake, it’s just a vegetable! Then again, I read an article by Sally and Mary. That was it. Time for an experiment. I stopped eating soy.

            Within three days, all blood in my stool cleared up, bowel movements went back to normal and by the end of seven days, everything was fine. Not fine great! I couldn’t believe it. Thank you at the Weston A. Price Foundation for making the truth about soy available. P.C.

SAVED FROM SOY    
            Three weeks after my internist sent me to a nutritionist sharing his office, it was fortunate that I saw your article on soy. Although my cholesterol was slightly elevated (it turned out to be the good cholesterol), she went gung-ho in prescribing six weeks of soy hell tofu milk shakes, soy cereal, soy meat substitutes, soy cheese, soy ice cream, plus salmon and tofu chunks (ugh!) four times a week. With a copy of your article in hand, I marched back into my internist’s office and handed it to him. Five minutes later he said,
Forget about it. Eat normally.

            No doubt your timely article has prevented other unsuspecting subjects from falling for the soy hype. However, I am alarmed to see even more soy-based products arriving on the shelves weekly. You need to submit your findings to major US newspapers and magazines so the message gets out to the thousands who are becoming guinea pigs. E.C.

SOY AND CHRONIC FATIGUE       
            Thank you for your exposé of soy. I believe it was one contributor to my five-year bout with chronic fatigue syndrome. It is amazing that even the health food stores have been deceived by the agri-business corporation cartels on this one. G.G.    

SOY AND FIBROMYALGIA     
            There is a great need to make public the dangers of soy, not only in infant formula but in any product containing soy. I personally have suffered from consuming soy protein shakes for a period of 2-3 years, once a day for breakfast. There are no warning labels on these products! I had been hypothyroid for many years and was taking Synthroid at the time. In spite of the medication I became ill as the result of the effect the soy had on my thyroid. I developed fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue, which by the way is due to low thyroid function. (I will wager that 99 percent of all medical doctors are not aware of the connection.) My doctor did not find any change in my lab work so he never suspected that my thyroid was the source of my illness. (I have since found out that blood tests are a poor way to determine thyroid function, but that’s another subject.)

            Not only did the soy affect my thyroid, it also affected my digestion and brain function! I developed cognitive problems and had difficulty spelling and figuring out basic problems that before had never been a challenge. My memory was steadily going downhill, which at age 45 was a scary prospect, especially since my dad has Alzheimer’s disease. As the result of my illness I decided to leave my job.

            Many people apply for disability as the result of fibromyalgia. Through prayer and two years of research I am fortunate to be 95 percent symptom-free, part of which is due to avoiding soy products. Soy is dangerous and the public has the right to know what the dangers are so that they can make informed choices. Think of the many helpless babies that are exposed to this toxic chemical every day and their mothers are totally unaware of the damage that may result ! C.W.    

SOY AND SEIZURES     
            I have had a seizure disorder my whole life with long periods off medication with no seizures. I was seizure-free from 1985 through 1994 on medication and from 1994 to 2000 off medication. My seizures only occur in my sleep. Historically, I had grand mal seizures. In 2000, I began having nighttime episodes which went undiagnosed until January, 2002 when I was told I has having simple partial seizures. Additionally, at the time of diagnosis in 2002, through many blood tests, I also was found to have very high antibodies indicative of systemic lupus. However, I have no other symptoms of SLE. I have been on seizure medications since May due to elevated liver enzymes. I was taking Tegretol. Since being off the Tegretol, my liver enzymes have returned to normal. However, up until four weeks ago, I was having seizures again every night.

            All of a sudden, they stopped. I realized that the only thing different in my life was that I had not eaten any soy products. I have made a conscious effort to cut out anything with soy ingredients and have been seizure-free for four weeks.

                        I thought back to when I began eating a lot of soy burgers and soy
chicken,  soy milk, cereal with soy fortification, soy protein shakes, etc., and realized it was around 2000.

            My question: is there any research out there that connects soy with seizures. I know MSG is a neurotoxin/excitotoxin like aspartame which causes me to have seizures, and that MSG is a by-product of soy and also soy protein isolates contain MSG. But I am also curious about the soy/estrogen connection. Some women only have seizures during menstruation. I also have irregular periods which only corrected themselves while on Tegretol, which is known to metabolize estrogen. C.A.

SOY AND THE BRAIN  
            Thanks for your website! I found it by doing a Netscape search on isoflavones which took me to soyonlineservice.co.nz which took me to you at westonaprice.org.

            Until 2 years ago I was a regular consumer of homemade soymilk. I have a PhD in plant physiology and over the years I systematically worked to optimize the process I used at home so that I could make a soymilk much more palatable than any on the market. I had an interest in eventually starting a business to make it. But then I learned that I probably had an adverse reaction to isoflavones in the soymilk and I stopped consuming soyfoods.

            I tried taking isolated soy isoflavones, basically just to see what effect they had and also because they were reported to be good for prostate health (I am 57). (I am aware that there are studies pro and con benefit to prostate.) I took 2 SoyCare tablets (a total of 50 mg Novasoy isoflavones). A few hours later I found that it was difficult to speak and I nearly got into a serious accident due to impairment in judging the speed of a car. I definitely had serious mental impairment which I attributed to the isoflavone supplement. (This was gone by the next day.) I don’t think it was due to an allergic reaction or mini-stroke.

            Once before I had similar difficulty in speech when a doctor gave me an atropine-like medicine. Atropine antagonizes acetylcholine action, which triggers some of the nerves involved in memory. Memory is an essential component of speech!

            Previously I had thought (based on ignorance) that isoflavones in soy probably had insignificant health effects. After the reaction to the isoflavones, I starting searching Bioabstracts for studies on soy isoflavones. I quickly learned that genistein is a potent inhibitor of tyrosine kinase, a key enzyme in mediating cell responses to our natural cell growth factors. (It had been used for this purpose in over 1000 research studies!) That did not sound like something I wanted in my food! Furthermore, I found several studies that showed that tyrosine kinase is also involved in triggering of nerves involved in memory, and this is blocked by genistein! My memory was flaky enough already and I quit eating soy products, except for a few subsequent trials of soy milk.

            Besides inhibition of tyrosine kinase, adverse cognitive effects of soymilk could also be due to anti-estrogenic actions (estrogens are important for speech and memory in both males and females) or to anti-thyroid action. Or maybe to all three!

            All my adult life I have been bothered by rather severe seasonal affective disorder (SAD, winter mental sluggishness) when I lived at northern latitudes. In the last two years I have rarely drunk soymilk, but when I did, it seemed to worsen the SAD and each time I felt an undesirable aggressiveness. (A recent study showed soy isoflavones increased the potent androgen dihydrotestosterone in men.) I think my particular physiology made me more susceptible to soy’s adverse effects. Subsequently I learned of the Hawaiian study on elderly Japanese. It was the first time I heard that soy may cause cognitive problems. G.S.

KIDNEY PROBLEMS   
            I was taking a soy product that had soy protein isolate in it. After a few months, the doctor found my creatine had gone way up, indicating kidney problems. They were so concerned. I stopped taking the product and my kidneys became normal. My friend took the same product and had trouble with her thyroid.   I am so thankful we have people like you to keep us informed. M.W.

THE SKIN TEST   
            I quite accidentally found your article on the dangers of soy while doing research onprostate cancer.   I am shocked by this report and am now very concerned about using soy. Ironically, I subscribe to Consumer Reports on Health and just received their May 2000 report with a two-page article stating the benefits of soy on the heart and osteoporosis, stating that the isoflavones bolster the bones.

            You might find it interesting that I have psoriasis and recently visited the Canyon Ranch in Arizona, where soy is added to most of the food. After a few days, the skin rash flared up terribly. It took me a week to figure out that it was the soy. Once I stopped eating any food that contained soy, my skin improved. To test this, several months later I ate some soy beans and again my skin flared up. Needless to say, I now avoid all products containing soy.

            Both of my children were given soy formula because they were unable to tolerate conventional formula. One developed severe asthma and the other was definitively diagnosed ADD. Is it possible that the lactose intolerance indicated a preexisting allergy and he would have developed asthma regardless, or was it the soy? I guess I will never know. However, your article certainly caught my attention. The biggest question is how to make this information more available to the general public. S.F.

UNSUSPECTED SOY          
            I was diagnosed 30 years ago with what was described as mild hypothyroidism. I had very few problems with mental ability but suffered mostly with weight problems. However, a few years ago I became premenopausal and that was when my problems started. Intermittent at first but over the years as the menopause progressed I got worse and worse. I suffered from short term memory problems, inability to concentrate, and couldn’t even comprehend what I was reading. I am a receptionist and word processor operator and I was making so many mistakes in my work that I was eventually threatened with dismissal. More often than not as the years passed I would type a word backwards without even realizing I had done so. I would proofread my work and would just read right over my mistakes.

            I had no idea what was happening to me, and neither did my doctor. He eventually referred me to an endocrinologist at my local hospital to arrange for me to have tests done for possible Alzheimer’s yes, Alzheimer’s. Yet, what is the claim about soy? That it protects against aging! My tests showed that I was above average for my age in every other category except mental acuity. As time wore on I got to the stage at work where I couldn’t even remember how to answer the phone when it rang!! The phone would ring, I would pick up the receiver and. . . blank what do I say? By this time my speech was slurring, and still no one could come up with an answer.

            One day while I was shopping, I found myself walking down the street and the next thing I knew I was walking across a very busy intersection against the lights with the drivers of vehicles trying desperately to miss me.

            One doctor told me that my serotonin levels were way down as a result of being hypothyroid and the only medication he could put me on was Prozac. However I didn’t take it for long because I found my appetite increased so much I couldn’t stop eating.

            It was about the same time I also stopped eating commercially made bread. I just had no desire for it. It was a few weeks later that I realized I was feeling really great again, with my memory returned and no problems with concentration. In the meantime I had discovered the internet so I decided to do some research on thyroid disease. In the process I came across a website on thyroid disease by Mary Shomon. It was through the bulletin board connected to this site that I learned about those who had had bad experiences with soy. The reports were horrifying but I wasn’t concerned because I didn’t consume any soy or so I thought.

            Two months or so later I was back in cyber space, and with short-term memory and concentration problems. A work colleague was quick to pick it up and suggested that maybe it was something I had been eating. She suggested I think about what I could have eaten that I hadn’t for a few months. I then realized I had gone back to eating bread. I checked the ingredients label on the packet to find that I had been eating bread laced with soybean flour, and in fact when I checked the ingredient labels on all varieties of bread at my local supermarket, there was not one that didn’t contain soybean flour. Remembering what I had read on the internet, I then realized that surely it had to be the phytoestrogens contained in the bread I had been eating all those years that had caused my problem. The slow buildup had been blocking my medication. The worst part of this story is that I was consuming soy without realizing it. I have begun to make my own bread and stopped consuming all forms of soy. I have become an expert at reading labels!

            It is now ten months since I came off all soy products and although I am now 60 years of age, I feel more like 40. For years I had extreme difficulty getting my TSH count below 5+, but my December 2000 blood test showed that my TSH was down to 0.03! Again proof positive that my medication was finally working. And I am losing all the weight that I put on during the menopause years. As the absence of soy is the only change in my diet, surely that is a good indication of what caused my problems.

            I dread to think of the number of folk around the world who suffer from thyroid disease, are having problems and are unaware that in all probability it is due to the soy they are consuming in one form or another. All around the world, even in China, health professionals are complaining about our children gaining weight. It is blamed on too much watching TV, playing on computers, etc. But I am not so sure. Now tests have shown that soy can cause hypothyroidism. The amount of soy our young children (indeed the population as a whole) are consuming daily within one product or another must surely build up over a period of time, which in turn means the phytoestrogens must eventually take their toll. J.S.