Safety of soy?
My daughter and I make a point of eating tofu and drinking soya milk on a regular basis so we were both concerned to read recent reports suggesting a high consumption could increase the risk of cancer. Can you shed any light on the subject?
I can well understand your concern but what you need to remember is that these adverse reports were based on 28 studies suggesting possible toxic effects, all of which fly in the face of thousands more other trials cataloguing the benefits of increasing the amount of soy protein in your diet.
The adverse reports questioned the safety of one of the active ingredients - the isoflavones - which have an oestrogenic action in the body and which could, it was suggested, increase the risk of breast cancer which relies on oestrogen-type hormones for growth. The reason this sent shockwaves through the food industry is that one of the reasons so many women try to eat more soy is to protect against this very disease.
All foods have the potential for toxicity if over-consumed so the answer for those concerned about the safety of soy is to eat moderate amounts as part of a mixed and varied healthy diet. That said, I am not myself a huge fan of soy products but for a completely different reason.
When you eat soy, you inadvertently trigger an increased production of mucous in the intestinal tract. Anyone with an interest in natural health or naturopathy, will quickly learn that impacted mucous is one of the biggest problems for people eating the typical Western diet that is, of course, usually high in dairy foods which have the same effect as soy.
Parents of young children can confirm that healthy faeces, eliminated from an undamaged colon, not only looks completely different but floats. If you are not sure whether to be concerned about your gut and if you can bring yourself to do so, take a look at what you are eliminating.
The good news is that a number of herbal remedies are highly effective in cleansing the colon and removing this mucous so that you really can start again. These include the wonderfully-named, slippery elm. Colonic irrigation, of course, does exactly the same thing.
This may not be a pleasant topic to consider on a Sunday morning but since naturopaths reckon we use 80% of our total energy to digest and eliminate our food when healthy, imagine how much more stressed our system will be if we fail to take steps to counter any developing problems.
*To learn more about the health risks associated with impacted mucous, read Professor Arnold Ehret’s Mucusless Diet Healing System which was published more than 75 years ago. Published by Ehret Literature Publishing, the ISBN for this small but thought-provoking paperback is 1-884772-00-5.