Well, soy milk is mainly made of soybeans and is rich in vegetable protein. This is good for your health. However, soy milk also contains small amounts of plant estrogens, also known as phytoestrogens. These can affect women’s hormones and cause side effects. However, soy milk has advantages and disadvantages. Let’s share is soy milk bad for women’s health, and what are the disadvantages?
Is soy milk bad for women’s health
Drinking too much soy milk will cause indigestion
Drinking too much soy milk will cause abdominal distension or indigestion in women. Soy milk is rich in protein. Drinking too much will cause overeating protein indigestion, abdominal distension, diarrhea, and other symptoms.
The nature of soy milk itself is cold. Therefore, women with indigestion and belching should drink less soy milk. In addition, soy milk can produce gas under the action of enzymes. So women with abdominal distension and diarrhea are best not to drink soy milk.
May cause an extra burden on the kidneys
Drinking too much soy milk will increase the burden on the kidneys because soy milk is rich in protein. If you drink too much soy milk at one time, its metabolites will naturally increase the burden on the kidneys, especially for women with poor kidney function.
Therefore, in addition to controlling the amount of soy milk you drink every day, if you choose to squeeze soy milk at home, the number of soybeans per person should not exceed 50 grams at most, and more water should be added to dilute the soy milk (the ratio of beans and water is 1:10) ), so as not to be too thick and increase the burden on the kidneys.
Can be an effect of the obesity
Drinking too much soy milk will also make you fat. Because of its high fiber, diuretic properties, and the isoflavones contained in soy milk, it has the effect of losing weight. However, be careful not to drink too much. Soy milk is high in calories, and drinking too much will make you fat. Drinking one or two hundred milliliters of soy milk each time is recommended, and about 500 milliliters a day is appropriate.
May affect women’s hormones
Drinking a lot of soy milk may affect the effect of estrogen on the body. Soy milk contains a small amount of phytoestrogens, and the main component is soy isoflavones, which are compounds with weak estrogenic effects. Phytoestrogens have a molecular structure similar to estrogen and can also bind to estrogen receptors in the body to produce estrogen-like effects.
If you drink too much soy milk, the combination of phytoestrogens in soy milk and receptors will hinder the normal combination of physiological estrogens and receptors but will have an inhibitory effect. The result is equivalent to reducing the level of estrogen and weakening the effect of estrogen.
Estrogen is closely related to the development of breasts, so drinking more soy milk not only can not increase breasts but may also affect the development of breasts. In other words, drinking too much soy milk can easily lead to precocious puberty.
Can eating more soybeans prevent breast cancer?
In general, soy products appear to help prevent cancer rather than worsen it, but the exact reason is uncertain. Numerous studies have shown that Asian women eating more soy is associated with a 30% lower risk of breast cancer than American women, who consume far less soy. For example, the average intake of isoflavones in Japan is between 30 and 50 mg, while the average intake in Europe and the United States is less than 3 mg.
Soy has also been linked to reduced breast cancer severity. Fang Fang Zhang, an associate professor at Tufts University in Massachusetts, surveyed 6,000 breast cancer patients living in the United States and found that women who ate more soy had a 21 percent lower mortality rate. The benefits of soy were most pronounced in patients with hormone receptor-negative breast cancer, a more difficult-to-treat type of breast cancer whose tumors lack estrogen and progesterone receptors and therefore do not respond well to hormone therapy.
“Our findings suggest that soy consumption may have a potential benefit in improving survival in patients with hormone receptor-negative breast cancer,” said Fangfang Zhang. Even so, it has been challenging to isolate the beneficial components of soy. Soy is often seen as an essential part of a healthy diet and as an alternative to red meat, which has been linked to a higher risk of heart disease and cancer.
Still, Leena Hilakivi-Clarke, a professor of oncology at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., said: “No one is giving people soy foods and seeing if they are better than those who don’t eat soy products. As a result, people are more likely to develop breast cancer.”
7 taboos for women to drink soy milk
- Do not drink too much
Drinking too much soy milk at one time can easily cause protein indigestion, abdominal distension, diarrhea, and other symptoms.
- Avoid brown sugar
When the organic acids in brown sugar combine with the proteins in soy milk, denatured precipitates can be formed, and nutrients can be destroyed.
- Avoid taking it together with antibiotics
Soymilk must not be taken together with antibiotics such as erythromycin because the two will have a chemical reaction. The interval between drinking soymilk and taking antibiotics is preferably more than 1 hour.
- Avoid thermos bottles
Soymilk contains substances that can remove the scale in the thermos. Under suitable temperature conditions, using soymilk as a nutrient, the bacteria in the bottle will multiply, and after 3 to 4 hours, the soymilk can be rancid and deteriorate.
- Drink soy milk often and pay attention to zinc supplementation
Beans contain inhibitors, saponins, and lectins, all of which are bad for the human body. The best way to deal with them is to cook soy milk. People who eat soy milk for a long time should not forget to supplement with the trace element zinc.
- Those with a deficient constitution should drink with caution
Because soy milk is made from soybeans, and soybeans are high in purines and are cold foods, people with deficient constitutions who have symptoms of gout, fatigue, physical weakness, and mental fatigue are not suitable for drinking soy milk.
- Avoid drinking on an empty stomach
When you drink soy milk on an empty stomach, most of the protein in the soy milk will be converted into heat and consumed in the body, which cannot fully play a beneficial role. Eating starchy foods such as steamed bread and bread while drinking soy milk can fully absorb and utilize nutrients.
