Soybeans are not dangerous

There have been all sorts of rumors about dangerous things in soy, such as estrogen-like compounds that might have feminizing effects or encourage the growth of some breast cancers, or compounds that might be bad for your thyroid gland. Stop worrying!

There is no evidence that the very slight estrogen-like activity in soy has any harmful or even significant consequences. I wonder if this rumor is promoted by the dairy industry– since cow’s milk makes your blood cholesterol go up and soy products make it go down, they need to grasp at some straws.

Just remember that Asian cultures have eaten tofu, made soymilk and enjoyed good health for thousands of years. For you jocks it is a rare vegetarian source of high quality protein. For those of you worried about heart disease it contains healthy polyunsaturated fats, plant sterols and fibers to lower your blood cholesterol.

You probably don’t want to overdo it, just like you don’t want to overdo anything, even things as healthy as drinking water and getting some sun. And I wouldn’t want to subsist on all sorts of products made out of highly processed soy powders- or other kinds of refined or purified products– but there isn’t any reason to shy away from tofu or edamame or a glass of soy milk.

Lowering blood cholesterol- do statins have side effects?

I was asked to comment about the safety and side effect of statins– Lipitor, Pravacol, Zocor and others– drugs that are very effective at lowering blood cholesterol and preventing death from heart attacks. I’m not an M.D., but my impression is that these are pretty good drugs as far as safety and efficacy goes.

However, they can occasionally be toxic to the liver and to muscles, and if you are taking a statin your doctor is probably checking for liver toxicity (ALT/AST) and should be checking for muscle toxicity (creatine kinase). Your job is to note any muscle weakness or pain that might indicate dangerous muscle breakdown, which might eventually be fatal.

If you are concerned, there are two things you can do– one is to take supplements of coenzyme Q and vitamin D along with your statin. I can’t say that the evidence for benefits of these supplements is unequivocal, but I would take them if it were me.

The other thing you can do is to work with me to lower your cholesterol without statins. I’ve had great success with nutritional strategies that go far beyond the pretty useless low-fat recommendations you’ve probably given up on. Look on the testimonials page of my website (healthyfat.com) or search my name on Yelp for clients bragging about their low cholesterol numbers.

Diet or drugs for cholesterol-lowering?

The American Academy of Pediatrics caused a big stir by recommending the use of cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins) in kids, even though there have not been safety or efficacy studies of these drugs in children. I looked at the AAP position paper to get the details, hoping that they would recommend starting out with safe nutritional strategies before progressing to drugs. Well, yes and no. They do recommend dietary intervention, but just the same old low fat and low cholesterol diet that has been ineffective for adults and has driven them by the scores to statins.

The authors of the AAP position paper are not nutritional scientists, they are M.D.s. They need to be told of research by Chris Gardener at Stanford, Jenkins & Kendall in Toronto, and others, showing that there are much more effective means to lower cholesterol than the documented-ineffective “low-fat” diet. Through a variety of mechanisms, eating more plant foods (including fatty ones) can be quite effective at lowering cholesterol. With simple nutritional strategies, a client of mine lowered her LDL cholesterol from 164 to 123 in 3 weeks, and then to 106 in another 4 weeks. What will it take to get medical doctors to stick to medicine and to let more knowledgeable nutritional scientists make diet policy?