
I used to believe that soya was the only thing to contain plant estrogen and therefore we all needed to eat it every day to beat menopause symptoms! Not anymore though. My book Grow your own HRT contains scientific databases of many other foods that contain both plant estrogen and plant progesterone and although soya is in there, I can tell you now it is not the top one! In terms of estrogenic effect there are at least three different sprouted foods that beat soya too.*
The great thing about beans and seeds are that the sprouting process not only increases all the nutrients and plant hormones but it gets rid of any antinutrients which means we can digest them more easily and their contents are more bioavailable. The fact that this takes place in the first few days of their germination means that you are creating the perfect fast food, you don’t need any soil and you can sprout them on your windowsill, just like when you grew mustard and cress as a kid.
The mistake we made about soya is that some databases only look at isoflavones as plant estrogen and indeed soya then comes out on top, but that’s like having a vitamin database than only contains vitamin C! Luckily more sophisticated databases** count other kinds of plant oestrogen such as lignans and coumestans too. My book will show you how many plant hormones you are getting in your current diet, and which foods to eat to easily boost your plant hormone levels. Plus if you use sprouted foods as a top up they have the bonus that they will also reduce the risk of you getting long term illnesses such as cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease and dementia.
This all happens without any risk of side effects too. When you grow your own HRT you can start small and build up, experiment with amounts, the way we did for thousands of years. The body naturally excretes any plant hormones we don’t use through our urine, so you can’t overdose. You really have nothing to lose. That’s good because I never did like soya burgers!
Refs:
* Thompson LU, Boucher BA, Liu Z, Cotterchio M, Kreiger N. Phytoestrogen content of foods consumed in Canada, including isoflavones, lignans, and coumestan. Nutr Cancer. 2006.
** Boué SM, Wiese TE, Nehls S, et al. Evaluation of the estrogenic effects of legume extracts containing phytestrogens. J Agric Food Chem. 2003
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