Soya bean, soy products are not good for pregnant women
by admin ~ February 11th, 2008. Filed under: Pregnancy.
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The food to avoid when pregnant is soy products. Yet, many pregnant moms go out of their way to consume more soya bean drink, eat soya bean cakes and totally adore soy products because they were told that soy will give their babies fair and beautiful complexion.
As with everything, one shouldn’t consume too much of anything. Therefore, soya bean is not good for pregnant mothers if they consume too much. If you are expecting a baby boy, you may even work against his favour. You may bring up a boy with a lot of female features.
The humble soya bean may play a role in the problem of male infertility, a team of researchers in Belfast has found.
Soya contains the female hormone oestrogen and too much of it is being linked to poor quality sperm.
Dr Lorraine Anderson says she found the link in research carried out at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.
“What many men do not realise is that soya is not just consumed by vegetarians, it is contained in a lot of everyday processed foods.
The director of reproductive medicine at Queen’s University, Belfast, Dr Sheena Lewis, said the findings were clear.
“What we have shown is that if men are consuming large amounts of soya products, for example, there is a negative relationship between that and the quality of their sperm.
Dr Anderson said if boys eat a lot of soya when they are growing up, it can damage their reproductive capability.
“The key time for that is when a male foetus is developing and in the early toddler years and up to puberty.
“All through that period, if you alter the oestrogen that a man is exposed to, you can not only affect their sperm quality but affect the development of their reproductive tract, so that you can get an increase in structural abnormalities like undescended testes and you can also get other problems later in life, such as testicular cancer.”
Dr Anderson recently came runner-up in a prestigious competition for her work on the link between male fertility and oestrogen in the diet.
(the full story can be found from BBC News but I have pasted it over here in case the link is not working in future. The link to the article : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/3513607.stm)
So, moms, as always, moderation is the key.
