If you have suffered from hot flashes, you know you would give almost anything for a cure. Some say soy is the answer while others say no. I know when I first started experiencing hot flashes, I tried soy milk. Actually, it didn’t taste that bad, but then the hot flashes subsided a bit and I quit drinking it.
But, did it work?
One study at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine said that soy isoflavone supplements didn’t work. Researchers spent $3 million and two years following women ages 45 to 60 within five years of menopause. The study, called SPARE (Soy Phytoestrogens As Replacement Estrogren), gave the women either daily soy isoflavone tablets or placebos. After two years, the study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, showed that the tablets provided no relief from hot flashes. So the soy didn’t help, but it didn’t harm, although those taking the tablets did complain of constipation and bloating.
But, today a new study showed that soy supplements do help hot flashes. This study gathered results from 17 clinical trials that had already been published and studied those.
The researchers found that women who had taken soy isoflavone extract saw a 21 percent reduction in their hot flashes as opposed to those subjects that only received a placebo. It also showed that even when the women taking the extract had hot flashes, they were less intense.
While senior researcher Mark Messina of Loma Linda University said that the effect did vary from study to study, there was a pattern that the soy isoflavone worked better than nothing.
So what do you do? Do you try soy or not? Messina suggested giving it a try, but said that if you don’t see any results after four weeks, it was time to move on. Even naysayers said it was reasonable for women to try soy supplements for four to eight weeks to see if they help. However, women with a history of breast or endometrial cancer may want to talk to their healthcare providers first.