Wait! Flaxseed isn't healthy?
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@Sunny_Bunny_ I love that blogger too
learned so much! I think that blogger is awesome. But there is no date I could find on that article being written. All the references are older than ones you can now find that say different things. I wish bloggers were better about placing dates and disclaimers on there, especially about health, that said if it is older than 5-10 years recommendations may have changed. I honestly believe that it was a thoughtful and great article for when it was written. But everything gets updated over time. I mean when I was a kid butter and eggs was bad bad bad. You avoided them. Now - especially with keto - I eat a ton and all you see are articles about how healthy they are. Versus back then all you saw was how bad. I saw a bunch of newer research for PCOS and phytoestrogens. Not sure about Soy for PCOS, but that could change. I LOVE black beans. So occasionally I know I can have black soy beans to be in keto and not worry about the estrogen.
But the fact that there is research out there for PCOS that shows positive affects with flax made me want to at least try it. And it could just be the fiber/insulin affect and nothing to do with anything in flax. Who knows.
I wish we knew more about nutrition and the foods we eat. But phytonutrients is an elective type study for health professionals. Not a lot of money or focus on it
Like another person stated, I will find out something interesting from a blogger. But then will go to the articles themselves and also google to get the NCBI articles to see what is said. Half the time you find out everything has something that contradicts another article. So I just go with the information I can get and weigh risk versus benefit. 2 -
Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »Emmapatterson1729 wrote: »Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »I'm not going to weigh in on the phytoestrogens much, except to say: context is important. As a post menopausal woman, I'm actually looking for phytoestrogens.
And to note that soy comes in so much lower, but boy does it get all the press.
@Sabine_Stroehm
I think it gets a lot of press in the US, because it's in everything. It's hard finding a product on the shelf here that doesn't contain corn syrup and soy.
When I need estrogen, I take a sip of dry red wine after dinner. It's accepted and converted to estrogen easier by the body, doesn't cause me weight gain like soy does, and added bonuses of helping fight cancer and acid reflux.
I don't like the taste, I have to take it like medicine, lol.
Is there evidence that soy causes weight gain? I've not seen that.
@Sabine_Stroehm
No, that's just from my personal experience.
I had switched to eating vegetarian and consumed a lot of soy. Started packing on weight, quickly.
All the GMO talk was fairly new. Had already cut corn for the GMO reasons, before switching to vegetarian diet.
When I discovered soy was also mostly a GMO crop, I cut all the soy in my diet, except organic (non-gmo) fermented. And the weight fell off, just as quickly.
Shortly after, became a label reader and really into organic (non GMO) foods.
No science, just personal.
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The Weston A Price Foundation is against any soy, that's when I stopped eating it besides occasional processed foods like ice cream or chocolate. I don't think there is any reason why men should have it?canadjineh wrote: »I think soy gets a bad rap in the Western world because almost all of it grown here is GMO and not organic.
https://ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically-engineered-crops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx
Japan does not grow biotech food (only GM blue roses since 2011) so if you are buying soy products try to get Japanese soy or at least certified organic.
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Therapeutic doses of vitamin isolates are almost always much higher than most food amounts, especially B vitamins. I just quickly found the link to help someone looking for foods with inositol. As goes with any internet link, use with caution.Dragonwolf wrote: »The amount needed for PCOS treatment is measured in grams, so it's arguably more about treating a deficiency than maintaining a reasonable level, but once you get out of "deficient," maintaining the levels with food is certainly something to consider.
The important ones for treating PCOS, specifically are myo-inositol and d-chiro-inositol. Like most nutrients, not all sources are created equal, so it's important to suss out which inositol is being counted.
According to https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814603006265 , which notes that kiwifruit juice has among the highest of myo-inositol at 153mg/100g and mandarins with the highest for "chiro-inositol" (which I'm guessing is equivalent to d-chiro) at 108mg/100g. (By the way, this paper contradicts your link regarding the inositol content of bananas, which this paper says has none at all.)
The therapeutic dose for myo-inositol for PCOS treatment is 4g+. Even in a myo/d-chiro blend, it still requires a gram or more of myo. To get that from food, then, would require a kilogram of kiwifruit juice or equivalent.
D-chiro is easier to get, from what I've found, with beef being up there 260mg/100g. Grains technically have more, but there's a lot of crossover between PCOS and gluten/grain intolerance, so I don't consider the benefits of more d-chiro to outweigh the harm, personally (and they're out in a LCHF/keto context anyway, there's that). Lentils and chickpeas are fantastic sources if well-tolerated, though (assuming it's bioavailable and not bound up in anti-nutrients).
https://www.leaf.tv/articles/list-of-foods-high-in-d-chiro-inositol/
I'm not finding hard numbers on myo-inositol in individual foods at the moment, but the abstract for this paper https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7416064 suggests that even eating the highest-content foods falls a fair bit short of the therapeutic requirements for PCOS, to say nothing of the glucose/insulin load of the foods highest in myo-inositol.
Side note - this part in your quote:it is important to consume only those sources which are grass fed and chemical free sources.
If the meat sources are raised on steroids and antibiotics, they can do more harm than good.
goes for plant foods, too. Plants grown with a bunch of pesticides and herbicides do more harm than good, too.
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Flaxseed gives me shortness of breath for some reason 🤷2
