New study shows soya fights cancer - do we care?
Here we go again! The mound of studies which tell us soya saves or soya kills has just got bigger with some new research from America. Yet people seem willing to believe whatever study is in the newspaper that day to decide their eating habits in our desperation to find The Answer to our health concerns. We forget that all studies require professionals knowledgeable in the field to tell us if you should eat it, bath in it or shove it where it can’t hurt you. Are we bored of studies that swing us one way or the other without telling us what to do about it?
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Last month saw research results suggesting that soya could be used as a healthy alternative to hormone therapy for those suffering from menopausal problems. Now an American study, due to be published in this month’s edition of the International Journal of Cancer, supports claims that soya can also be useful in the prevention of certain forms of cancers. The study clearly shows that soya isoflavones safely enhanced the therapeutic effect of radiotherapy in prostate cancer cells.
But does this mean that we should all go running out to buy foods made with Soya? Well, in this latest study’s experiment prostate cancer cells were directly treated with the bioactive isoflavone from soya, which sounds like it’d be more productive to start rubbing soya on the inside of our testicles. Nevertheless, Japanese study carried out in 2000 provided what is said was ‘modest’ support that soya reduces stomach cancer and heart disease death. The dietary habits of 6000 randomly selected Japanese households were surveyed to get these results.
