soy and mood swings

Hi Nomad,

Your question really deserves two answers.  First, can soy help with symptoms of menopause?  Yes, for some women it is very helpful.  However, it is also one of the main food allergens (see mayoclinic.com and others), can interfere with thyroid function in some women.  I actually took soy early in menopause and while it helped initially with hot flashes and so forth, over time it made things worse.  So the answer is really to find out what will work for you.  Here's an excerpt from my blog about soy's pros and cons:

Soy For Menopause Symptoms: Oh Soy! or Soy Vey! Posted on May 10 2008

For just about a year, my hot flashes, insomnia, and mood alterations were down to a dull roar thanks to my natural progesterone cream. And then I started down the next dip on the Menopause roller coaster.

Early in perimenopause, progesterone levels drop. Later in the transition, estrogen levels decrease as well, causing a resurgence of hot flashes, mood swings, insomnia, vaginal dryness, and more. The progesterone cream that worked initially is no longer enough. We may feel the need for estrogen supplementation. I surely did. Following the rules and guidelines for remedies, I wished to start with the least heavy duty, most ?natural? remedy first. Enter natural remedy #1: soy.

Natural Soy - The Good News
I decided to do a little research - here?s what I found. Soy has been touted as a healthy food alternative to almost everything: meat (tempeh, tofu), milk (soy milk), cheese (yep, soy cheese), appetizers (edamame soybeans), snacks (soy crackers and chips.) and so on. Soy is also a phytoestrogen or plant estrogen precursor. Ergo, if you want to have ?natural? symptom relief from your hot flashes, insomnia, and the like - eat soy. Still have symptoms? Eat more soy. Don?t like the taste or texture of bean curd? You can ingest soy in the form of pills or capsules. A number of popular products can be found in the health food aisle of your grocery store, such as Estroven. For many women, soy has made the transition much milder. 

Soy Vey - The Bad News
While soy is a healthy choice for many people, it makes the list of the top 8 food allergens, along with milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, and wheat. (source: Mayo Clinic.com) The FDA now requires that all food be labeled if it contains any of these.

Although it is estimated that only 1% of the population has true allergies to these foods, a large number of the population may be intolerant or sensitive to them. What ?intolerance? means is that they can ingest small amounts of these substances with no ill effects, but with larger doses symptoms appear. (Those who have true allergies cannot tolerate even a tiny amount of the reactive food without a serious allergic reaction: difficulty breathing, hives, swelling of face, neck, tongue, or shock).

In a nutshell, many of us are unknowingly sensitive to soy. When we increase our intake of soy, we may develop symptoms consistent with food intolerance such as cramping, diarrhea, bloating, dizziness, nasal congestion, and flushing. If we are soy-sensitive, we may actually find our hot flashes and other Change symptoms increasing, as we stress our body beyond the already overwhelming stressors of menopause. Luckily, those of us with soy intolerance have the option of soy-free herbal preparations that contain phytoestrogens, which we?ll touch on in the next blog.  

Your second question is what will help with mood swings and sadness.  Mild depression, sadness, and weepiness are a very common occurrence in menopause.  And it can feel out of control.  Yet, most of the time it is normal. 

First, we are experiencing loss.  No matter how much we may have looked forward to no more periods, it is only natural to grieve the loss of our childbearing ability, our youth, our body as we knew it.  Sadness is a normal response to this time and we need to allow ourselves to move through the stages of grief, before we can move on to who we shall become for the second half of our lives.

It's a matter of degree.  Are we weepy for no reason, melancholy, sort of draggy?  NORMAL.  Are we unable to function or perform activities of daily living?  Time to seek professional help.

If you are experiencing NORMAL sadness of menopause, the single best remedy I know is to develop a community of like-afflicted women.  Our group of menopause goddesses has been meeting for 6 years now and every one of us is adamant that we'd never had made it through without one another.  Being able to commiserate and support one another made it so much easier to move through.

If sadness is severe, perhaps herbal remedies or a short course of HRT might be helpful - these are things you should discuss with a trusted health care practitioner and/or therapist.

For more about this, check out our blog at menopausegoddessblog.org and search "soy" and "depression".  Search "creating menopause goddess group" for how to start your own group of women.  Every part of this journey is so much more difficult when we undertake it alone.  Also, check out our book "The Big M" at thebigmwebsite.com.

Let us know how it goes.  I know it seems like uncharted territory - it sure did to us, but together we found remedies and understanding the way women really share wisdom - through their own experience.