So I’m a vegetarian…looking for information regarding the link between alzheimer’s and soy. I’m trying to find an objective site, and I can find nothing but UTTER TRIPE! Take a look at some samples that I have found.
Truth: In some people, consumption of soy foods will lower cholesterol, **but there is no evidence that lowering cholesterol improves one’s risk of having heart disease. **
On the other side, http://www.soymilkquick.com/tofualzheimersdisease.html
The authors attempted to address the above issues, but they cannot eliminate the possibility that their results may be due to some other unidentified factor related to both tofu intake and brain aging.
Is there ANY freaking 3rd party site where i can get fed information instead of shit?
That isn’t shit. That is the way research works and builds. Single studies in science hardly ever say anything definitive. That is just the way science works. The typical article, even in fairly prestigious articles, usually ends asking for me research on weak parts if the current study.
I went to graduate school in behavioral neuroscience and the missing links in Alzheimer’s research are far more basic than somebody wanting to know the links to soy. Expect definitive research on that in upcoming centuries. The basic questions get priority for obvious reasons and no one would have much idea what to make of a multi-year, multi-thousand person study of Alzheimer’s and soy if they had one. The theoretical framework is not there and there is no reason for people to invest millions of dollars into doing a definitive one.
But how is there no evidence that lowering cholesterol lowers risk of heart disease? Thats all I’ve been hearing from the FDA since I learned what cholesterol was!
Danja, you are right to want reliable sources, but that doesn’t mean that they will always support what you’ve been told before.
Try googling Alzheimer’s and soy with either Johns Hopkins or the Mayo Clinic. You should be able to find at least a little information or maybe a link to a study. Medical schools, large universities and respected medical journals such as JAMA are another possibility.
You just have to keep digging. And (if you’re a researcher and you feel passionate about something in particular) consider doing the research yourself if the question hasn’t been asked (and answered) to your satisfaction.
On a lighter note …
LISA: You can’t expect us to swallow that tripe?
PRINCIPAL SKINNER: Now, courtesy of the meat counsil, please help yourself to this tripe (points to a bowl of tripe). children rushing to trays and cheering
You ARE talking about nutrition here. It’s not chemistry, where you can map out the expected reaction, or physics where you can build an experiment.
Nutritional science is observational, not experimental. It’s not even the nice observations like in astrophysics, or anthropology where the stuff is just sitting there waiting for you to look at it. It’s observing people who usually don’t want to be observed, who change their habits every week, who will happily lie through their teeth so you don’t know about the box of Ho-Ho’s they ate last night. Not to mention that there are a zillion factors that affect your health, winnowing it down to “soy” is not remotely easy.
I get frustrated since every couple of years there’s one new cancer fighting food and one of our existing cancer fighting foods really wasn’t. Good luck in your search.
Actually, depending on how one defines “heart disease,” high cholesterol may not increase the risk. After all, it may well not affect the heart itself…
(“Mwah-ha-ha!” while wearing the Evil Marketer Hat)
I did that and got 9 articles. They problem with how most nutrition reserach is reported is a big part of the problem, IMHO. Reports tend to turn “consistent with” to “responsible for”
For example, one of the 9 papers that comes up when you search Pub Med is this:
Soy isoflavone glycitein protects against beta amyloid-induced toxicity and oxidative stress in transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans.
by Gutierrez-Zepeda A, Santell R, Wu Z, Brown M, Wu Y, Khan I, Link CD, Zhao B, Luo Y.
This is EXACTLY what they did: They took 3 proteins isolated from soy and gave them to genetically modified worms that carried a human amyloid gene. The gene stimulates the worms to make one specific type of human amyloid. One of those proteins - glycitein - caused the worms to make less amyloid than did the worms given the other soy proteins or control worms. Also, they became paralyzed less quickly than the other worms.
Make out of that what you will. Unless you are a genetically modified worm yourself, it’s difficult to take this as being direct useful information on how to prevent amyloid deposition. [Amyloid is increased in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s]. Research like this is often reported as evidence that soy prevents Alzhemer’s, however.
Most of these studies should be taken with a large grain of salt, even if they are completely unbiased and the methodology is perfect (which is seldom the case). The reason has to do with tests for statistical significance:
If 5 separate groups of researchers are studying a link between X and Y, and all 5 are looking for differences that are statistically significant at the 0.05 level, the probability of each group finding a statistically significant relationship even if one does not actually exist is 0.05. However, the probability of at least one group finding a significant relationship is 1-(1-.05)^5 = 0.23. Which means it is expected that one of those groups will find a significant relationship even though one does not exist. And of those five studies, guess which one will be published? It almost certainly won’t be one of the four that turned up no relationship.
Most of these studies should be taken with a tablespoon of soy to prevent Alzheimer’s, a glass of wine to reduce the risk of heart disease, and a couple of cups of coffee to keep you awake while reading them.
