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Soy milk provides the body with phytoestrogen, or chemicals that can act like estrogen but only have 0.00001 or 1/100,000 the potency of the actual estrogen. Because it does not encourage cell proliferation (does not promote the rapid cell growth that is characteristic of breast cancer), it is used as a health product along with tofu and other soy products.
Some people think that it gives you more estrogen, but it actually counteracts estrogen effects by binding to the receptor sites in the breasts that the estrogen would normally bind to.
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Breast enhancement products typically exploit common misunderstandings about what herbs and "phytoestrogens" can and cannot do. For example, the advertisements claim that since a woman's estrogen is what naturally causes her breasts to grow, products like soy, red clover, flaxseed, black cohosh, saw palmetto, and wild Mexican yam will do the same.
But that is not how soy and other "phytoestrogens" work. These products actually have an anti-estrogenic effect on the breast in premenopausal women. (In postmenopausal women they appear to have more of an estrogenic effect.) This means that even if these products contained what the manufacturers claim they do (and they don't always), they would not be able to make a woman's breasts grow.
The bottom-line: your breast size is as genetically determined as your hair color or your height.
About one-third of your breast is fat tissue; the other two-thirds or so is breast tissue. If you gain weight, the fat in your breast will grow along with the fat in other parts of your body and your breasts will become larger. In turn, if you lose weight, you will lose fat in your breasts and your breasts will become smaller.
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Can consuming soy prevent breast cancer? Several lines of evidence suggest this possibility. First, breast cancer rates are significantly lower in Asian countries which routinely consume high amounts of soy. For example, the consumption of soy in Korea is approximately 20 grams per day. In 1992, death rates from breast cancer in that country were 2.6 per 100,000. By contrast, in the United States during that same year, where soy consumption is negligible, breast cancer death rates were 22.4 per 100,000. Second, studies in laboratory rats have shown that soy can cause a 50 percent reduction in breast tumor incidence. Third, genistein, the principal isoflavone in soy, has been shown to inhibit the growth of breast cancer cells in vitro. Fourth, genistein has also been shown to inhibit a process known as angiogenesis--the growth of new blood vessels. Angiogenesis is essential for tumors to grow beyond 1 or 2 mm in size. Thus, compounds which inhibit angiogenesis may inhibit cancer growth. Finally, isoflavones are thought to possess antioxidant activity, thereby protecting cells from free radical damage which can initiate the cancer process.
Edit: I'm sorry if my research didn't help, but I would say that soy milk actually counteracts breast enhancement by taking the place of estrogen at receptor sites. And the thing about cheese is that it allows a woman to gain body fat, which generally increases breast size.
Last edited by kiggaplease on 08-16-2002 at 04:08 PM
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08-16-2002 06:05 AM
