Sorry, soy supplements. Women in the first five years of menopause who took the supplements saw no differences in bone-mineral density and experienced more hot flashes than women who took a placebo, a new study finds . Many women sought out alternatives to hormone therapy after studies suggested health risks. Soy products are attractive because they contain plant estrogens, specifically two isoflavones called genistein and daidzein. “The concept is that they can provide some estrogen-like effects, hopefully the benefits but not the risks,” Silvina Levis, an author of the new study and professor and director of the Osteoporosis Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, tells the Health Blog. But the research, published in Archives of Internal Medicine, combined with earlier studies, suggests menopausal women aren’t helping themselves by taking these products in the hope of shoring up bone density (there was no difference between the groups) or staving off hot flashes (they were more common among the women taking soy). The study covered 248 women aged 45 to 60 who took the

supplements or a placebo for two years. If the supplements worked, they would have represented an “easy, inexpensive, healthy way to prevent bone loss,” says Levis. Levis says this doesn’t mean a diet rich in soy doesn’t have a protective effect. The foods themselves — tofu, edamame, soy milk, for example — differ in their nutritional makeup, and they are different from the isoflavones found in supplements. They also contain protein, she says. “The reason we went for soy isoflavones instead of food is that for a western woman, it’s very, very hard to change her diet to eat as much soy food as a woman in Asia,” says Levis. The supplements were equivalent to about twice the amount of isoflavones in a typical Asian diet. The study was funded by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. The NIH has been stepping up its funding of over-the-counter supplement research. Image: iStockphoto

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Study: Soy Tablets Don’t Prevent Menopausal Bone Loss