How does Food (Dairy/ Soy/ Flax Seeds) affect our sex hormones?
In: Biology
“Selling flax 90gp each.”
You are what you eat and a lot of you is hormonal reactions. Adding something to this neurochemical soup will adjust your body to a certain degree.
We don’t really know as the research we currently have sometimes seems conflicting.
So, for example, we know that hormones in milk appears to have a temporary affect on the serum (blood) levels in men, women, and children. Measured hormone levels shift a little bit after consuming a lot of cows milk.
But we also know that the amount of naturally occurring sex hormones in cows milk is a tiny fraction of what is naturally occurring in *your* body, even if you’re male. A literal drop in the proverbial bucket. And we know human bodies are pretty great at balancing out that sort of thing.
But we also also know that commercially available milk might not *just* contain naturally occurring hormone levels. The cows might have been treated with hormones designed to increase their milk production. And those hormones might end up in the final product. But still, your body is churning out lots of hormones and constantly rebalancing everything and its likely fine.
…if you’re an adult. But what if you’re a child years away from puberty? Or just starting puberty? Could a refular, external boost of sex hormones affect you? Maybe. It’s sort of tricky to study bc we can’t exactly pump thousands of kindgergarteners full of cow hormones for a decade in an effort to trigger a statistically significant effect. Its unethical.
What we can do is compare the health outcomes of countries that drink a lot of dairy to those that don’t. And we see that high dairy countries tend to have higher rates of certain cancers.
So case closed? Not quite. Because they also eat higher amounts of meat as dairy producing animals are, well, edible. And there’s potentially a lot of other factors that differ between the countries that might account for the different cancer rates. So we could way diary consumption is linked to an increase in cancers, but we can’t say it caused it.
And we *definitely* can’t say it was the hormones in the dairy that caused it.
And that’s just animal hormones directly affecting another animal. Its way, way murkier and convoluted when you start talking about plant estrogens that get *cooked* and the effect they might possibly have an animal.
So what’s a confused human to do? Try to make reasonable choices while living a balanced life and don’t stress about it too much. Maybe a reasonable choice is to choose milk thats not treated with hormones. Or maybe that’s to switch to a non dairy alternative. Or maybe it’s to enjoy regular old milk in moderation while also ensuring that the rest of your diet is balanced. So that even if you are getting some negative somethings from dairy or red meat or processed food or soy or nitrates or *whatever*, it’s only a little bit. And human bodies are pretty fantastic at dealing with and recovering from little bits it negative.
Edit: and remember that an increased *risk* for cancer doesn’t necessarily mean a whole heck of a lot. Take flying. We know that flying in a plane raises your risk of cancer due to exposure to higher radiation levels. But that doesn’t mean 1 flight and you’ll get cancer. It means millions of miles spent in a plane will increase your risk by a little. It could mean that, over the course of a career as a pilot, your odds of cancer increases so that 1 in 100 pilots gets cancer. Or 1 in 500. Or whatever. So what are the risks to you, a casual traveler who might fly 8 hours per year? Increased, but probably not enough to alter your behaviour.
How much it increases your risk matters more than the fact that it does.
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