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Soy Protein

wolfgirl

Graduate Poster
wolfgirl
Joined
Apr 24, 2002
Messages
1,375
I've been looking for an alternative to cholesterol-lowering drugs.

First off, let me say that I'm not a wacko or a flake. I'm a major skeptic and a strong believer in science. Simply put, though, I don't trust the big pharmaceutical companies.

I've tried diet and exercise - my weight went down, it lowered my triglycerides and raised my good cholesterol, but my bad cholesterol and total cholesterol remain stubbornly the same.

I tried plant sterols to no effect.

A good friend said that she started using soy protein for PMS and her cholesterol went down, too. I started using it myself about a month ago. The first bonus I got was no cramps with my period! I'm going to wait about three months and see if my cholesterol changes at all.

I've tried to read as much as I can about soy protein and its health benefits, but I'm wondering if anyone has any personal experience with using it to lower cholesterol.

My doctor is being very patient with me because my cholesterol isn't all that high (238), and he's even suggested some other things to try. Next is policosanol if the soy doesn't do the trick.

Thanks!
 
wolfgirl said:
I've tried diet and exercise - my weight went down, it lowered my triglycerides and raised my good cholesterol, but my bad cholesterol and total cholesterol remain stubbornly the same.
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If your good cholesterol went up, but your bad cholesterol stayed the same, how could you total have remained constant?

There are compounds in garlic that inhibit cholesterol production in the body. You might consider adding more garlic to your diet.

Simply put, though, I don't trust the big pharmaceutical companies.
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As opposed to the small pharmaceutical companies?
 
Google for 'Soy phyto estrogens'. Seems soy is loooaded with estrogen. There is your PMS 'cure'. I guess you are talking soy instead of nasty ole meat? Not for me, thanks.

Re: Cholesterol hype. Longest study to date is 5 years, plus another 5 year period of treating both groups (4S, Swedish SimvaStatin Study). It shows that after each 5 year period, the survival rates were 95%, vs 97 1/2%. So, 1/2% per year improvement. If you are 55, and expect another 20 years, with cholesterol treatment, you have a 90% chance of the cholesterol NOT being a factor in your live span. Remember, even people with low cholesterol have heart attacks, strokes, cancer, car accidents......
 
casebro said:
Remember, even people with low cholesterol have heart attacks, strokes, cancer, car accidents......
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And my uncle smoked 60 a day and drank a quart of whiskey every evening and lived to ninety. Actually, that's not true (he did neither of those things and died at 47), but the point is that some people outlive their average, and some people die earlier than would be predicted. That's kind of in the nature of averages. You don't extend your life by giving up smoking, drinking less, eating better, or whatever; you increase your chance of living longer. I don't think anyone disputes that, whatever recent findings on cholesterol.

Cheers,
Rat.
 
If your HDL is over 60, I wouldn't even worry about it.

Actually, eating a lot of sugar/carbs can mess with your blood lipids. Triglycerides feed into the manufacture of VLDLs and LDLs. How much difference it makes, I have no idea, though. It probably varies with genetics and a gazillion other factors.

Also, it can be worthwhile to check your thyroid function. Hypothyroidism is often associated with higher blood cholesterol. This is anecdotal, of course, but I changed my thyroid medication, and my cholesterol dropped from 260 to 209 while my HDL went up (improvements partly due to diet/exercise also). It's worth checking, because thyroid pills are cheap and easy, compared to most cholesterol-lowering drugs.

What about niacin, by the way?
 
I work as a pharmacy technician for Walgreens, and I see that a LOT of physicians look at the cholesterol numbers and simply routinely prescribe things like Lipitor for their patients, because that's "the thing to do", and they're anxious to be very proactive because they're worried about getting sued if they don't do something.

But the thing is, I stand there typing all these prescriptions for Lipitor every day, and I can't help wondering how many of those people actually need it. But we live in a climate of malpractice avoidance, and thus the tremendous focus on "numbers".

How is your health overall? Is there a history of heart disease in your family? These are the kinds of things that I personally would take into consideration before I started getting terribly focused on my cholesterol numbers.

Especially before I started taking drugs for a cholesterol problem that may not even exist at all.

You say even your doctor doesn't think the numbers are that high. Then why worry about it? Go ahead and eat soy for the overall health benefits if you want, but don't get all obsessive about your cholesterol "numbers". As has already been pointed out, people with low cholesterol "numbers" have heart attacks, and people with high cholesterol "numbers" live to be 90.

BTW, I've been eating soy protein one meal a day (a big bowlful of TSP chunks) for reasons of menopause, and I definitely notice a lessening of the severity and duration of the hot flashes. So your friend with the PMS is not just imagining it.

It's called TSP Chunks from NOW Natural Foods. If you buy them online they aren't as stale as the ones in the average health food store. Let 'em sit overnight in the fridge in whatever flavoring liquid you choose to soak them in, they'll taste better than if you eat them right away (although there's really no way to get rid of that distinctive "soy" flavor). Kikkoman Roasted Garlic Teriyaki (diluted about 1 to 4 with water) is currently my flavoring of choice, although ordinary spaghetti sauce out of a can works nicely, too. You need to allow about 4 cups of liquid to about 3 small handfuls of dried chunks. It'll look like you can fit more in there, but don't, because they'll swell up quite a bit. And when they sit overnight in the fridge the first night, you have to make sure they're mostly covered with liquid, because they won't wick liquid upwards, and your top layer of chunks will be all hard and dried-out the next morning.
 
Goshawk said:
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It's called TSP Chunks from NOW Natural Foods. If you buy them online they aren't as stale as the ones in the average health food store. Let 'em sit overnight in the fridge in whatever flavoring liquid you choose to soak them in, they'll taste better than if you eat them right away (although there's really no way to get rid of that distinctive "soy" flavor). Kikkoman Roasted Garlic Teriyaki (diluted about 1 to 4 with water) is currently my flavoring of choice, although ordinary spaghetti sauce out of a can works nicely, too. You need to allow about 4 cups of liquid to about 3 small handfuls of dried chunks. It'll look like you can fit more in there, but don't, because they'll swell up quite a bit. And when they sit overnight in the fridge the first night, you have to make sure they're mostly covered with liquid, because they won't wick liquid upwards, and your top layer of chunks will be all hard and dried-out the next morning.
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and they call that a "Natural Food" ?

I remember a dog food called "MPS chunks"- Meat,Protein,Sauce. Seems about the same, just add your own sauce...

And there's TSP, TriSodiumPhosphate, a caustic cleaning agent. I think I'll stick with red meat, thanks
 
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Although, I will add, if you have a hypothyroid problem, soy isoflavones are goitrogenic - they can work against your thyroid.

But mostly, yeah, 238 is just nothing to freak out about. Exercise is the best way to get HDL up a bit.
 
wolfgirl said:
...I've tried diet and exercise - my weight went down, it lowered my triglycerides and raised my good cholesterol, but my bad cholesterol and total cholesterol remain stubbornly the same.

...
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When I was tested last February my cholesterol was very high. But my HDL was very high (as was the LDL). BUT... what he did tell me was to not panic, and to work on reducing the difference between two numbers by "20".

So I cut down on lots of different foods, and increased exercise (swimming). I had already started to swim more regularly at that appointment. Since then I have increased my workout from 1000 yards to 2000 yards (except with the virus I picked up... I am back down to 1500 yards).

Since I am married to a fellow who is half Dutch, our diet consisted of lots of cheese and butter. My dear hubby's cholesterol is very very low (life is not fair... I've eaten steak at his grandparent's in Holland that was braised in a pool of butter!... they cooked everything in butter!). Since I've had to change my diet we've actually finally had cheese go moldy in the fridge --- and we go through much less butter (but use more olive oil).

When I found out about my high cholesterol, I checked out my favorite source for medicine, Medlineplus. Here is its cholesterol page:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/cholesterol.html

It also led me to this page:
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4488

Good luck.
 
I'm not impressed with plant sterols either. I had my blood tested, then used the expensive magarine with sterols for six months.
I then had my blood tested again,... No difference.
 
Hydrogen Cyanide said:
When I was tested last February my cholesterol was very high. But my HDL was very high (as was the LDL). BUT... what he did tell me was to not panic, and to work on reducing the difference between two numbers by "20".

So I cut down on lots of different foods, and increased exercise (swimming). I had already started to swim more regularly at that appointment. Since then I have increased my workout from 1000 yards to 2000 yards (except with the virus I picked up... I am back down to 1500 yards).

Good luck.
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But you didn't say, how much did all that help your numbers?

Personally, I can't take statins, they give me and all my siblings myopathy. I already have a mitochondrial myopathy, so I take lots of NSAIDs for the chronic aches. Until I started taking Hops instead. 1 ounce per week of pellitised hops from the homebrew store brought down my triglycerides 25%, my TC by 20%, my H1AC by .5, my microalbuminuria almost to normal. Seems to be a real panacea for me. Too bad I still have the excercise intolerance, or I would get my HDL up.
 
casebro said:
and they call that a "Natural Food" ?

I remember a dog food called "MPS chunks"- Meat,Protein,Sauce. Seems about the same, just add your own sauce...

And there's TSP, TriSodiumPhosphate, a caustic cleaning agent. I think I'll stick with red meat, thanks
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It's just defatted pure soy protein, extruded through a 1" die and lopped off in chunks. It's about as "natural" as it gets, barring the actual manufacturing procedure.

Any negative associations you may choose to have concerning dog food or caustics are your own responsibility. ;)

TSP stands for "textured soy protein", BTW, and it's been around for decades.
 
I usually see that stuff sold as TVP, Texturized Vegetable Protein.

I remember a coworker who used to make that with Hamburger Helper or something. She wouldn't tell her kids it wasn't meat and they never noticed. It was back when there were those "Chicken Tonight" commercials for a product in a jar that you poured over chicken and baked to make dinner, where this "I feel like Chicken Tonight" song would play while people did a funky chicken dance, so we were trying to make up a theme song for "I feel like TVP" while dancing like vegetables somehow.
Hey, it was a warehouse job. Dancing around like morons and giggling helps keep you warm in the winter.
 
357. This was during the time of training for my fifth Marathon.

Went on Lipitor.

Six months later -- 218, lowest it's been in 15 years.

Sometimes the drugs actually work!
 
Thanks to everyone for all the input. Yes, garlich I know is supposed to be good. My doctor also mentioned niacin, but he said that in the doses that actually help cholesterol, it requires a prescription, so I haven't gone that way yet. My doc checked my thyroid, and that was fine.

The soy protein I'm using, by the way, is Revival Soy in the form of chocolate shakes (powder mixed with milk). One shake has the equivalent of six cups of soy milk or some outrageous amount of tofu, neither of which I am willing to suffer through. These shakes taste fairly good, though with a touch of an aftertaste. Sometimes as a treat, I mix it with nonfat frozen yogurt in the blender for a real shake. Or add a banana to it for a smoothie.

It's comforting to see so many people say not to worry so much about this. I've had cholesterol numbers this high or even higher for years, but suddenly my doctor seems all disturbed about it. My overall health is excellent. In fact, I never get sick (haven't missed a day of work for illness in years and years). No family history of heart disease on my mom's side (don't know about my dad's side - out of contact). My blood pressure is fine. I'm overweight, but not drastically so. That's why my doc isn't pressuring me too much, but he keeps talking about these drugs, which I don't want to take.

I'll let you all know how the soy thing works out in early February, when I'm due to go back for another test.

Again, thanks!
 
Cholesterol Happy Dance!

casebro said:
But you didn't say, how much did all that help your numbers?
....
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Now I have the numbers! I just got back from my annual exam and I did not have to wait for the numbers (this year they have a new machine that only requires a finger prick and has results in about 5 minutes).

So here goes:

Last year: Total= 255, Triglycerides=122, LDL=162, HDL=70

This year: Total=237, Triglycerides=130, LDL=137, HDL=74

The triglycerides is in the normal range (under 150), The total is supposed to be under 200, but my HDL really helps.

The bad stuff, LDL went down from "high" (160-188) to "borderline high" (130-159)...

AND the good stuff, HDL went up... anything above 40 is protective... which makes the LDL not so important.

Oh, and last year my blood pressure was 125/85 ... now it is 114/72 !

I just need to keep it up. I am also slowly losing weight, something on the order of about a pound per month.
 
wolfgirl said:
I'll let you all know how the soy thing works out in early February, when I'm due to go back for another test.
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The results are in, and they are as follows:

Triglycerides went from 115 to 63
Cholesterol went from 248 to 229
HDL (good cholesterol) went from 46 to 54
LDL (bad cholesterol) went from 179 to 162

I know that these aren't drastic results, but they're the first positive results I've had. And since the only thing I did differently was to add the Revival soy shakes to my diet, I think that the soy protein must have had some effect.

Funny thing is that, despite this, I still find myself skeptical! I guess it's just in my nature!
 
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