Women Who Eat Soy. . . . . (Reliv)

Are you trying to get Pregnant? Reliv is not going to help you. I think you will find the following article very informative concerning yet another danger in consuming soy based products.

Women who eat soya may spoil sperm's chances

Tests indicate such foods may make it harder to get pregnant

• James Meikle in Copenhagen
• The Guardian,
• Wednesday June 22 2005

This article appeared in the Guardian on Wednesday June 22 2005 on p10 of the Life news and features section. It was last updated at 14:20 on June 22 2005.

Women who eat soya-based foods may be damaging their chances of becoming pregnant and should give up eating them during the most fertile part of their monthly cycle, a scientist said yesterday.

Professor Lynn Fraser has found that men's sperm quickly passes its sell-by date if it comes into contact with genistein, a compound found in soya.

Laboratory tests suggest the naturally occurring chemical destroys the mechanism that allows sperm to dock with women's eggs, she said at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Copenhagen.

Her team is about to test the theory by mating mice on a soya diet.

"It might be practical, if you are in the habit of eating lots of soya-based products, to restrict your diet for a short time over your window of ovulation," Prof Fraser said.

The researcher, of King's College, London, added that sperm could "hang around" for four days in women's organs.

Soya, present in products such as bread, milk, margarine, ready meals and sauce, is often lauded for preventing damage to cells, and protecting them against heart disease and some cancers.

But even the Vegetarian Society went along with Prof Fraser's advice: "For anyone struggling to become pregnant, avoiding soya products for a few days a month is worth a try if there is even a slim chance that it will help fertility." It recommended alternatives for vegetarians and vegans, including Quorn meat substitutes, oat or rice milk and pulses.

Prof Fraser said human sperm had proved 10 to 100 times more sensitive than mouse sperm to the action of genistein. "Human sperm are responding to very low concentrations - well within the amounts that have been measured in people's bloods."

Ovulation typically occurs around 12 to 15 days into the menstrual cycle. Many women try to conceive at that time.

Prof Fraser said research indicated "important warning signs", but cautioned that little was known about how sperm worked in human bodies rather than laboratories.

Professor Richard Sharpe of the Human Reproductive Science Unit in Edinburgh,was sceptical of the theory: "Oriental societies that traditionally eat a soy-rich diet show no signs of reduced fertility of which I am aware; [and] effects on sperm in the laboratory are not necessarily directly related to what might happen in real life."

More evidence of sperm's frailty emerged yesterday. Researchers from Toronto suggested that the DNA damage common in older men's sperm hurt their chances of conceiving with their partners, who tended to be older women.

And those who think men should abstain from sex so they can store up more or better sperm to coincide with their partner's ovulation might like to think again.

Dr Elyaho Levitas of the University of the Negev, Israel, analysed sperm samples collected for fertility treatments and found that abstinence in donors for more than three days "is doing some harm to the semen".

"People sometimes abstain from sex for weeks, thinking they are doing good, but I think probably they would be better to have sex every two days, rather than every two weeks," he said.