Can I eat soya?

I'm thinking of introducing more vegetarian meals into my diet. Usually, I eat chicken most of the time. I'm fairly healthy although my condition stops me exercising as much as I would like. Brief background: I've had endometriosis since 2005. I'm going through IVF (had a Prostat injection to hopefully reduce a 6cm endometriosis cyst), take a multivitamin supplement with folic acid every day, currently switching to almond milk and trying to reduce gluten. I want to try and replace chicken with quorn, but I'm reading conflicting information about soya. Some say I can't, others say I'd have to eat a lot of soya to actually do any damage. My doctor doesn't know. Help appreciated!.

[jojo777]

Hi

One of the principles of endo diet is NO soya. Soya has some kind of oestrogen and you dont want this as this hormone is that feeds endo. So, no soya. You can have as much as organic chicken as you want though.

Try not to use quorn too much as is highly processed and once again in endo diet you want unrefined and unprocessed foods (same for sugar, unrefined sugars, e.g. organic raw honey is fine).

endo-resolved.com/diet.html

Good luck x

[jojo777 in reply to jojo777]

Rice milk is also a good alternative to dairy. I use the Rice Dream, the one which his fortified with vitamin D and calcium. x

[musicmaestro]

Hi Everyone

Yes I agree, soya is a nightmare for me too. I had a major flare up last week and couldn't understand why my pain was SO bad. My husband asked if I had eaten anything different....at first I said no but then thinking back I had a bit of a binge on popcorn, only to find it is smoothered in soya oil!.....this proves it for me without a doubt.

Julie x

[JulesUK]

It wasnt too long ago articles everywhere were claiming how good soya was for you. I always had soya milk and soya meat substitutes for years. Im not even veggie was just trying to be healthy! Deep down I always wonder if this is the reason (or a high contributing factor) for my Endo. Obviously now we are told its not the wonder food for everyone but its a bit too late now. I would totally avoid it.

[Hidden]

Thanks everyone for your advice. It's a shame about the soya, like JulesUK says, it's an easy vegetarian substitute. I was at the supermarket today and double checking the ingredients list, I put down a lot of products that had soya in, and I never realised! Oh well.. back to the drawing board!

[esbjorn in reply to Hidden]

Hiya

Soya, linseed, peanuts and a few other things contain high levels of plant oestrogen. Unfortunately most factory made bread in the UK contain high levels of soya flour. If you do eat bread, bakery made bread is usually better, lower gluten containing flour (and no soya) and has been allowed to take longer to be made, thus doesn't have to have as much salt and additives to taste good..

In our family we're cooking with and drinking oat milk (oatly) also fortified with vitamin D and calcium. Tastes nice and there's a cream version as well.

I'm experimenting with eating a lot of mushrooms (natural aromatase inhibitors) and they do help to a certain extent but I probably overdid it eating 1,5 - 2kg in one week as we also rely on prostaglandins and I went a bit hormonally haywire.. Now I stick to no more than 0.5 kg in a week ie mushroom soup 2-3 times max/week. Doesn't give an immediate effect the same way but it helps nevertheless (especially when i have an oestrogen surge with have sore nipples followed by increased pelvic pain 1/2 day later. The mushrooms appear to take about 36-48 hours to work on me).

Carrots (soup) and oily fish are good for vitamin D and hopefully helps reducing inflammation.

Anybody else have any experience or knowledge about aromatase inhibitors and endometriosis?