A Rant About Soy (and pro Dairy)
May. 16th, 2009 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deirdreThis is a forum post I wrote on the subject of dairy/no dairy in a diet, responding to someone who pointed out that soy was very unhealthy for some people....
I confess to loving chocolate milk, and I've never found a chocolate milk mix that was as good as the kind one buys in the store. However, at some point more than 5 and fewer than 15 years ago, the standard became to use milk that was going off to make chocolate milk, apparently under the mistaken impression that people couldn't tell.
So I switched to soy chocolate milk. The beany tast of soy complements chocolate quite well. I also rotated in soy milk along with regular milk, and I was using a soy protein mix for breakfast (in either dairy milk or soy milk), and had been since my 20s. Because it was healthy.
Fast forward a few years to the dot bomb era, where a co-worker said to me: "You breathe funny. Have you had your heart checked?" She'd had a heart valve replacement, and that was her obvious symptom.
So I did. Had an echocardiogram. My doc said that he thought I had a problem further up in my breathing, but NO ONE (including me, for which I now feel like an idiot) thought to do more diagnosis. I figured that if it were further up, it wouldn't be a huge problem, right?
Except I had sleep apnea, for which I later got a CPAP (16,000 hours and going). During my sleep study, my O2 saturation was low enough that the doc supervising called me from his caribbean vacation to get me in for a CPAP.
So that's humming along, and I realize that I feel better, but I'm still exhausted all the time. I get prescribed more anti-pain meds. My doctor is surprised at how much I need, and that opiates work for me -- at the time I have a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, and opiates don't work for FM pain. This should have been a clue that I didn't actually have FM. In my defense, I wasn't feeling all that well....
A series of doctor's visits over the years ensues in which I complain about a number of things, including fairly severe (but not pathologically so) water retention issues. My weight can swing 15-20 pounds over a one-week period. This is a classic thyroid symptom: myxedema.
Fast forward to two months ago.
I finally specifically ask to be tested for thyroid, and my thyroid hormone number came back as normal for my lab's range. However I found out that there's a lot of arguing about what the range should be. I also discovered that, when compared to a population study of people specifically excluded for thyroid and related disorders my TSH values were well above the mean and median and also well outside the 95% range.
My doc wouldn't prescribe hormone therapy nor a referral, so I knew I needed to do more research. In doing so, it said that goiter was a symptom, and I felt my neck -- first time anyone had actually done so. I discovered a lump.
An ultrasound and a biopsy followed. Basically, I have a 3.8cm lump on one side and a 2.9cm lump on the other, both pressing inward toward my windpipe. That's what my coworker heard all those years ago.
That's why I can't breathe at night.
Soy is goitrogenic, and it is, in quantity, the single largest goitrogen I've consumed over the years (second largest being peanuts).
I'm convinced I'd be dead by now if we hadn't found a technological solution to my breathing at night, because when I lie down, the lumps put more pressure on my windpipe.
So it really irks me to hear praise given to soy and people dissing dairy.
Dairy never tried to kill me.
Soy almost succeeded.
I confess to loving chocolate milk, and I've never found a chocolate milk mix that was as good as the kind one buys in the store. However, at some point more than 5 and fewer than 15 years ago, the standard became to use milk that was going off to make chocolate milk, apparently under the mistaken impression that people couldn't tell.
So I switched to soy chocolate milk. The beany tast of soy complements chocolate quite well. I also rotated in soy milk along with regular milk, and I was using a soy protein mix for breakfast (in either dairy milk or soy milk), and had been since my 20s. Because it was healthy.
Fast forward a few years to the dot bomb era, where a co-worker said to me: "You breathe funny. Have you had your heart checked?" She'd had a heart valve replacement, and that was her obvious symptom.
So I did. Had an echocardiogram. My doc said that he thought I had a problem further up in my breathing, but NO ONE (including me, for which I now feel like an idiot) thought to do more diagnosis. I figured that if it were further up, it wouldn't be a huge problem, right?
Except I had sleep apnea, for which I later got a CPAP (16,000 hours and going). During my sleep study, my O2 saturation was low enough that the doc supervising called me from his caribbean vacation to get me in for a CPAP.
So that's humming along, and I realize that I feel better, but I'm still exhausted all the time. I get prescribed more anti-pain meds. My doctor is surprised at how much I need, and that opiates work for me -- at the time I have a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, and opiates don't work for FM pain. This should have been a clue that I didn't actually have FM. In my defense, I wasn't feeling all that well....
A series of doctor's visits over the years ensues in which I complain about a number of things, including fairly severe (but not pathologically so) water retention issues. My weight can swing 15-20 pounds over a one-week period. This is a classic thyroid symptom: myxedema.
Fast forward to two months ago.
I finally specifically ask to be tested for thyroid, and my thyroid hormone number came back as normal for my lab's range. However I found out that there's a lot of arguing about what the range should be. I also discovered that, when compared to a population study of people specifically excluded for thyroid and related disorders my TSH values were well above the mean and median and also well outside the 95% range.
My doc wouldn't prescribe hormone therapy nor a referral, so I knew I needed to do more research. In doing so, it said that goiter was a symptom, and I felt my neck -- first time anyone had actually done so. I discovered a lump.
An ultrasound and a biopsy followed. Basically, I have a 3.8cm lump on one side and a 2.9cm lump on the other, both pressing inward toward my windpipe. That's what my coworker heard all those years ago.
That's why I can't breathe at night.
Soy is goitrogenic, and it is, in quantity, the single largest goitrogen I've consumed over the years (second largest being peanuts).
I'm convinced I'd be dead by now if we hadn't found a technological solution to my breathing at night, because when I lie down, the lumps put more pressure on my windpipe.
So it really irks me to hear praise given to soy and people dissing dairy.
Dairy never tried to kill me.
Soy almost succeeded.