Many edible plant products, such as French beans, soybeans and pomegranates, contain “phytoestrogens” that might combat ‘cancer, suggests Kenneth Setchell of the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Washington. In his lab, rodents that are fed soy protein develop fewer tumors than those on a soy-free diet. This might help explain why women in Japan have low rates of breast cancer when they eat tofu, soy sauce and miso-all rich sources of good estrogen-but have “American” rates when they move to the United States and adopt a Western diet. Compounds in such “healthy” foods as broccoli, says Davis, might nudge estrogen down the path to the cancer-fighting form.
Last fall Victor Henderson of the University of Southern California reported a tantalizing link between estrogen and a lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease: in a group of 2,418 postmenopausal women, those who took estrogen pills (for such problems as osteoporosis and hot flashes) were 40 percent less likely to develop this crippling dementia than those who did not take estrogen. In rats, estrogen helps make a “growth factor” that maintains and strengthens connections between neurons. It also helps produce an enzyme that speeds communications among neurons. The effect seems to be particularly strong in memory centers, the first to be ravaged by Alzheimer’s.
