Why You Need Soya Beans To Stop Aging

Category: Health News

If you don’t eat soybeans, you deprive yourself of a readily available youth potion. One of the best things you can do to enliven your cells’ defenses against aging and age-related diseases is to infuse them with substances found in the soybean.The soybean may seem like a tiny speck of nature, a trivial, inconsequential creation. Wrong. It is actually an anti-aging pill, packed with powerful antioxidants that can perform magic in your cells. Inside your body the soybean is a mighty force that may actually alter your destiny, slowing the pace with which you age and consequently influencing when you encounter disease and death.

That’s what Dr. Denham Harman, the father of the free radical theory of aging, discovered a couple of decades ago. He found that soybeans could interfere with free radical damage, which is at the heart of how fast you age. Laboratory animals fed soybean protein had far less free radical damage to their cells than animals fed casein, a protein in milk and other dairy products. In short, eating soybeans slowed down aging; eating milk or animal products accelerated it. Eating soybeans instead of casein also stretched the animals’ life spans by 13 percent!

This may help illuminate why vegetarians enjoy a longer life and why the Japanese, who eat the most soybeans in the world – thirty times more than Americans – live longer than anyone.

Recently, scientists have identified the source of the soybean’s enormous biochemical energy. The bean is a powerhouse of antioxidants and other antidisease agents, including genistein, diadzein, protease inhibitors, phytates, saponins, phytosterols, phenolic acids and lecithin. Many are antioxidants, able to battle aging and chronic diseases on many fronts. For example, Dr. Ann R. Kennedy, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, finds that a protease inhibitor in soybeans – called Bowman-Birk inhibitor – is so versatile against various cancers that she calls it “a universal cancer preventive agent.” Dr. Stephen Barnes, professor of pharmacology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, hails soy’s genistein as a unique and incredibly promising inhibitor of breast and prostate cancer. Dr. Harman also points out that the amino acids in soybeans are less vulnerable to oxidation; thus, unlike many other foods, soybeans don’t spew scads of damaging free radicals throughout your body to mangle and age your cells.

The Drug That Makes Soybeans Special

Soybeans are unique because they are a rare source of high concentrations of a kind of wonder drug, known as genistein. Genistein is a potent antioxidant with wide-ranging biological anti-aging and anticancer activity. For example, genistein interferes with fundamental cancer processes at virtually every stage: Genistein blocks an enzyme that turns on cancer genes, thwarting cancer at inception. It inhibits angiogenensis, the spawning of new blood vessels needed to feed growing cancers. In test tubes, it directly curbs the growth of all types of cancer cells – of the breast, colon, lung, prostate, skin and blood (leukemia). It also has anti-hormonal effects that give it special potential in deterring breast and possibly prostate cancer.

On other anti-aging fronts, genistein saves arteries because, just as it hinders cancer cell proliferation, it also obstructs proliferation of smooth muscle cells in artery walls that promotes plaque buildup and clogged arteries. And genistein clamps down on the activity of an enzyme, thrombin, that promotes blood clotting, thus heart attacks and strokes. Remarkably, genistein also seems to actually decrease the number of cells that are dividing in the breast. This gives enzymes more time to repair DNA damage so it is not permanently passed on to newly created cells in the form of mutations that hasten aging and cancer.

Even more astonishing, a brief exposure to soybean genistein early in life may inoculate against cancer. Investigations at the University of Alabama by Dr. Barne’s colleague Coral Lamartiniere have found that even very low doses of genistein given soon after birth to female rats delays the onset, size and multiplicity of cancers in middle and old age. In the experiment, a group of newborn rats were given a chemical known to cause breast cancer later in life. Some also were given genistein and others got an inactive compound. Of those getting genistein at birth, only 60 percent developed breast cancer in mid to late life. One hundred percent of those getting the dummy pill developed tumors. This might mean infants now drinking soy-based formula or who drank it thirty years ago have already received a dose of anticancer vaccine, partially immunizing them against future malignancies, Dr. Barnes says, but as yet no human studies have been done to verify it.

So powerful is genistein that researchers see it as a potential new type anticancer drug. But why wait? You can get the drug now by eating soybeans.

Another soybean compound, diadzein, has some but not all genistein’s powers. Diadzein, too, blocks cancer in animals and is also an isoflavone with antiestrogenic activity. These two soy compounds – genistein plus diadzein – are considered double threats to rapid aging and cancer in particular.

The Alarming Facts

¤ We [USA] grow about half the world’s soybeans and export one-third of it, mainly to Japan. Nearly all that we keep goes into food for pets and agricultural animals.

¤ The Japanese, who hold the world’s record for longevity, eat about an ounce of soy per day. Americans eat too little to measure. Americans have four times more fatal breast cancer and five times more prostate cancer than the Japanese. (Jean Carper, Stop Ageing Now!, pp. 189-192)

Special Note From Nature’s Choice

Please take careful note that this article refers primarily to natural soya beans. We should not assume that all of the benefits in the natural soya bean will be found in processed soya derivatives or isolates.

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