Frequently Asked Questions

FAQs About Increasing your Quality of Life by means of optimizing your Health

FAQs About Increasing your Quality and Quantity of Life by the optimal use of Food

Q What is soy?

A Soy generally refers to any number of products derived from the soya bean, a leguminous plant which originated in China and is now cultivated widely in Asia, Europe, and America for forage and seeds. The bean has an oil content of 18-20% (high content of omega-6 - linoleic acid) and is also rich in protein. Soybean products include tofu, miso, and many simulated meat products which form a major source of protein for many humans. Soy also contains phytoestrogens and flavonoids (genistein, diadzein and glycitein), as well as lecithin, fatty acids, carbohydrate, and fiber. The USDA website provides a listing of many nutrients of the various forms of soy.

Q Is soy good or bad to eat?

A The short answer is: Nothing is all good or all bad. However, as a 'pseudo'-estrogen (not having all its powers or effects), soy isoflavones can be both pro- and anti-estrogenic depending on the area of the body. For women, they can help with the lack of estrogens after menopause. For men, they help reduce the negative effects of increased estrogen with aging, especially on the prostate, by competing with estradiol for the prostate estrogen receptors.

There appears to be excellent evidence that early use of soy is highly protective against breast cancer ^R, the use of soy to fight off existing breast cancer is only slightly less clearly positive ^R; and the general therapeutic use of soy is also becoming well established^R.

The enzyme inhibitors contained in soy, which block the action of trypsin needed for protein digestion, are water soluble and mostly removed by soaking the beans overnight. This also softens them so they require less cooking time and cause other beneficial effects.^R The enzyme inhibitors are also destroyed by fermentation and other processes which produce miso, natto and tofu, for example.^R

Although soy contains very little mineral and much fiber which might prevent mineral absorption, vegetarians who eat soy products as a protein substitute should not risk mineral deficiencies if they also eat sufficient leafy green vegetables since these contain high concentrations of minerals.

Soy has been found to have multiple cardiovascular benefits.^R The elevation of thyroxine is the putative mechanism for the cholesterol lowering effects of soy.^R There is evidence for negative phytoestrogen effects on the thyroid, but these are confined to people with prior thyroid problems.^R Even for infants and children there is no clear evidence of negative effects of soy.^R However, babies especially, are best fed human mothers' milk. Anything else is more likely to be harmful for them!

If not given to babies, if prepared correctly, if eaten in moderation, and if restricted for certain people with a few conditions which it may negatively affect, soy can be a useful and beneficial adjunct to a healthy diet. In addition, for women soy flavones can be very helpful for problems arising from hormonal irregularities and postmenopausal conditions.

Q Is it unhealthy or dangerous to use soy flour?

1. Soy and other beans contain potent trypsin and other inhibitors to the digestion of both proteins and carbohydrates. This is the source of their well known "flatulence" effect and the reason for the popularity of the product "beano".

2. These inhibitors are best removed by soaking the raw beans overnight and discarding the soak water which will contain much of these water soluble inhibitors.

3. Considerable destruction of the digestive inhibitors is obtained by cooking the beans well and even more removal is obtained by discarding the cooking water, although it should be okay to use the cooking water in stew and soup stock.

4. Since 1. is still true for soy flour, but neither of 2. or 3. can be done, it follows that soy flour it going to be full of potent digestive inhibitors which may still be quite potent when the products made with soy flour enter the digestive system. These inhibitors may delay digestion of proteins and/or carbohydrates in the food ingested with soy flour. If this causes discomforting flatulence it will certainly be a problem.

If you have no symptoms of any kind of distress from the use of soy flour, then you may have no negative effects from the use of soy flour except delayed and inhibited absorption of certain nutrients, which may or may not be a problem for you. But, for a person with "delicate" digestion (eg Irritable Bowel Syndrome - IBS), use of soy flour could be a major problem. However, it is quite possible that some products have been processed in such a way as to remove the digestive inhibitors. In that case, they have only benefits left for most people.

All soy products can be beneficial, *if* they are processed in the correct manner. However, if you take plain dried soy beans and grind them into flour, this will likely cause the same digestive problems as would using whole soy beans directly in stew.

Q Will enzymes taken orally to increase Super Oxide Dismutase (SOD) help? [Taken from MoreLife Yahoo Post#897]

In order to help you understand why it is either unlikely that such enzymes will help, or if they do then they are an unnecessarily expensive form of such help, I will first briefly explain again how the digestive system works.

In the stomach ingested food and supplements are warmed up and acidified with hydrochloric acid. This causes all proteins (enzymes are a subcategory of proteins) except a very few special ones to unfold (become denatured) and food and supplements (with capsules disintegrated) to become a liquified slurry. This slurry then passes into the small (upper) intestine (the doudenum, jejunum and ileum, in that order) which is the main site of nutrient digestion and absorption. Digestive enyzmes secreted by the pancreas into the slurry passing through the duodenum, break the denatured proteins in their amino acid and short peptide (only a few amino acids long) components. These peptides and amino acids are then able to be imported into the cells lining the intestinal walls, exported into the capillaries that supply them with oxygen and thence to the portal vein and possible further processing in the liver. Very few if any enzymes can survive this digestive process and get directly into the blood stream. In fact, if this happens at all it is usually because of a faulty digestive system, since one function of a healthy digestive system is to protect the body from the influence of any exogenous proteins.

Futhermore, it is important to realize that, again except for a special few, proteins including enzymes are not generally transported in the blood stream but are produced by cells only for their own use. Thus, it can be seen that oral SOD, which is a cellular enzyme (actually three kinds) required by every cell, is not going to be absorbed intact and can at most be of benefit to the cells of the mouth, esophagous and stomach, or if enterically coated possibly to the cells of the intestinal wall. The only way that oral SOD might benefit other parts of the body is because its chemical components many be undersupplied and may help increase the production of SOD by the cells.

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FAQs About Increasing your Quality and Quantity of Life by using Dietary Supplements

Q Do synthetic vitamins have the same positive effect on our health as natural vitamins? Can they actually have negative effects or even damage our health?

A When applied to chemicals or substances, the word "artificial" is normally used to mean "synthetic" and that is how it will be treated here at MoreLife. In that context, the question of "artificial versus natural" becomes a question of whether the synthetically made product is identical or not to the natural product.

If a synthetic vitamin is truly identical to a natural product, then it will have precisely the same biochemical and biological effect as the natural product on all life-forms including humans. However, many vitamins come in several distinct natural forms (these are usually called different vitamers). In addition, a given vitamer can be a part of a larger molecule from which it must be separated before it can perform its vitamin function within the body. These different vitamers, and different compounds of which they are a part, often have subtly but importantly different properties and affects on health. Indeed, some of these effects are so different that the vitamer really should be considered to be different vitamin (eg. the different vitamin E vitamers and compounds or ascorbic acid versus ascorbyl palmitate). In addition, most vitamers have several stereoisomeric forms, most of which have little biological activity and which are generally not found to occur naturally. However, some unnatural stereoisomers can sometimes be active with a different effect than natural stereoisomer, sometimes even having toxic effects while the natural version is beneficial.

The problem with synthetics arises because they are often not complete in having the full spectrum of vitamers and supporting chemicals that many foods and food extracts contain. Worse, because stereoisomeric forms are difficult and/or expensive to separate, synthetics often contain equal quantities of all the stereoisomeric forms. On the other hand, the idea that a synthetic or even a stereoisomeric form of a natural vitamin will or can have the "opposite" effect is complete nonsense.

Finally, there are synthetics which are not even isomers of a natural form. These are usually made to test for some stronger or better effect than the natural chemical or an exact synthetic, and also because they will then be patentable. These should really be called "analogues" or "derivatives" of the vitamin or other natural chemical to which they are related. They often can have highly different effects and sometimes surprising toxicities.

Q Why do neither of you take glucosamine?

There is much excellent research to show that glucosamine helps with many types of arthritis and joint/ligament problems. For that reason, I have always recommended it for anyone who has such problems, at least until their problems are greatly reduced or another effective therapy has been found.

OTOH, I do not recommend taking glucosamine as a preventative or as a life long supplement because of the following research results:

• "Glucosamine treatment causes insulin resistance in cells, possibly by entering the hexosamine biosynthetic pathway. In neonatal rat cardiomyocytes, glucosamine treatment blocked both insulin and ET-1-stimulated glucose uptake and also eliminated the translocation of IRAP, an aminopeptidase in GLUT4-containing vesicles, from the cytoplasm to the plasma membrane."^R
• "we investigated effects of osmotic shock and vanadate on glucose transport in glucosamine-treated cells and found that glucosamine completely inhibited their actions in these cells." (ie. glucosamine inhibited the increase in cellular glucose uptake normally caused by osmotic shock and vanadate.)^R
• "In conclusion, the infusion of glucosamine, which is known to cause insulin resistance, also impaired exercise-induced glucose uptake. This inhibition was independent of hyperglycemia and FFA levels."^R
• "Thus, in humans, acute GlcN infusion recapitulates some metabolic features of human diabetes."^R

Considerable additional reasoning and citations are provided in a Yahoo MoreLife post.

Q What should one look for in quality in supplements and how do strength and purity relate to quality?

These terms are often very loosely used. To me, "quality" means several things.

1. That the supplement contains the amount of ingredients which are stated on the label and in other descriptive information.
2. That all the various information sources about the supplement are self-consistent, and that they completely and accurately list all ingredients which are likely to affect the health of anyone taking the maximum suggested dosage.
3. That the major ingredients are of high purity and the impurities are of low enough concentration with respect to any possible toxicity or harm that their effect is essentially insignificant at the maximum suggested dosage.
4. That the ingredients used have strength, bioavailability, and lack of negative side effects which are appropriate to the purposes for which the supplement supplier suggests they are useful.

Thus, "purity" is included within "quality", and "strength" is only part of quality to the extent that what is stated on the label gives you the dosage which you desire, and which the supplier states will be useful for a certain purpose.

Q Will enzymes taken orally to increase Super Oxide Dismutase (SOD) help? [Taken from MoreLife Yahoo Post#897]

In order to help you understand why it is either unlikely that such enzymes will help, or if they do then they are an unnecessarily expensive form of such help, I will first briefly explain again how the digestive system works.

In the stomach ingested food and supplements are warmed up and acidified with hydrochloric acid. This causes all proteins (enzymes are a subcategory of proteins) except a very few special ones to unfold (become denatured) and food and supplements (with capsules disintegrated) to become a liquified slurry. This slurry then passes into the small (upper) intestine (the doudenum, jejunum and ileum, in that order) which is the main site of nutrient digestion and absorption. Digestive enyzmes secreted by the pancreas into the slurry passing through the duodenum, break the denatured proteins in their amino acid and short peptide (only a few amino acids long) components. These peptides and amino acids are then able to be imported into the cells lining the intestinal walls, exported into the capillaries that supply them with oxygen and thence to the portal vein and possible further processing in the liver. Very few if any enzymes can survive this digestive process and get directly into the blood stream. In fact, if this happens at all it is usually because of a faulty digestive system, since one function of a healthy digestive system is to protect the body from the influence of any exogenous proteins.

Futhermore, it is important to realize that, again except for a special few, proteins including enzymes are not generally transported in the blood stream but are produced by cells only for their own use. Thus, it can be seen that oral SOD, which is a cellular enzyme (actually three kinds) required by every cell, is not going to be absorbed intact and can at most be of benefit to the cells of the mouth, esophagous and stomach, or if enterically coated possibly to the cells of the intestinal wall. The only way that oral SOD might benefit other parts of the body is because its chemical components many be undersupplied and may help increase the production of SOD by the cells.

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