What I do to Minimize my Gyno

[MinimizeGyno]

Ive had Gyno since I was 12. It started when I started gaining weight after I got glasses and kids made fun of them causing me to go to the library during recess and not exercise. When I got home I would lock myself in my room and eat and watch TV, away from those that would laugh. This weight gain of course led to more ridicule and my gyno progressed. The emotional pain led to alcoholism and abuse of Marijuana. These worsened the condition. At my heaviest weight 4 years ago, I was 338 pounds. Im tall at least 6'4". This is when my Gyno was the worst. My chest was constantly stared at by my coworkers on a daily basis. I tried many things to minimize the appearance of my Gyno. I know a lot about what works and what doesnt by years of trial and error. I feel a lot more confident these days because I have figured out lots of tricks to make my chest appear normal. I cant afford surgery and I do not like wearing compression vests so that is why I have looked for other means. This is what I currently do:

1. Take Estrogen Blockers. Dietary supplements that specifically for block aromatase activity (conversion of Test to Est)
2. Eat lots of White Mushrooms. (Most anti Aromatase vegetable, and full of Antioxidants)
3. High Protein diet (I got 40%Protein, 35%Carbs, 25%Fat - this is very close to what the Biggest loser contestants eat)
4. Wear Waist reducing belt around my chest under my shirt and above my undershirt during my cardio workout at the gym (this gets rid of extra water in the area)
5. Drink lots of water everyday (it actually normalizes water levels in your cells to drink more water than normal)
6. Maximum of 3 beers in a night. NO Marijuana, it instantly makes gyno apparent for days) No Alcohol is better but Its all I can do to only drink 3
7. No Soy products at all. for the same reason as #6. Soy Milk is the worst but Tofu is really bad. No Edamame, and no Soy Nuts. When you eat a protein bar or shake make sure there are not any evil Soy Proteins in them. Soy has Phytoestrogens.
8. I also stay away from: From Wikipedia: A more comprehensive list of foods known to contain phytoestrogens includes: soy beans, tofu, tempeh, soy beverages, linseed (flax), sesame seeds, wheat, berries, oats, barley, dried beans, lentils, yams, rice, alfalfa, mung beans, apples, carrots, pomegranates,[14] wheat germ, ricebran, soy linseed bread, ginseng, bourbon and beer[15] fennel and anise.[16]
9. Low sodium is good, but very hard when on a high protein diet as most shakes and bars have sodium in them. I therefore go to the steam room at the gym everytime after workout, It gets rid of the excess salt, reduces body water, reduces body toxins and Body Odor, and keeps skin soft. I keep my shirt on in the steam room as Gyno will be apparent at temperatures that high.
10. When I didnt have a steam room available, I took herbal diuretics. Celery seed in my salads, Juniper berries before bed (I like the taste!), Uva Ursi tincture in warm water. Potassium pills (just a few will do). Banana works too because its very high in potassium but Im allergic unfortunately.
11. No Milk. There are way too many hormones in there. Like Pregnenalone.

I currently live in the desert, If I can be comfortable living in a hot place like this and not feel so self conscious you can too.
When I lived up north, and my work was at 63 degrees indoors I loved it, My chest was always contracted. When Summer came and it got over 80 inside I was stared at and I quit my job. I didnt know the above tricks yet.
Those 11 things were like a miracle to me. I hope they help some of you also.

[headheldhigh01]

7. No Soy products at all. for the same reason as #6. Soy Milk is the worst but Tofu is really bad. No Edamame, and no Soy Nuts. When you eat a protein bar or shake make sure there are not any evil Soy Proteins in them. Soy has Phytoestrogens.
8. I also stay away from: From Wikipedia: A more comprehensive list of foods known to contain phytoestrogens includes: soy beans, tofu, tempeh, soy beverages, linseed (flax), sesame seeds, wheat, berries, oats, barley, dried beans, lentils, yams, rice, alfalfa, mung beans, apples, carrots, pomegranates,[14] wheat germ, ricebran, soy linseed bread, ginseng, bourbon and beer[15] fennel and anise.[16]

sorry, this one's a common misconception, and it's WRONG.

i agree with you on other things, but let me give you what i posted on the subject elsewhere.  

i'm going to respectfully disagree with the dr on this one, having taken a look at this issue as a vegan myself.  moderation with anything is good, but my soy intake is probably well above normal, with, anecdotally, no ill effects on my existing gyne one way or the other in almost 20 years.  here's my take, reprinted from a past post.

the “estrogen” you hear about is actually phytoestrogens which are actually generally good for you, they have something like 1/500th the effect of regular estro and as i understand it actually compete with regular for chemical receptors and could therefore actually inhibit the estro effect.

this always smells like scare tactics from the frightened boys in the dairy and beef industry who i think are the REAL culprits.  since this comes up from time to time, excuse me if i quote from a past post on the subject. i left out the parts on recent studies of arsenic in chicken, pcb's in fish, etc., though that was nasty too.  for the record, i'm also vegan, meaning pure vegetarian, no eggs or dairy (for ethics reasons more than the health, though that's a plus too), so see if you find this interesting.  from the 2/04 monthly newsletter of dr. michael greger:

V. MAILBAG: "Why did the Ukraine ban our meat?"
 
I just got an email from someone who read the hilarious column in Friday's San Francisco Chronicle (online at http://tinyurl.com/2b2qr) . Her questions was "I've heard about bovine growth hormone in the milk supply, but I didn't know that we used hormones in meat."
 
For more than fifty years, U.S. farmers have used both natural and artificial hormones to increase the growth rates of livestock. Just like bodybuilders can bulk up on steroids, these steroid hormones make cattle grow bigger and faster. Of course the USDA doesn't like to call them growth hormones, they call them "meat quality enhancers," which they note is a "more consumer friendly term."
 
According to the USDA, these hormones can eliminate as many as 21 days of feeding time-same weight, 21 days earlier-which saves lots of money. But Europe in the eighties had just gotten over this thing where little babies started growing breasts and menstruating after eating baby food made from veal calves pumped with the hormone DES and then there were all these cancers and genital deformities and so January 1st, 1989 Europe banned the production and consumption of hormone laden meat.
 
Major beef exporters such as Argentina. Australia, New Zealand, Brazil all agreed to ship hormone free meat to Europe, but the U.S. was not going to be stopped. Not only would the profits of the beef industry suffer (and we know how much the beef industry doesn't like to see things suffer Wink, but the profits of the hormone manufacturers- Monsanto, Eli Lilly, Upjohn-would take a hit. And as powerful as the beef lobby is, you do not mess with the pharmaceutical industry.
 
The US took the European Union before the World Trade Organization demanding that Europe drop its ban on American beef. And of course, the World Health Organization struck down Europe's public health law, and demanded Europe drop the ban or face stiff penalties. And Europe decided to maintain the ban and stomach the financial consequences, which it has for years now.  They are willing to pay $50 million dollars a year to protect their citizens from American beef.
 
Growth promoting hormones, with names like "Steer-oid" are fed, implanted or injected into more than 95% of U.S. cattle. They implant estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and a number of synthetic steroids. The FDA insists that, when properly used, these sex steroids pose no risk to humans.  This is the same agency, though, that, under pressure from the poultry industry, took 20 years to ban DES, the hormone that caused all the v.aginal cancers in the daughters of mothers exposed to it.
 
The European Union commissioned their own panel of scientists review the available research on the hormones in American meat and concluded that they "may cause a variety of health problems including cancer, developmental problems, harm to immune systems, and brain disease.  Even exposure to small levels of [hormone] residues in meat and meat products carries risks."
 
The European Commission identified one hormone in particular as a "complete carcinogen," acting as both a tumor initiator and a tumor promoter. They explained, "In plain language, this means that even small additional doses of residues of this hormone in meat, arising from its use as a growth promoter in cattle, has an inherent risk of causing cancer." The French Agriculture Minister simply declared that the United States had the, "worst food in the world." Even research done here by National Cancer Institute has found that some of the synthetic estrogen-like hormones U.S. ranchers continue to implant can indeed stimulate the growth of human breast cancer cells.
 
The U.S. government was not happy with Europe's report. The U.S. Agriculture Secretary held a press conference and said 'The European Commission has issued yet another misleading report."
 
In response the European Union replied, "The commission is deeply concerned about the US attempt to belittle the risk which scientists have identified. [We] cannot understand why the US has not reacted in a more responsible way to the conclusive findings of the scientific committee. It is all the more incomprehensible as pre-pube[scent] children are the population group most at risk from the hormones."
 
Indeed, because children they have such low baseline levels, an 8 year boy, for example, eating two burgers increases his level of sex hormones by almost 10%. And lifelong exposures like that might increase the risk of developing cancer.
 
The incidence of reproductive cancers has skyrocketed since U.S. farmers started using these sex steroids in meat. Compared to 1950, we have 55% more breast cancer, 120% more testicular cancer, and 190% more prostate cancer here in the United States. Now that's not to say that the hormones in meat are the cause, but as one prominent cancer researcher noted, "The question we ought to be asking, is not why Europe won't buy our hormone-treated meat, but why we allow beef from hormone-treated cattle to be sold [here in America]..."

so far from being a culprit, i bet soy would keep us safer from gyne that i suspect has taken off in the last half century specifically because of the same meat and dairy industry, who time might just prove are to blame for this curse instead.

that discussion also produced another good link on the subject, so here's another post from that thread.  '

Drinking one glass of soymilk is equivalent to popping 6 birth control pills at once.

complete bunk.  don't take it personally, but it's best to read the full thread preceding before accidentally falling for, and ignorantly re-posting, urban legends like this into the discussion.  the post that came two after mine on the previous page included this link,

http://www.t-nation.com/article/diet_and_nutrition/soy_whats_the_big_deal&cr=

which includes this observation:  

Before we go on, let's do something very important — something many authors fail to do. Let's put these rat studies into a real life perspective.

We'll start by looking at an adult male who weighs 190 pounds (86 kg). If he were to consume 20 mg/kg of PE's like the initial rat study indicated, that'd be 86 kg x 20 mg, leading to a total of 1,720 mg of PE's per day.

Do you have any idea how much soy that'd be?!

If not, have a look at the following table. It gives you an idea of the amount of PE's found in soy foods.

Food     Serving      Total Isoflavones (mg)

Soy protein concentrate, water wash
3.5 oz
102

Soy protein concentrate, alcohol wash
3.5 oz
12

Miso
1/2 cup
59

Soybeans, cooked
1/2 cup
47

Tempeh
3 ounces
37

Soybeans, dry roasted
1 ounce
37

Soy milk
1 cup
30

Tofu based yogurt
1/2 cup
21

Tofu
3 ounces
20

Soybeans, green, cooked (edamame)
1/2 cup
12

Soy hot dog
1 hot dog
11

Soy sausage
3 links
3

Soy cheese, mozzarella
1 oz
2

As you can see from the table, our hypothetical male is very, very unlikely to consume 1,720 mg of PE's from food.

Check out the following menu:

1 cup of cooked soybeans = 94 mg
6 ounces of tempeh = 74 mg
2 cups of soy milk = 60 mg
6 ounces of tofu = 40 mg
2 soy hot dogs = 22 mg
4 oz of soy cheese = 8 mg

Total = 298 mg

Soy overload, for sure, right?

Yet, it only supplies 289 mg of PE's. That's one-fifth of what might be required to lower Testosterone levels.

So, let's get real here. It's unlikely that Testosterone problems would occur if someone were to eat a moderate amount of whole-food soy products.

A more traditional daily intake of soy for someone may look more like this:

8 ounces of tofu = 53 mg
1/2 cup soy milk = 15 mg
1/2 cup edamame = 12 mg

Total = 80 mg of PE's

Taking it to human studies, data on patients with prostate cancer showed that the intake of 80 mg/day of PE's didn't significantly alter Testosterone levels.

To go one step further, an intake of PE's up to 16 mg/kg of body weight had no significant influence on behavior or physical characteristics.

Taking the dose up again, another study found that 84 straight days of consuming 450 to 900 mg/day of PE's lowered DHEA levels and had estrogenic side effects in males with prostate cancer. Not necessarily good. However, skim over the chart above to determine how much soy food that'd be. It's a freakin' lot!

i'm a vegan and even i don't consume close to 300 mg in a day - let alone 1,720!    

a mistake like the one you cite naively relies on the idea that a phytoestrogen is equivalent to regular human estrogen, which i already mentioned, it is not, it is a fraction of it, about 1/500th of it i believe, and there are suggestions it could even interfere with the effect of the regular stuff.  

more proof that the meat and dairy industry's lies are easily swallowed and passed on by the uninformed  can we try putting this pseudoscientific myth to bed again once and for all please?  thanks.  

[MinimizeGyno]

I always suspected that some of us are more sensitive to phytoestrogens than others.
What I know for sure is that I learned that if I drink even one glass of soy milk, my chest looks like crap for up to 2 days.
I dont think it worsens the condition permanently, But I really like the taste of Soy Milk so when I drink it, its Friday after work, so my chest has recovered by Monday morning for work. This is what I do with Tofu and Tempeh as well. Lately I have cut out all soy, but I know there are some benefits to the Soy Isoflavones, so it may not be good to cut completely out of the diet.