Author Topic: I am my own science project  (Read 4671 times)

Offline SoyFreeCrusader

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Hello, I am a seventeen year old male well into puberty with Gynecomastia. My case is probably less severe than some others I have seen on here. Recently, I read about a study done at the University of North Carolina that took three men and gave them copious amounts of soy. The results were abnormal breast sizes and nipple discharge.
The relationship between excessive soy consumption and gynecomastia has been long debated. I searched the internet for this, and found mixed results. Some say soy consumption causes this and others say it is not true. I decided that I would simply have to find out for myself.
Over the course of the next thirty days, I will turn my body and my eating habits into a scientific experiment. I will not eat ANY soy products, or anything with the slightest element of soy. This includes soybean oil, soy letchin, etc. I will eat a healthy, balanced diet and eat five to six small, balanced meals a day. In addition, I will exercise for fifty minutes four times a week.
I hope and pray that I will find some sort of connection between soy consumption and gynecomastia. If I do succeed, I hope to share my results and encourage other people to do the same thing. I will be keeping a journal to document my results and show which foods I ate that day. I hope to update all of you as well.

Should also mention I am new here.  :)

Offline jackson318

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Sounds like an interesting experiment.  From the slight research I did when I was worried about this (as a vegetarian-almost-vegan, there's a lot of soy options around) from what I could find, the breast results hinged on that "copious" amount.  That is, you would have to nearly gorge yourself on soy all day long, like more than you would even normally eat, for days on end in order to have as much soy as the researchers were giving those rats.

Offline soonplz

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yeah, i'm a vegetarian (almost vegan--i eat more typical foods with the hope people will be more likely to try vegetarianism) and soy is EVERYWHERE. there was a brief freakout about the phytoestrogens, but it was then discovered that those might even quell natural estrogen rather than create their effects. let me know how it goes and best of luck to you, but i'm guessing that since 60% of products in grocery stores are made of soy, there'd have been an epidemic by now if this was hte case. but then again, you might be onto something given that research. keep us posted!

Offline SoyFreeCrusader

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I have gone four days on this, and so far, I am doing very well. I feel very well and have not been depressed or gotten down in the last four days. I have also noticed that the nipple has become somewhat smaller. To me personally, my chest seems to be its smallest after I work out. It seems to be more of a puffyness issue now. It seems like I have actually lost a small amount of breast tissue already. I will be keeping you guys updated every couple of days.

Offline Gyno 44

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soy has nothing to due with gyn... so many guys take soy and dont have gyne.

Offline scballersc

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Ive been saying since day 1, bodyfat at the outset/over the course of puberty is positively correlated with gyne.  Mark my words.  And of course, yes there are exceptions but on the whole, adolescent obesity is a very possible cause.

Offline The_G0rn

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Kid I already tried this. Over an entire year.
Once you have the gyne not eating soy wont make it go away.

HOWEVER...someone who doesnt have gyne, not eating soy might prevent them from getting it...!
But how are we going to prove that.

p.s.

Either way I still avoid soy, even now that i've had the op
Surgery done 18th March 2008

Offline Paa_Paw

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What little I know about dietary influence upon Gynecomastia, Specifically with reference to soy derived Phytoestrogens would seem to indicate that a study involving a single subject for as little as a month would have no value.

To be meaningful, You'd need a few hundred subjects with evaluations over time, lots of time. Some subjects would be given a normal diet with a small amount of soy, another group would be given a considerable amount soy concentrates and a third group with no soy products at all. To be totally objective, you'd have to figure out how to keep all the subjects ignorant of which group they were placed in.

What we already know is that people of ethnicities which traditionally have high dietary intake of soy products are not necessarily any more likely to have Gynecomastia than other people known to consume little or no soy.

The subject of dietary influence on Gynecomastia comes up often here. There are postings about Milk, Red Meat, Poultry, Broccoli, Yams, Soy etc. etc.  All lead nowhere.

While there are rare instances in which Gynecomastia is a symptom of a disease. In those cases, Gynecomastia could honestly be called abnormal. For most of us, the cause can not be identified and there are so many of us that the condition is considered to be statistically within the bounds of normal. there are lots of men who vehemently reject the mere thought that our condition is anywhere near being normal. They will look into anything that they can find trying to find some evil cause for their abnormal condition,

What we have is an embarrassment. Really, It is nothing more or less than that. Some guys live with it and have no problem, others have emotional problems caused by it and some guys have surgery to remove or diminish it. The condition is that simple.

Sorry, but we are all quite boringly normal here.
Grandpa Dan

Offline jay1599

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just reading this story and what everybody thinks of it. i think its good that your thinking into it but to be honest i dont think it's soy. there must be a link but its something i think we wont understand for a very long time. i am new on here and i'm desperatley lookin for help, advice and information. i am only just 19 and gynocemastia has ruined my teenage life. 'ruined' sounds bad but what i mean is i thought i was a freak and started hating myself for it. ive been so down its untrue but this is something all you guys will understand.
I have got to get it removed! IM 6 FT tall quite built and the right weight for my size. im a really outgoing person and have only just been to see my GP about it. i ahve suffrerd for about 8 years with it. i am really eager to find out more about the operation and the resulta 6 months or so on. the other day i told my girlfriend when i was drunk what was getting to me but then i found it helps the more people you have to talk to about it. shes the only one that knows though. my previous girlfriend of 2 years js though that it was abit mishaped and nothing of it but i knew different and the more research i did the more i found and was certain it was gynocemastia.

im terrified about this op but really want it done. ive heard its really painfull!

Offline headheldhigh01

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absolutely the opposite.  don't believe the hype, recommend you change your handle early.  the “estrogen” you hear about is actually phytoestrogens which are actually good for you, they have about 1/500th the effect of regular estro, they compete for chemical  receptors and can therefore actually inhibit the estro effect.  it is not normal to eat "copious" amounts of anything, but i am a heavy soy consumer (soymilk, tofu) and as an anecdotal but independent experiment also, i have never observed an effect, negative or positive, on the gyne yet. 

this always smells like scare tactics from the frightened corporate factory farm boys in the dairy and beef industry who i believe 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:

Quote

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 believe soy would keep us more safe from gyne, not less, especially if by consuming soymilk or tofu we ate less of that hormone-infested meat and dairy sh*t.   i believe the reason gyne has taken off in the last half century is specifically because of the d*cking around with hormones by the same meat and dairy industry over that same period of time, and that time might prove them to blame for this curse instead. the reason for their new interest in soy is, they can blame their competition instead of confessing what they've done to us.  they've been starting to lose business and get scared.  and the government and the beef/dairy corporations, and especially the mega pharmaceutical corporations would never set their enormous profits before public health or lie to you, right? 

fact: it is not normal for infants to grow breasts.  vegan 20 years too late  :'(  :'(  :'( 
 
p.s.  jay, don't worry, you'd be out for the op, and recovery for most cases is probably just soreness, it appears to depend a little on the skill of the ps some too. 
« Last Edit: July 13, 2008, 04:36:59 AM by headheldhigh01 »
* a man is more than a body will ever tell
* if it screws up your life the same, is there really any such thing as "mild" gyne?

Offline soonplz

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good point, headheldhigh. it's a shame so many people think we veg*ns are conspiracy theorists... there would be so far fewer health probelms.


 

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