My daughter was on soy formula after 6 mo. because I could no longer nurse. (The soy was at the advice of my mother.) She is now 12yrs old. She has Hashimoto Thyroiditis, outrageously high levels of aluminum, and manganese, as well as mercury. She also has 3x the normal amount of estrogen. Now I find out soy is not the super food it was supposed to be! How do I reverse the damage?

I was recently diagnosed as hypothyroid.  I do NOT have Hashimoto's so they don't know what caused my thyroid to go wacky.  I think it's likely the high soy diet I followed.  I was low-carbing and many low-carb products use soy - soy flour, soy protein, soy concentrate, etc.  It totally sucks because I *love* soy. I can't give it up entirely, but I have cut WAY back.  My doctor just started me on levothyroxine (synthetic T4 hormone) to try to get my free T3 and T4 levels up and my TSH down.

Sadly, folks, if you would like an answer to your questions - you are going to have to search the web or join Dr. Mercola's "Inner Circle".

While this is a good site for "opening one's eyes", you really need to search for answers for your very important questions. You just get the "trailer" here.

I, too, have serious thyroid problems and in my menopause years consumed large quantities of soy and took a "natural" soy formula pill for relief. I don't know if there is a connection and The JAMA insists their studies say "no" but I am a realist. I don't believe everything I read - even if it is from a doctor.  Doctors make huge errors, every minute of every day. Because we've been taught to depend on them for our very life - we sometimes forget they are human.  

Thank you, Teakvass, for the link.

my son, now 25, was fed soy formula,at 6 yrs old developed juvenile diabetes, but he always craved lots of milk too, and sweated profulsey as a toddler, dont know if any of this connects, just thought id comment,

jain999ATLive.com

I find this article both interesting and not useful - or rather, incomplete. I recommend that interested readers check out the research and articles done by the Weston A. Price Foundation on breast-feeding. Here is a link: www.westonaprice.org/.../index.html It makes sense to me that nursing mothers drink (best quality) milk, both for their babies' and their own health!

Thank you.

There is a deep divide in the health food community on soy.  Aside from the thyroid affects, the phyto-estrogen affects are still present.  Soy just should not be an infant formula on the market today.  I was a soy baby, I have a strange subclinical hypothyroid status 30 years later (maybe less, it's hard to say exactly when I shut down).  

My son was on soy and I didn't like it, however, then there were no other options to dairy protein intolerance (not to be confused with lactose intolerance).  Lactose free formulas had "just" hit the market and were of no use to us.  So far he appears okay, but he has some disturbing things going on I have yet to get on simply due to my own health over the last 2 years.

When loosing weight on a major weight loss plan, I consumed soy.  As a nursing mom, I consumed soy thinking it was a good thing.  A few years later I'm hypothyroid with no family history and just plain weird lab results.  I am not classical hypothyroid or secondary.  It took a doctor who treats symptoms and not labs to get me the help I needed to start the recovery process.

When I had trouble feeding my last son (due to hypothyroid status, it nixes milk supply), I gave him hypoallergenic formula.  It costs more, but I was not going to expose him to soy period.

Even I was not convinced 100% that soy is a bad thing.  Today, there are 3 things I will not consume Soy, HFCS and Gluten.  My husband and children are all Celiacs, medically confirmed biopsied Celiacs.  

My answer is consume at your own risk.  Temphe is probably okay in moderation.  Americans consume soy in much higher quantities than Asian counter parts for the most part.

BTW - Gluten proteins pass into Breast milk as well.  Pub Med studies prove it exisit, even if top Celiac doctors do not want to believe it happens.

Nobody has replied to this query nor the previous query... perhaps this is not a widely read article.  Too bad.  There is so much pressure by the AMA for doctors to ABLATE thyroids with Radioactive Iodine (RAI) for all thyroid disorders... hyper or hypo... which really makes us thyroid sufferers desperate for alternative treatments.  I do not want to spend the rest of my life determining how much synthroid and cytomel I need to take to be normal, nor do I want to spend the money for 3 or 4 endo appointments a year if I can restore my God-given thyroid to normal function.  I just need to slow it down.  Also, they never tell you that RAI ablation will most likely make the eye problems (Graves Ophlamopathy) worsen.  Soy milk, I repeat, does not affect they thyroid, from my esperience-- possibly due to heat in the production process.  The anti-thyroid isoflavanoids in the brassica vegetable family, as well as soy sources, is very fragile and is destroyed by heat--  reference TEXTBOOK OF NATURAL MEDICINE, by Joseph Pizarno.  

if you want to reply individually, my email address is JHaberer@cableone.net... I would appreciate any advice or common experience.  Thank you, Stuggling-to-keep-my-thyroid-Scotty

Lecithin is a product made from soybeans, regarded as a health food. Is this now taboo? Or is it a different process?

I have Grave's Disease, hyperactive thyroid.  I have tried using soy-milk as an anti-thyroid treatment... drinking as much as a gallon a day.  I experienced absolutely no relief from this.  Then, I learned, anti-thyroid isoflavanoids, like those present in cabbage, broccoli, soy, etc, are destroyed by cooking.  I suspect that soy milk, soy formula, and other products from soy, are processed by cooking or pasteurizing.  Do you think this is the reason I got no relief from the soy milk?  Scotty/Sioux City

jhaberer@cableone.net