Lee Swanson Research Update

Soy Supplementation Lowers Blood Pressure in Postmenopausal Women

November 2007

"Substituting soy for nonsoy protein in a TLC diet improves BP and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels in hypertensive women and BP in normotensive postmenopausal women," according to a study published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.

Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston studied 60 healthy women-12 with high blood pressure (140/90 mmHg or higher) and 48 with normal blood pressure (BP). All the women ate two kinds of diets for eight weeks each.

One was the Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) diet, which consisted of 30% of calories from fat (with seven percent or less from saturated fat), 15% from protein and 55% from carbohydrates, 1,200 mg of calcium per day, two meals of fatty fish (such as salmon or tuna) per week and less than 200 mg of cholesterol a day.

The other diet had the same calorie, fat and protein content, but the women replaced 25 grams of protein intake with a soy supplement.

"Soy supplementation significantly reduced systolic (top number) and diastolic (bottom number) blood pressure in all 12 hypertensive women and in 40 of the 48 normotensive women," the study authors wrote.

Compared with the TLC diet alone, the TLC diet plus soy lowered systolic and diastolic blood pressure 9.9% and 6.8%, respectively, in hypertensive women and 5.2% and 2.9%, respectively, in normotensive women."

In women with high blood pressure, the soy also decreased levels of low-density lipoprotein ("bad") cholesterol by an average of 11% and levels of apoliprotein B (a particle that carries bad cholesterol) by an average of eight percent.

Archives of Internal Medicine 167(10):1060-1067, 2007

New to Natural Health?
Tools
Customer Service