Stink, Soy & Sales

With that in mind, we took a peak under three health myths we’ve been hearing people talk about recently to see what the evidence says.

First, there’s a difference between deodorants and antipersperants. The former tackles odour and the latter tackles odour and sweat. Simple.

The main problem people have with antiperspirants is the use of aluminium salt. It’s used as a way to plug your sweat glands. That’s how it helps to stop sweating.

Firstly, we have aluminium in our bodies naturally. You’ll find it in blood, bones, faeces and urine. Think of the word and you’ll likely imagine a silver bar in your mind’s eye, but that’s misunderstanding the substance.

Second, studies have shown that we barely absorb any aluminium at all through our armpits – around 0.012% in fact. Over a seven week period, using antiperspirant every day, the final amount of aluminium taken in by their 100 subjects was roughly 2.5% of the amount that the individuals consumed through their normal diet in the same time period.

Supposedly the myths of aluminium being a danger to health spread from a 1990s chain email, which suggested that the combination of cutting yourself shaving and applying aluminium salt lead to an increase in breast cancer – deemed untrue by the American Cancer Society.

Another rumour spread was that the levels of aluminium led to an increase in Alzheimers – to which the Alzheimer’s Society says “no convincing relationship between [the two] has been established.”

Many people find antiperspirants irritate their skin, sometimes due to the aluminium salt, others due to the fragrances involved. To swap to alternates without these ingredients is totally understandable. Just note that the essential oils found in many “natural” deodorants are created using numerous chemicals and also frequently irritate skin, too.

Basically, use what you want.

More of us are trying to add vegetables to our diet. Soy’s one of them, frequently used for its high protein value to replace meat for many.

Soy contains isoflavones which are a little similar to estrogen. This led to non-human studies that surmised how soy was an endocrine disrupter (affecting your hormones) and how those isoflavones would increase estrogen levels – and higher estrogen levels have been linked to certain types of breast cancer.

So men get shook because they hear estrogen and think they’ll get manboobs, women the same due to hormonal imbalances, and both due to breast cancer.

We could fluff up the language here but the meta-analyses speak for themselves. Ten years of studies between 2010-2020 found no reduction of testosterone in men who ate soy.

The increase in estrogen has also been linked to prostate cancer. To stress, soy contains isoflavones which are similar, but not the same. A meta-analysis of 30 studies again found no connection between soy consumption and the likelihood of prostate cancer.

Similarly, no need to dress it up here. A Chinese, seven-year study of 7,000+ women found a 22% lower risk of breast cancer when comparing the highest intake to the lowest intake of adults.

 A North American study of 6,000+ women already diagnosed with breast cancer found a 21% lower risk of death when comparing those who ate the most, with those who ate the least.

Many of the scary-sounding results regarding soy are from animal or lab tests, which as we always stress at ZAAG have wildly different outcomes when compared with humans. So should you eat soy? The evidence doesn’t suggest any apparent harm – in fact, quite the opposite.

Another meta-analysis, studying over 300,000 participants, found a 12% reduction in breast cancer deaths with each 5 gram per day increase in soy protein intake.

This one I actually heard this morning in the gym. Turns out… there was some truth in it.

It’s all due to the use of bisphenols A and S (BPA/BPS) in receipt paper. These are the same chemicals that have raised alarm bells across the globe for their use in plastic and the potential for them to enter our system through water bottles, tupperware etc.

Turns out receipt paper isn’t recyclable as it’s treated with BPA/BPS as a means to eliminate the need to use ink in printers. There’s a heat reaction on the paper which (in essence) burns the characters onto the paper, rather than requiring ink.

Similarly to above, BPA/BPS are endocrine disruptors. So if they were to leach into your system, either through the touch of a receipt or from consumption via containers, the general consensus is that they play havoc with your hormones.

A thrilling study actually looked at how much BPA would be subsumed over 10 hours of handling receipt paper. The researchers found the level to be 42 times less than the “tolerable daily intake.”

So unless you were a receipt collector for your job, it's likely you're safe.

The UK actually banned BPA use in receipts in 2020, as even low levels can impact unborn children, but you will still find certain plastics contain the substance. 

As a rule of thumb, if your little recycling triangle has a 6 or 7 in it, it contains chemicals with endocrine disruptors. If it’s got a 3 in it, there’s a possible carcinogen (DEHP).

2, 4 and 5 are the better numbers for storing food. If you care!

Hopefully you do. Hopefully you learned something. Hopefully you’re a little less fearful.