What If You Already Used BPA? BPA Protection: Spinach and Soy | Dr Greene.com.
This is a brief but very informative article about how we can actually reverse the damage to the body from BPA (plastic ingredient). Scientists at Duke have shown that ingesting spinach (or high levels of folate, found in many dark greens should be as beneficial) and soy (best in the natural form of fermented soy like miso, tempeh and tofu) can actually move BPA out of the body.
BPA has been implicated as a strong endocrine disruptor. Essentially BPA has an estrogenic effect on the body and can cause many hormonal imbalance problems (think PMS, bad periods, infertility, menopause problems, and reproductive cancers). And it is in a lot of things that we come in contact with everyday, all day.
Scientists at Duke also found that the affects of BPA could be seen in several generations of mice initially exposed to it. But once they ingested high levels of folate (spinach) and genistein (soy), they were able to reverse the damage from the BPA. This is hopeful news.
So how does soy and spinach have this reversing affect on BPA? Well soy has an estrogenic affect on the body. It can literally wedge its way into estrogen receptors in our cells. But it appears to do this gently and more naturally than artificial estrogens (xenoestrogens) like BPA (and pesticides, etc). And spinach and other foods high in folate help the body’s detoxification system so that the body can better metabolize these estrogens and convert them into safer metabolites.
With this discovery in mind, it would follow that many other foods that have natural estrogenic affects and boost our detoxification systems could be helpful in getting BPA out of our bodies. A few to mention here are; red clover, black cohosh, seaweeds, kale, and many dark greens. I am sure we will find a lot more natural plants that can help us detox and rid our bodies of BPA, as well as many other toxic chemicals we are all exposed to everyday. Now, if we could just get the manufacturers of the world to slow down the production of these poisons and concentrate their efforts on finding safe, healthier alternatives. With studies like this, we are heading in the right direction.