Soy: Source of hope in the prevention

The potential health benefits associated with a soy-rich diet have been a source of interest and debate for many years. Soy has already shown signs of its great potential for relieving posttraumatic pain (i.e. from accidents or surgery) and osteopathic pain.

Dr. Yoram Shir, director of the McGill University Health Centre’s (MUHC) Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit, has been focusing on the benefits of soy for years, and is leading a breakthrough study exploring the possible connection between a soyrich diet and the prevention of chronic pain after breast cancer surgery.

“While proven to play a crucial role in the prevention of multifactorial illnesses such as cancer and ischemic heart disease, only scarce data on the pain-relieving properties of diet exist to date,” notes Dr. Shir, the study’s principal investigator. “Nevertheless, pre-clinical and clinical studies have associated pain-relief with certain dietary factors like soy protein and fat.”

“If we can demonstrate that a soy-rich pre-surgery diet is both safe and effective for the prevention of chronic post-surgical pain, the clinical implications will be significant and could help many women around the world,” explains Dr. Shir.

Across Canada, 23,000 women, including 6,000 in Quebec, are diagnosed with breast cancer each year. The vast majority will undergo surgery as part of their comprehensive cancer therapy. Fifty per cent of these patients will have chronic pain following their surgery–the most common cause of long-term morbidity in women battling the disease. What is worse, chronic pain is often resistant to treatment and can endure for years, leaving these women with permanent physical and emotional scars.

“There is currently no proven effective method for the prevention of chronic postoperative pain,” explains Dr. Shir. “Measures such as pain-relieving medications, commonly used to relieve acute pain after surgery, are largely ineffective in preventing acute post-surgical pain from becoming chronic. If shown to be efficacious, this would be a natural and safe preventive treatment that is easily incorporated into the everyday diet,” he concludes.

For more information on this study, or to participate, please contact Dr. Yoram Shir at 514-934-8222 or by email: [email protected].