Gasp! Invasion of the exogenous estrogen!

Oh those phytoestrogens, you cause so much controversy!!!

What are you anyways? Well phytoestrogens aka "dietary estrogen" are molecules that have structurally similar to estrogen. This allows for them to bind to the estrogen receptor and hence produce the same response that estrogen would. You can see in the picture below that 17-b-estradiol (estrogen) has that same (cholesterol) ring structure as the phytoestrogens which allows them to have an estrogen-like effects. Now don't worry, phytoestrogens have a mild estrogenic effect... In addition, phytoestrogens can actually have an anti-estrogen effect because they can downregulate estrogen production. Once again phytoestrogens have a mild effect. However, if the exposure to dietary phytoestrogens is very high then there could be a positive or a negative consequence for human health.

Now what are the dietary sources of phytoestrogens?You probably know quite a bit about soy! Soy foods contain isoflavones (type of phytoestrogen) in the quantities of 1.2-3.3mg isoflavones per g of dry weight soy. Apparently in Asia, the average daily intake of isoflavones is 25-40mg while in America it's less than 1 mg. At least that's what the study said :P

What you probably didn't know is that a lot of other foods contain phytoestrogens as well. Lignans are a type of phytoestrogen and are found in flax seeds, sesame seeds, legumes, seaweed, fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. However, mainly in flax seeds. 

There're is coumestan which is derived from coumarin or coumestrol. Well this coumestrol is found in soy nuts, mung bean sprouts, white beans, flax seeds, clover sprouts, cabbage and alfalfa. 

Lastly, there's diosgenin that is derived from yams. 

Interestingly, epidemiological studies found that phytoestrogens are protective aggainst postmenopausal symptoms, cardiovascular disease, bone health, breast, prostate, and colon cancers.

There was a lot of talk about soy leading to breast cancer. Now let me explain, some types of breast cancer are estrogen dependent and literally how you treat them is by blocking estrogen. So the logic was, the more estrogen then the more of that type of breast cancer. Well... not quite... The professor I interviewed last week actually found that flax seed extracts combined with current breast cancer therapy or on their own help combat cancer in mice. Cool stuff!

Furthermore, mouse models of chemical induced breast cancer have been used to show that soy proteins containing isoflavones had dose-dependent tumor formation reduction. However, this effect was lost when the mice were given soy proteins without the isoflavones. 

Right now a hot topic for phytoestrogens is to use them for postmenopausal women. The current treatment during postmenopause is hormone replacement therapy (HRP), so literally going on the birth control pill. However, women find that sketchy especially some evidence showing that the birth control pill increases your chance of developing breast cancer. Therefore, using the "natural" phytoestrogens instead of the birth control pill could be a better option for postmenopausal women. 

An issue with lack of menstruation and estrogen is that your bones get weaker as estrogen has a protective effect on bones. It was found that coumestrol from flax seeds can promote bone mineralization and osteoblastic differentiation (osteoblasts are bone forming cells).

A downside of phytoestrogens is that genistein (phytoestrogen metabolite) was found to promotes the process of blood coagulation, meaning that it increases thrombin formation. Thus, maybe it's not that great for those with atherosclerosis as it can lead to heart attacks and strokes. 

What have you heard about soy or phytoestrogens?

Spicy cucumber and black soybean stir fry ;)

Yesterday I've had another interview and this time from a professor from the Nutritional Science Department. YaY! She does research on flaxseeds and other phytoestrogen related foods like sesame seeds and soy beans. There will be a sciency post on that coming up soon. It's very exciting research :D

As for now, I reminisced back to a recipe I first tried when I was 17. It was WEIRD, it was UNIQUE, it was SPICY! Who ever thought of putting cucumbers and black soy beans together, what genius...

So black soy beans! I got them at the bulk section of my nearby Asian grocery store (love these). They have similar nutrition to the regular yellow soy beans and have a similar taste too. Maybe a bit less soy bean-like and more plain bean-like.

Spicy Cucumber and Black Soybean Stir-fry

Adapted from Star Fire, quick and simple recipes Stir-fry

Ingredients (serves 2-4)

*0.5 cups of black soy beans

*1 large English cucumber 

*4 garlic cloves, crushed

*2 tbsp soy sauce

*1 tbsp of parsley

*salt

*chili powder

*oil

 

Directions

*Soak black soy beans overnight

*Cook the black soy beans until edamame like consistency (about 45 min). Make sure to remove the scum that rises to the surface

*Peel the cucumber and cut in half. Rub salt all over and leave for 30 min. Place somewhere where water can drain off

*Remove the excess salt from the cucumbers and pat dry

*Heat up a wok to very high temperature

*Add oil and fry the garlic

*Add in the black soy beans and stir-fry for a minute

*Add in the cucumbers, soy sauce, and chili powder to taste

*Stir-fry for another minute

*Remove from heat and adjust for salt and chili

*Garnish with parsley

Thanx for all the comments about smarts and all. I really don't know what posses my grandma to preach that to me. Now the topic for today are my wrists. I'm really not a fan of people being like "omg, you have such small wrists" and try to wrap their fingers around it. They're just a little over 5 inches and the last time I've bought a watch I had to get it shortened :( My mom sometimes will grab my wrist and wiggle my hand in the air. Really woman!!! She does it as a joke of course, I probably make my family sound horrible lol. You know what there're pro's to having a small wrist. I used to be into beading so making a bracelet for myself meant less work :P Required less beads too :P

BMI- a game of statistics

Now I think back to Z's question for me whether I am good in math. Yes, I liked calculus, algebra, and functions, but couldn't stand statistics. I HATE STATS with passion! I have suffered through my epidemiology and statistics courses in university and that was enough.

One thing that I did take away from statistics is the idea of a normal distribution. Should I say the dreaded bell curve anyone? Many health related things follow the normal distribution where most values lie close to average and more extreme values are less common. Think height, IQ, school grades, race completion times, BMI- these all follow the normal distribution curve.

That's just the truth... Most of us are average and very few lie on the extremes. 

Then comes in the idea of standard deviation which is basically a measure of dispersion of data from the mean. One unit of standard deviation above and below the mean encompasses 68.2% of the data, while two standard deviations encompasses 95%.

When epidemiologists do studies they get a wide array of data but they need to set special cut off points when something is considered normal/abnormal. Hence, they set these confidence intervals which are really quite arbitrary... However, generally confidence intervals take in 95% of the data.

So why is this important?

Oftentimes you find individuals who are overweight or underweight but are still healthy (considering average muscle mass). You know, those naturally fat or skinny people. Well they just didn't fit into the X% of data. 

Statistics is a guessing game and there're errors associated with it. That's why most of the times in statistics you say that this is correlated to this with x percentage confidence level. You can never be 100% confident though :( 

By no means am I saying that being overweight or underweight is healthy for most people, but there're a few individuals that just don't fit into that normal distribution. 

Just something to think about :)

There is something that pisses me off. My family The women in my family keep on telling me not to study too much or "say smart things" especially when it comes to guys. I'm constantly told that men like to feel smarter than "their" women. Like WTF!!! Personally I wouldn't want to date a guy who's dumber then me but someone on my own level. Wouldn't it be the same the other way around! Why do women say all this BS to each other! PS: If you're a guy reading this I'd love to hear your opinion :P

I'm still alive and future steps :D

Thanx for all the congratulatory messages guys :) It really meant a lot :D

After getting a massage from my mom after my half-marathon on Sunday and extensive icing, I woke up feeling better then I expected on Monday. My quads, hamstrings and gluts were sore and I've noticed a bit of bruising at my left knee. However, I survived!!! Lol!

Monday was filled with more icing, a nice walk and some Bikram Yoga. During yoga I took it easy on my legs and didn't push myself as much as I normally would. I did rock the spine series though :P

Today my exercise consisted of a lot of cleaning and going for a nice 40 min swim at my pool. Did some basic flutter kicking, good old front crawl, but I mainly focused on working out my arms. Hence, there was a lot of arms only swimming :D

I've done some research about post-half recovery and most people suggest 1 week of no running. Aaah! Since I was having shin splint issues during the race maybe it is best if I take things easy. My test for shin splints is the Toe Stand Pose and it didn't feel to good last class. I could see how the pose feels over the next few yoga classes and base when I go back to running on that. As for now I'll stick with swimming and add in biking.

I can almost do the pose properly, but I can't balance with my hands at my chest. The pose works like magic to tell you how your shins are feeling ;)

Now next steps... I don't quite feel ready to do a marathon next :S Instead, I'll do the Toronto Scotiabank Half Marathon (that I was supposed to do last year, grr) in October and work on improving my time :D Honestly, I'm 21 so there's no point in rushing things. I'd rather have a solid base before pushing my endurance and getting injuries.

As for right now, I'll carry on with my triathlon plan. I've found a nice Olympic distance training plan (will be posted another time) to keep myself busy with this summer :D Even if I do a Sprint distance I think it's better to be more prepared then under-prepared.\

When I was younger I used to be highly self conscious about my voice. I've had an operation on my lung when I was 1 month old and when I was around 13 my voice got hoarse. My ENT told me that one of my vocal cords is paralyzes and is probably because the surgeons cut my nerve by accident. Bummers! Well I used to get made fun of it before but it managed to get better now. It's nowhere near as hoarse but my vocal cord gets tired out quickly so I lose my voice easily :( Somehow over the years it stopped bugging me as much and the whole experience was a great way for me to learn not to give a **** about the stupid things people said to me.

How do you recover from a half-marathon? Do you have any fitness or life goals for the summer?

Conquering my First Half :)

Dang, it's been dead silent on the blogosphere. Not only did I have to deal with tapering but also not having any posts to read :( I can't blame it, there's been a tonne of races going on and some beautiful weather :D Who'd want to spend these days beside their computer?

Anyways... I ran my first official half-marathon today. YAY!

It all started off with a beautiful morning in Mississauga (greater Toronto area) and perfect weather for some running! Got up around 6:00am, ate my bagel and got ready. Headed over to the start line 7am with my Momsy and made it just on time. There were so many people. Aaah! Somehow I sneaked into the line and just went with it. Off we went...

Yeah :) You can probably tell where I am :) In the light pink shirt and blue pants.

I started off nice and easy but almost right away felt pain in my shins :S I'm not sure what happened because things were ok before the taper. At the moment I'm blaming my walking shoes because I've recently switched them and had some pain last night. Not smart, Nadiya, not smart. The pain wasn't too bad so I just went with it.

After good 4km I passed my Bikram Yoga studio. Time was passing by really fast. Way too fast! Before I knew it we were passing the beautiful Erindale Park and making our way around the University of Toronto Mississauga Campus. Around 6th km I started getting pain in my left knee which was weird because I haven't had knee problems during any of my training runs. Like ever, not even the slightest bit 0.0 I felt like I was heel striking much more and my form was off. A combination of race nerves and wearing shoes? Luckily, my knee pain went away by 10th km :D

Now let me tell you, there were a lot of spectators along the way. There were people with drums and people music and cute little kids giving you high fives. Honestly Mississauga, I couldn't have done it without you :D

Something weird happened around 10th km. My legs just felt like jelly, and heavy, and just very stiff. I had some gatorade at that point and my legs magically felt fine. Was this just in my head?

The next 6kms I was just cruising along. It was getting a little hot because we were directly under the sun and the temperature was probably close to 20C. Then at 16km we turned unto Lakeshore and the breeze from the Lake cooled me off :P

At this point I knew I only had 5kms left so I just kept going. My shin was still hurting and my legs were getting that heavy feeling again. There were a few times where I'd stop and walk for a few seconds. So in my mind I was like "Nadiya, get your a** back to running" and so I did. The second last km was definitely the hardest because you were almost there and you were tired. The last km was ok because there were a lot of people cheering for you including an appearance from one of my friends (Thanx girl! Couldn't do it without you!) Before I could blink I was done my first Half :D It went by sooo fast... way to fast...

Yeah! Medal Time!

Overall, it was a very nice cheery supportive race. There were some issues in the beginning at water stations. Literally had to wait for like 30 seconds to get water at the 6km mark. Overall, I couldn't complain because it was a beautiful course and things went smoothly :)

As for myself, I wasn't too impressed with myself and think I could've done better. I'm not sure why I had the shin pain out of the blue but I'm proud that I raced through. Ok, I'm going to pay for that one tomorrow but it was worth it :P I did not do a negative split but my second half wasn't that much slower then my first. My chip time was 2:08:09.9 which was just a little bit better then average for my gender and age group. I can't stand being average so I was disappointed with myself, yet again this was my first half :) I was aiming for much faster then that but I guess that just means that I have a lot of room for improvement :P

My legs felt so heavy afterwards. I needed an excuse to sit :P

Did you know? + Easy Spring Salad

First off, thanx Z for nominating for the Leibster Award. I've technically already have done it a while back, but because you asked I'll answer your questions :P It's always fun to answer and read them :) I'll put teaser pictures of today's recipe in between too. Uhh sorry this post is a bit long :S

1) Why did you start blogging?

Umm... I wasn't exactly leading a healthy lifestyle before I started my blog. I knew all the nutrition principles but didn't really put them into practice. At the same time I've adopted a lot of the unhealthy habits from my housemates. I was eating a lot of junk food and really just not taking care of myself. Then I found a few healthy living blogs and I thought it was super cool. So I've started a blog to get myself back on track :)

2) How much time do you spend per week on your blog?

I've never actually kept count. It really depends from one week to another. Like if I learn something really cool in school then I don't have much to research for my science posts. Yet, if I know nothing about it then I have to do a lot of background research. Also, with posts sometimes I just get an inspiration and I can write a pretty good one during my bus ride to university. Other times it takes a while. I'm also always trying to learn new things and am currently trying to figure out how Twitter works. So it varies... a lot. 

3) When people ask you "What do you do?" what do you answer, (work/hobby/spiritual)? Why?

I tell them straight up. I'm a health science major hoping to get into the MD/PhD program. Hobby wise I'm a health freak :P

A kohlrabi???

4) What is a food you hate but secretly pretend to like to be cool?

Surprisingly a lot of junk food. Many sweets and cakes are too sweet for my taste but I have them anyways because its rude not to eat cake on someone's birthday. Yeah... I don't like most fast food places.

5) Favorite romantic comedy?

I don't really watch them :S I did like Beauty and the Briefcase though :)

6) Favorite TV soap?

Again I don't really watch soaps much. I watch Grey's Anatomy (what pre-med doesn't), New Girl (sooo funny!), and Game of Thrones at the moment. I did watch Gossip Girl before :P

7) Do you believe in God?

Pssh... why must it always be male? Why not Goddess :P Being in science my religious views are kind of complicated. I believe in a higher power but I don't follow an organized religion.

A Kohlrabi salad?

8) Are you good in math?

Did you really have to ask that haha! Love math :) Used to be part of math club in high school and participated in these contests.

9) Guilty Pleasures?

Ooh :P Turning off all the lights in my room so that my parents think I'm sleeping. Really I'm just watching Game of Thrones (before Gossip Girl) or reading magazines (Cosmo Runner's World) on the computer :P Having the lights off makes me feel like I'm sneaking behind my parents back to do it :P

10) Favorite place to go for vacation?

I've never been to the same place twice but as strange as it sounds I really want to go back to Amsterdam. It's so beautiful :) Madrid is nice too, so is Nice... I liked LA too... and Lucerne... I'll shut up now.

11) Are you practical or emotional?

Generally practical. Most times I do things because I need to get them done but sometimes I go with the moment. 

Now the salad...

Spring Kohlrabi Salad

Ingredients and Directions (serves 3)

• Wash and clean a kohlrabi
• Grate 1/2 of a large or 1 small kohlrabi
• Grate about 200g of white radish
• Add 1/4 cup of raisins, let them soak up in the juices
• Grate 1 apple
• Mix in 3 tbsp of sour creme (I'm sure plain greek yogurt will work)
• Season with salt right before eating or else it'll get way too watery

Enjoy ;)

Lastly...

I've had acne since I was about 15-16. I guess other girls got it much younger and got rid of it while they were younger. I still have it but over the last 2 years it's been disappearing :) In a way I don't regret having it because it was a learning opportunity about skin and different skin products. I'm also proud of myself for not wearing foundation daily to cover it up :)

Do you have any interesting answers to any of those 11 questions?

"MAY" you be Seductive

So seduction… How did I get there? Well I was watching a TEDx video by Chen Lizra who is a professional dancer and she talked about the power of seduction. Basically, seduction is about getting someone to do something that you want them to.  First you yourself must have a desire to go do something, then you need confidence, the body language, and an ability to stir desire in the other person. Hmm… confidence…

Now let's think about what's "sexy"? I think it's more about confidence then how you look. "Sexy" is not about showing a lot of skin, that's just "trashy" and doesn't give any room for imagination.  Sexy comes in different body shapes, forms, and sizes, it's more of an attitude then how you look. Naturally skinny girls  can be attractive if they behave appropriately, same thing with very curvy women. It's like when you put on that special pair of pants or that black dress and you feel sexy. It's not that your  body has changed, it's just your confidence… and it shows!

Beauty is truly in the eyes of the beholder. Travelling through Europe has made me understand that and I've talked about it quite a bit with one my friends. The definition of beauty has  changed over time and is different based on the culture. Gosh, the small feet in China, those funky neck braces in an African country, having a tiny waist during Renaissance times, being Victoria Secret like in North America. If you don't fit the definition of beauty in your country at this moment, chances are that you would be considered attractive in another country or in a different time period.  I totally felt that while being in Europe because I fit their definition of beauty much better then the American version.

Evolution of Beauty. It always changes

Why aren't we confident then? We all blame the media don't we? The truth is (unless you're those few blogger awesome moms that I've met) our families are the ones to blame. I was watching this singer with my grandma on TV and she started making comments that she shouldn't show her legs because her thighs were touching. Uhhh… think about how I'd feel if sometime in the future I had legs like that singer. From an early age I was told that this and this are your bad features, hide them. While I was a child, my mom obsessed about the size of her butt and would always ask me how pants looked on her. Like a 12 year old cares? Yet, now that I'm older I'm starting to think the same way. Thanx mom!

The Chen Lizra from the TEDx talk discussed her experience in Cuba where there're no ads and children from an early age are ingrained with the idea that they're beautiful. Results? They're highly confident as evident by their damn right sexy dances. How many of us would have the guts to dance like that in the streets?

 

Now why is seduction important? Well yeah, the first thing in our mind is sexual seduction. However, there's so much more then what fits the definition. Really, it's just about getting people to do things that you want them too and it all boils down to confidence.

This is why for the month of may, I wanted to start an initiative called "MAY  you love yourself". I encourage you to take a feature that you don't like about yourself and write something positive about it. We cannot move on if we keep on dwelling on the negative things, we need positivity to move forward. Write it in a blog post, in a journal, or just on a paper. Then when you feel down, just re-read it. I also made a small button so feel free to share it :) Because you deserve to be seduction, you deserve to get everything you want out of life. 

I'll start. I've never had a flat stomach, unless it's right when I wake up and haven't eaten or drunk anything yet. My grandma says this stupid thing about me pinching my stomach and the fold having to be 1cm. Well mine's like an inch which means that my grandma has the right to constantly give me clippings from newspapers about stomach exercises and ways to decrease abdominal fat. See what I  mean about the role of family?

Well you know what grandma. My tummy is strong, it can digest anything and I very rarely get food poisoning. I can hold an over 2 minute plank now and my side planks are just kick ass! My stomach helps me lift things, helps me swim, helps me run, helps me live. Beat that!