This Everyday Food May Have A Memory Perk Hiding In Plain Sight

Soy has become a pretty familiar part of the conversation around women's health.

You'll find it in everything from tofu and edamame to soy milk, and researchers have spent years looking at its plant compounds and what they might mean for the body. One area that's gotten particular interest is the brain.

Soy contains compounds called isoflavones that can interact with estrogen in the body, which has led researchers to wonder whether they might also play a role in cognitive health.

Isoflavones are naturally occurring compounds in soybeans and soy foods such as tofu, tempeh, edamame, and soy milk.

They're sometimes called phytoestrogens because they can interact with estrogen receptors, although they don't work exactly like the estrogen your body makes.

Estrogen does more than regulate reproductive health. It also plays a role in the brain, including areas involved in memory and learning. That's one reason researchers have been interested in whether soy isoflavones might have an effect on cognition.

For this review, researchers brought together 16 randomized controlled trials with 1,386 adults. The average age was 60, and most participants were postmenopausal women, although the group also included some men and premenopausal women.

When the researchers looked at cognition as a whole, soy isoflavones were associated with a small improvement. But things got more interesting when they separated cognition into different skills.

Memory was the only area that showed a statistically significant improvement. The researchers also looked at attention, language, executive function, psychomotor speed, and visuospatial reasoning, but soy isoflavones didn't significantly improve any of these areas.

There was no major safety concern, either. The review found no serious adverse effects among people taking soy isoflavones compared with those taking a placebo.

The researchers have a possible explanation for why memory, specifically, showed a benefit. Some parts of the brain involved in memory, including the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, contain a lot of estrogen receptors.

But that's a possible explanation, not a proven cause.

The review can't tell us that soy directly improves memory, and it certainly doesn't show that eating soy can prevent dementia.

The size of the effect is important, too. The improvement was small, and most of the participants were postmenopausal women, already past the perimenopause transition.

And soy doesn't need to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to brain health.

It's one food that can fit into an overall nutritious eating pattern, alongside plenty of other foods that provide protein, fiber, healthy fats, vitamins, and minerals.

A review of 16 randomized controlled trials found a small association between soy isoflavones and better cognitive function, with memory showing the clearest benefit.