Soy and Isoflavons

I've heard mixed reviews about soy and it's isoflavons

On one hand isoflavons are good because they reduce the risk of colon and genital cancer, reduce fat. Soy is good as it has lots of protien, calcium and is rich in vitamins and minerals. Unlike meat it has no cholesteral and low fat

On the other hand isoflavons create an imbalance in your hormones, often increasing estrogen in you body. This estrogen is speculated to have bad effects, and can femenize some men (loss of body hair, nipple discharge, ect).

Generally I gather you needs tons and tons of soy to really get any negative effects. But the question is how much is too much? Is there really some limit you should have, or is it safe to have as much as you want? Soy to me seems like a miracle food, but unfortunatly there is lots of hype about estrogenic effects

There's a lot of soy alarmists with biased motivations out there. I've also seen mixed reviews, but I was more concerned about their effect on adrenal function.

What I've read about soy isoflavones effects on estrogen is that they are cleared from the body within a few days, are between 10 and 1000 times weaker than your bodies' natural estrogen, and that they had a protective effect against chemical xenoestrogens - BPA, pesticides etc, by blocking the estrogen receptors, thereby reducing the number of sites the xenoestrogens can attach to and then indirectly encouraging them to be excreted from the body. But its really hard to find unbiased info. They were also good for gently normalising estrogen in females.

The estrogen in dairy is far stronger than soy.

I just try not to let it become a major part of my diet. I avoid eating anything with soy in it more than once a day (I do this with most foods anyway).

The other thing that concerns me though is that soy is poisonous raw. I'm not a raw foodie, but I have a fairly high proportion of raw, whole foods in my diet. But it still makes me think twice about things like that. But having said that, I still eat soy frequently.