When the Women’s Health Initiative study found that menopausal women taking hormone replacement therapy suffered “higher rates of breast cancer, cardiovascular disease, and overall harm,” a call was made for safer alternatives. Yes, the Women’s Health Initiative found that estrogen does have positive effects, such as reducing menopausal symptoms, improving bone health, and reducing hip fracture risk, but negative effects were also found , such as increasing the blood clots in the heart, brain, and lungs, as well as breast cancer. Ideally, to get the best of both worlds, we’d need what’s called a selective estrogen receptor modulator—something with pro-estrogenic effects in some tissues like bone but at the same time anti -estrogenic effects in other tissues like the breast. Drug companies are trying to make these, but phytoestrogens, which are natural compounds in plants, appear to function as natural selective estrogen receptor modulators. An example is genistein, which is found in...