Has your period stopped? You may be eating too much soy.

Ladies, if soy is a staple of your diet and you've stopped getting your period, your favourite vegetable protein may be part of the problem.

Say what?! Really. Read on.

If you've browsed Goodbye, anorexia!, you'll know that I had amenorrhea, the technical term for not menstruating, for several years. There were some undeniable positives to the situation: no tampons, pads or blood stains, no irrational chocolate cravings, and above all, no PMS!

The pros paled, however, in comparison with the cons. Here are the worst of the bunch:

• you can lose bone density, increasing your risk of developing osteoporosis;
• your sex drive may drop; and
• getting pregnant is out of the question (so far as I know.:)).

Except during the years when I wasn't eating enough, none of my doctors, kind and dedicated as they were, had any idea why my period was MIA. They eliminated the usual suspects, from pregnancy to stress to a highly active lifestyle, and even prescribed me a hormone. Still nothing.

Then, eureka! On Christmas Day 2013 -- while at church, of all places:) -- I got my period for the first time in ages. By the New Year, it had gone underground again. There was a silver lining, though. When my period came back for good this January, I finally realized why it had been gone for so long.

Tofu -- cheap, easy to prepare and vegetarian-friendly -- had been my go-to protein source for years. What I hadn't realized is that the isoflavines found in soy protein can mimic the hormone estrogen. They can bind to estrogen receptors, taking the place of the real McCoy. Since soy doesn't have the same properties as estrogen, it presumably can't do everything this hormone can. One of the things it might not be able to do -- this is my theory -- is trigger menstruation.

When I finally connected the dots this spring, I could see that the times when I menstruated coincided with the times when I was eating only small amounts of soy. Before my Christmas miracle, I'd been sharing meals with my parents for at least a week. Their diet is rich in animal protein, and tofu makes only rare appearances on the menu.

What about this January? In the New Year, I was happily chowing down on an abundance of meat, fish and eggs. Tofu wasn't out of the picture, but it certainly wasn't shouldering the burden for providing me with protein, as it had in the past.

March was the clincher. I went back to tofu in a big way. Just like that, period off. And when I started eating meat, fish and eggs in April and dialed back on the tofu... period on!

I wish I could say this was a scientific account backed up by reams of carefully conducted research. It isn't. That said, if you have amenorrhea and you eat soy -- and you're not pregnant, unusually stressed, underweight or exercising like an elite athlete -- try an experiment. Kibosh the soy, or at the very least, stop eating so much of it. Go Paleo, if it helps. With any luck, you'll get the curse again.:)