[lled34aa]

thanks isabelle! yup, that confirms what i was thinking. unfortunately, i can't take maca at all - it makes me break out with cystic acne. i guess i will take a break from hops and see what happens. would hate to have to give up GR.

[Isabelle]

I opened a new jar of maca root flour this morning. I started using the previous one on September 25th:
http://www.breastnexus.com/showthread.php?tid=8419&pid=36870#pid36870

So I used 300 g in 75 days, that's exactly 4,000 mg a day. That's good, I used the jar before that at 5,000 mg a day, and I made an effort to decrease the dose.

This is the maca I use:
http://www.vanderpigge.nl/shop/active-ma...ttiss-300g
It costs € 16.95 for 300 g, which makes it my most expensive herb. But now I see the herb shop sells whole kilograms too, at € 49.95:
http://www.vanderpigge.nl/shop/active-ma...-bio-1000g
That lasts over 8 months, and saves € 6.55

I was at http://www.jacob-hooy.nl/ in Amsterdam today to buy more goat's rue: 100 g for € 3.77.

[Isabelle]

Today, the 400 g bag of flax seed will be empty. The 500 g bag of oat flakes may last another day. 420 g in 14 days is 30 g a day, which was the dose I targeted for both flax and oats.

Tape day is tomorrow. Whatever I measure, I have already decided to decrease both flax and oats to below 3,000 mg, and try that for another two weeks. I still have soy, milk thistle and panax ginseng to try before spring. That will finish the phyto-estrogens, and in spring, I want to test the anti-androgens, because that's the hair loss season. By summer, I hope to be a 42D, and switch to maintenance on NBE foods, without funny weeds and herbs

I'm breezing through the NBE targets. The waist slimming is reasonable, but the weight loss is going nowhere. Not that I want to be skinny and cold all winter, but by spring, I need to find a way to slim faster. And if that means taking up corseting again, winter is a better season than summer, so I need to do the thinking now. Maybe I should start an herb that does both waist slimming and weight loss, like black seed (nigella sativa). In Arabic, it's called al-habba as-sawda. The prophet said it cures all ilness except death.

[Isabelle]

I was reading through my new herbal, which is translated from German. It says stinging nettle root does not only contain anti-androgens, but lignans too. A quick search on scholar.google.nl showed that in the early 1990s, two German researchers, Rupert Kraus and Gerhard Spiteller, published 5 articles on stinging nettle root. They discovered no less than eight lignans in it, and even an aromatase blocker:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.10...8/abstract
Because of this variety of NBE related compounds, results are unpredictable, so I'm not going to use it anytime soon.

But the real learning is the same as after my December 7th post on hops: as long as I enter English language search terms, I will find mostly English language literature. The German literature on herbs is substantial. Better start looking into it

[Isabelle]

I found the first clues on how vitex agnus castus (chaste tree berry) should be used. These studies on monkeys and primates suggest it suppresses ovulation, increases progesterone, and lengthens the follicular phase:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...6X10002539
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.10...0/abstract
The vitex season is short. Maybe there's a symbiotic logic: have all the babies born in the most fortunate season, even with monthly cycles.

Women use vitex as a PMS herb:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/art...2209000310
http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10....1003632126
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.11...137.x/full
http://www.sid.ir/en/ViewPaper.asp?ID=173705&varStr=4;PAK%20GOUHAR%20M.,MORADI%20MARYAM,JAMSHIDI%20AMIR%20HOSSEIN,MEHRAN%20ABAS;JOURNAL%20OF%20MEDICINAL%20PLANTS;DECEMBER%202009;8;32;98;107
In these studies, low doses were taken once daily, for two or three cycles, with no mention of cycling.

Vitex is not traditionally used for menopausal symptoms, but it may be useful:
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.....2008.0447

This publication describes hormone fluctuations in irregular cycles:
http://journals.lww.com/menopausejournal...on.11.aspx
The irregular cycles are very similar to what women on PM report. The article explains why taking a strongly progestinic herb that suppresses ovulation, whether continuously or only starting at the end of the luteal phase, may help. The cause of the irregular cycle is a second ovulation, occurring at the end of the period. This would suggest vitex works best when started for PMS, and stopped a few days after the end of the period.

[Isabelle]

After maca and goat's rue tea, my weight is 82.5 kg. Body Mass Index (BMI) is down again to 25.9. The difference between bust and underbust has increased to 16 cm. Over the past 3 months, I still average over an inch of growth per month

I kept the Waist Hip Ratio (WHR) of 0.88, and the 40" butt. Neither the maca nor the fenugreek seem to have an effect, for over a month now.

I'm continuing the flax and the oat flakes, but I'll decrease the doses from 30 g to teaspoons, less than 3 g.

Height: 178.5 cm = 5 * 30.48 + 10 * 2.54 = 5' 10"
Weight: 82.5 kg * 2.2046 lbs/kg = 182 lbs
Body Mass Index (BMI): 82.5/1.785/1.785 = 25.9
Breast: 112 cm = 44"
Under: 96 cm = 38" Difference Breast - Under = 112 - 96 = 16 cm = 6"
Waist: 89 cm = 35"
Hip: 101 cm = 40" (actually the widest part around my butt)
Waist to hip ratio (WHR): 89/101 = 0.88

Progress:
Day 11/7 26/7 08/8 22/8 05/9 19/9 3/10 7/10 17/10 31/10 3/11 4/11 14/11 28/11 12/12 2014 2016
BMI: 26.5 26.4 26.2 25.7 25.3 26.0 25.7 25.30 25.70 25.70 25.7 25.7 25.60 26.00 25.90 23.0 23.0
B-U: 8.00 5.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 10.0 10.0 10.00 13.00 11.00 13.0 13.0 14.00 15.00 16.00 15.0 20.0
WHR 0.95 .945 0.94 0.92 0.92 0.96 0.93 0.920 0.940 0.910 0.91 0.88 0.880 0.880 0.880 0.80 0.70
B-U = Breast - Under in cm

[Isabelle]

The bags of oats and flax weigh 420 and 320 g. I used high doses out of them before lowering the dose, so I will need this record to back-calculate my doses. I use a tablespoon of oat flakes, and an egg spoon of flax seed now.

I saw this herbal in a book shop in Rotterdam today:
http://www.plantaardigheden.nl/meer_info...rhelst.htm

It's € 145, but it's huge: 718 pages, 24.5 cm * 30.5 cm (10" * 12"). It weighs 4 lbs. It describes 403 herbs. All the herbs I use are in it. PM is not.

The above article about the book closes with two of the web sources cited in the book:
the WHO monographs on selected medicinal plants:
http://www.who.int/medicines/areas/tradi...ograph/en/
hops is in volume 3: http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/20...24_eng.pdf
and dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases:
http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/

[Isabelle]

I found an easy link to all the volumes of the WHO Monographs on Selected Medicinal Plants:
http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Js2200e/
There are cumulative indices at the end of volume 4. Licorice and panax ginseng are in volume 1. Saw palmetto, milk thistle, stinging nettle, and peppermint are in volume 2. Hops, fennel, and aniseed are in volume 3. Vitex agnus castus is in volume 4. I didn't find maca or PM.

I checked the section on vitex agnus castus: it decreases prolactin, but prolonged lactation in one study. That sounds contradictory to me. Anyway, women who use it can expect less swelling.

There is a lot of info about quality and purity too. Maybe these books, together with the new regulation of the supplements sector, will improve what we can buy

[Isabelle]

I started 200 g hops on September 24th, and it ran out tonight December 14th. That's 200 g in 82 days, so my average dose was 2,400 mg.

I started 200 g goat's rue on November 2nd. Up to and including Thursday December 15th is 44 days. So my average consumption is 200,000 / 44 = 4,500 mg daily.

[Isabelle]

I checked the WHO monograph on hops:
http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/documen...f#page=244
for ways to modify the effect of hops by using an extract. Extracts in alcohol (95 %) are estrogenic, but not sedative. Extracts in oil are estrogenic too, so I'm not sure if an extract in alcohol has all the estrogenic compounds in it.

The sedative and central nervous system depressant properties are found mainly in methanol extracts. But OK, since methanol is very toxic, nobody's going tu use these anyway.