Pansy Mae commented several times that the time I take to judge any change in my program is too short. That would explain why everything I kept from my experiments so far are changes that affect the mind or start swelling. Those are short term effects. For NBE, of course, the time that really matters is how long a phyto-estrogen should be tested. The consensus on the forum is that this takes four months. So my growth spurt at the end of last year is the result of my starting hops in July. And my growth stopping in December could be the result of something I did in August. I started maca just before August, but the first oats and flax experiments were in August.
The length of cell cycles varies from 10 to 200 hours:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_cycle
This means my two weeks experiments are only just long enough to notice the first effects of a phyto-estrogen. And the only effects that would be noticed would be the very spectacular ones, like a level of IGF-1 in the breasts that would convince all the cells to start a growth cycle at the same time. This just doesn't happen, because the negative feedback loop via Luteinizing Hormone keeps hormone levels low. Because only a few cells start growing, it indeed takes months before the measuring tape shows any effect.
The anterior pituitary gland measures the total amount of sex hormones. If that's too high, it decreases LH, so less pregnenolone is made from cholesterol. That decreases the levels of all the hormones that are made from pregnenolone.
So the sum of all the hormone levels is a constant. What we want in NBE is to increase estrogens, preferably estradiol. That can only happen if another hormone is decreased. So we use anti-androgens to decrease DHT. I use just enough FG to keep progesterone high enough to prevent estrogen dominance, but no higher than that. I avoid stress and long, strenuous exercise to keep cortisol low. I will lower maca to lower testosterone, but I can't afford to let it go too low, because estrogens are made from testosterone. Flax, and possibly hops, are above the stalling limit, so I will lower them. I won't start panax ginseng, because that is supposed to increase estriol, and I prefer estradiol.
That's a lot of changes at the same time, but this is the beginning of the real NBE season, so I better get going. I can still do short term experiments with herbs that won't decrease LH, like black seed.
