(24-05-2012, 22:19)Isabelle Wrote: Later, I found out milk thistle contains phyto-estrogens too. So the phyto-estrogens on the receptors in the breasts may just be replaced by different ones. That means my break was not very different from what Pansy Mae did, replacing PM with my hops program for a month. That helped for a while, but Pansy Mae did not start a prolonged, steady growth cycle like I did.
Some people on the forum are convinced a week is plenty for a break. It's not completely clear how long you can to take a stalling dose before you actually stall either. The stall is over when Luiteinizing Hormone (LH) comes up to a normal level again. So that means blood work or saliva testing, or maybe a DIY ovulation testing kit can be used for that too. Without testing, it's a leap of faith: I just took my herbs diligently for four months and saw growth.
Ok, thoughts please? ( I know I'm acting rather like a headless chicken at the moment!!)
Following the above and subsequent exchanges about deliberately going beyond stalling, and/or the efficacy of Milk Thistle, I decided to do a couple of trials and see what happened.
First I went up to 3500mg PM per day for three days (3 x 500mg morning and evening plus an extra one at bedtime). That's 500mg higher than I've ever done before. The first night I woke up with a headache. No surprise there, but it went with a couple of ibuprofen, which was a surprise.
During the second day, I had a feeling that the normal 'growing pains' weren't as strong as usual, but they do fluctuate anyway so I didn't think much of it.
On the third day I was sure the pains were less, and I assumed I was definitely stalling and heading over the barrier. no difference over night, but definitely less 'uncomfortable'. So I took my 1000mg PM on the 4th morning but then went cold turkey on PM and changed to MilkThistle, 2x175mg morning and evening and nothing else. I've been doing that since Monday morning and over the past 3 days the pains have dropped to nothing.There is still the underlying extreme tenderness in the buds themselves, but other than that, zero.
It may be paranoia setting in, I know that, but this morning I'm sure that the left one, which has always tended to be smaller, is starting to lose volume already.
So, can anyone throw light on what may be happening?