[calilove236]

Hey yall so im estrogen dominant with low levels in all. I've been taking a large dose of PC cream and maca extract 3 times a day. Im cold all the time, my period won't stop, and I have a bunch of acne. Why?
Also, I had to stop taking shatavari earlier this year because it was making me sweaty, shaky, and sick.

[hannah]

Cause you notice acne I guess its maca it increases dha or dhea(maybe someone can jump in and correct me..) so you'll need an anti-androgen(like saw palmetto,spearmint, barley grass, borage oil, macadamia oil etc) or an aromatase but that will also ppromote estrogen(ie epo,liqourice or others).

[EllaC]

With those symptons I'd stop if you haven't already. Thyroid maybe because your always cold? Do the basal body temp test in the mornings, you can google it.
I do wonder about maca and estrogens after reading women developing ovarian cysts after taking it. If you have a cyst alReady then the action of even slightly raising estrogens even if it is to balance might be enough to push you over the edge. Sadly I don't think we will ever really know how herbs affect us individually.
The pc might be too much for you too.

[surferjoe2007]

Cold, period issues, sweaty, shaky and sick: The herbs & PC are overloading your nutritional resources. Plus even without the herbs your profile shows related past issues. So worsening them with herbs isn't a surprise: Diverting the already poor resources that went to them to your breasts instead is probably a bad idea.
Acne: PC increased testosterone, maybe maca a little too.

For nutrition I suggest large amounts of whole grains for the bulk of your diet, especially brown rice or rice bran (made from brown rice). Spinach, cilantro, brocolli or parsley are nice too. Also large amounts. Either way you can't just eat a little and then feel like you're eating healthy; it actually has to replace a large portion of what you eat. Multivites or multi-Bs aren't enough either, but a multi-B is better than nothing. Just don't go over about 300% RDI on any vitamin from a pill or it could make your nutrition worse for the vitamins that aren't on the label. This is not an issue with food, because it also has the other vitamins not on the pill bottle's label.

I also suggest a low dose or very low dose of PC for now and stopping the maca altogether. An anti-androgen is good too, as long as you're taking PC.

After your nutrition improves, health improves, and you no longer respond negatively to herbs and PC: Go back to large dose PC, shatavari and an anti-androgen. Test your hormone levels to make sure you don't overdo the progesterone and end up progesterone dominant instead. Once the estrogen dominance is gone reduce the PC and add a phytoestrogen such as PM. For any other phytoestrogen besides PM use very little PC or it could overwhelm the herb (after you are no longer estrogen dominant).

[EllaC]

Cold, period issues, sweaty, shaky and sick: The herbs & PC are overloading your nutritional resources. Plus even without the herbs your profile shows related past issues. So worsening them with herbs isn't a surprise: Diverting the already poor resources that went to them to your breasts instead is probably a bad idea.
Acne: PC increased testosterone, maybe maca a little too.

For nutrition I suggest large amounts of whole grains for the bulk of your diet, especially brown rice or rice bran (made from brown rice). Spinach, cilantro, brocolli or parsley are nice too. Also large amounts. Either way you can't just eat a little and then feel like you're eating healthy; it actually has to replace a large portion of what you eat. Multivites or multi-Bs aren't enough either, but a multi-B is better than nothing. Just don't go over about 300% RDI on any vitamin from a pill or it could make your nutrition worse for the vitamins that aren't on the label. This is not an issue with food, because it also has the other vitamins not on the pill bottle's label.

I also suggest a low dose or very low dose of PC for now and stopping the maca altogether. An anti-androgen is good too, as long as you're taking PC.

After your nutrition improves, health improves, and you no longer respond negatively to herbs and PC: Go back to large dose PC, shatavari and an anti-androgen. Test your hormone levels to make sure you don't overdo the progesterone and end up progesterone dominant instead. Once the estrogen dominance is gone reduce the PC and add a phytoestrogen such as PM. For any other phytoestrogen besides PM use very little PC or it could overwhelm the herb (after you are no longer estrogen dominant).

Since your into nutrition you say, could you post up a thread which isolates what foods/superfoods supply which vitamins/minerals etc ones essential for overall health ie like you promote rice bran etc and oysters and mushrooms in the past.
Having read a disturbing article yesterday about the risks of going over RDI's of certain vitamens its scared me. Ive asked similar before, but maybe to put this info up in a dedicated thread might keep it up there if you will. Cheers.

[surferjoe2007]

Cold, period issues, sweaty, shaky and sick: The herbs & PC are overloading your nutritional resources. Plus even without the herbs your profile shows related past issues. So worsening them with herbs isn't a surprise: Diverting the already poor resources that went to them to your breasts instead is probably a bad idea.
Acne: PC increased testosterone, maybe maca a little too.

For nutrition I suggest large amounts of whole grains for the bulk of your diet, especially brown rice or rice bran (made from brown rice). Spinach, cilantro, brocolli or parsley are nice too. Also large amounts. Either way you can't just eat a little and then feel like you're eating healthy; it actually has to replace a large portion of what you eat. Multivites or multi-Bs aren't enough either, but a multi-B is better than nothing. Just don't go over about 300% RDI on any vitamin from a pill or it could make your nutrition worse for the vitamins that aren't on the label. This is not an issue with food, because it also has the other vitamins not on the pill bottle's label.

I also suggest a low dose or very low dose of PC for now and stopping the maca altogether. An anti-androgen is good too, as long as you're taking PC.

After your nutrition improves, health improves, and you no longer respond negatively to herbs and PC: Go back to large dose PC, shatavari and an anti-androgen. Test your hormone levels to make sure you don't overdo the progesterone and end up progesterone dominant instead. Once the estrogen dominance is gone reduce the PC and add a phytoestrogen such as PM. For any other phytoestrogen besides PM use very little PC or it could overwhelm the herb (after you are no longer estrogen dominant).

Since your into nutrition you say, could you post up a thread which isolates what foods/superfoods supply which vitamins/minerals etc ones essential for overall health ie like you promote rice bran etc and oysters and mushrooms in the past.
Having read a disturbing article yesterday about the risks of going over RDI's of certain vitamens its scared me. Ive asked similar before, but maybe to put this info up in a dedicated thread might keep it up there if you will. Cheers.

I have made a thread with a list of many of the healthiest foods if you want to search my old posts. There isn't any single one for a single vitamin or mineral; it's the combination of vitamins and minerals. For example spinach might be the best one because it supplies a good amount of a wide variety. But you can use this to help find a food highest in 1 to 3 nutrients: http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-0001...00000.html (set to zinc as an example). It also lets you look up the nutrient content of a food. Zinc, vitamin E, B6 and essential fatty acids (ALA, EPA and DHA) are some of the hardest to get nutrients. But there are many others too both with RDIs and without RDIs, so it's far better to get food sources than to take pills for these. Vitamin E pills are in fact completely worthless for almost all health concerns because they only have alpha tocopherol and are missing other tocopherols and tocotrienols. Antioxidants are hard to get too and aren't listed. To get a complete source your only major options AFAIK are rice bran (or large amounts of brown rice), turmeric, spirulina, chia seeds and maybe large amounts of spinach since it's good to eat lots of spinach for other nutrients anyway.

Going far over the RDI on a vitamin pill is bad because it reduces your other nutrients a little, and because unlike food it does not contain these other nutrients. Other than that it's harmless. It is extremely difficult if not impossible to actually harm yourself with a vitamin or mineral. You would have to spend hundreds of dollars on vitamin pills for one specific vitamin. You usually can't do it with the water soluble vitamins and for the fat soluble ones you need around 20 times the RDI for 60-90 days. Over 1 thousand doses. This is to get the toxic amount. Exceeding the recommended upper limit is merely less than ideal, not toxic. Watch out for scare articles; they tend to exaggerate. Double check with studies and other sources.

The bigger danger is to be missing a nutrient because you got your nutrients from pills instead of food. This can be much more harmful long term leading to heart disease, cancer and many lesser issues too. But it's indirectly harmful, due to what you didn't get rather than what you got.

[calilove236]

Cold, period issues, sweaty, shaky and sick: The herbs & PC are overloading your nutritional resources. Plus even without the herbs your profile shows related past issues. So worsening them with herbs isn't a surprise: Diverting the already poor resources that went to them to your breasts instead is probably a bad idea.
Acne: PC increased testosterone, maybe maca a little too.

For nutrition I suggest large amounts of whole grains for the bulk of your diet, especially brown rice or rice bran (made from brown rice). Spinach, cilantro, brocolli or parsley are nice too. Also large amounts. Either way you can't just eat a little and then feel like you're eating healthy; it actually has to replace a large portion of what you eat. Multivites or multi-Bs aren't enough either, but a multi-B is better than nothing. Just don't go over about 300% RDI on any vitamin from a pill or it could make your nutrition worse for the vitamins that aren't on the label. This is not an issue with food, because it also has the other vitamins not on the pill bottle's label.

I also suggest a low dose or very low dose of PC for now and stopping the maca altogether. An anti-androgen is good too, as long as you're taking PC.

After your nutrition improves, health improves, and you no longer respond negatively to herbs and PC: Go back to large dose PC, shatavari and an anti-androgen. Test your hormone levels to make sure you don't overdo the progesterone and end up progesterone dominant instead. Once the estrogen dominance is gone reduce the PC and add a phytoestrogen such as PM. For any other phytoestrogen besides PM use very little PC or it could overwhelm the herb (after you are no longer estrogen dominant).

thank you very much! Im just nervous to stop the pc and Maca because even though my body is having a bad reaction to it, it feels like my anxiety and stress have gone down.

[EllaC]

Cold, period issues, sweaty, shaky and sick: The herbs & PC are overloading your nutritional resources. Plus even without the herbs your profile shows related past issues. So worsening them with herbs isn't a surprise: Diverting the already poor resources that went to them to your breasts instead is probably a bad idea.
Acne: PC increased testosterone, maybe maca a little too.

For nutrition I suggest large amounts of whole grains for the bulk of your diet, especially brown rice or rice bran (made from brown rice). Spinach, cilantro, brocolli or parsley are nice too. Also large amounts. Either way you can't just eat a little and then feel like you're eating healthy; it actually has to replace a large portion of what you eat. Multivites or multi-Bs aren't enough either, but a multi-B is better than nothing. Just don't go over about 300% RDI on any vitamin from a pill or it could make your nutrition worse for the vitamins that aren't on the label. This is not an issue with food, because it also has the other vitamins not on the pill bottle's label.

I also suggest a low dose or very low dose of PC for now and stopping the maca altogether. An anti-androgen is good too, as long as you're taking PC.

After your nutrition improves, health improves, and you no longer respond negatively to herbs and PC: Go back to large dose PC, shatavari and an anti-androgen. Test your hormone levels to make sure you don't overdo the progesterone and end up progesterone dominant instead. Once the estrogen dominance is gone reduce the PC and add a phytoestrogen such as PM. For any other phytoestrogen besides PM use very little PC or it could overwhelm the herb (after you are no longer estrogen dominant).

thank you very much! Im just nervous to stop the pc and Maca because even though my body is having a bad reaction to it, it feels like my anxiety and stress have gone down.

I'm sorry but taking large doses of pc cream if not under guidance is not a good idea. Is anyone monitoring your health?
If not perhaps consider dropping pc cream? You know it builds up in your body... Progesterone that is. Your call though.

[surferjoe2007]

Maca is pretty mild so if it is helping your anxiety you could continue it. The PC I do still think you should reduced to a low dose.