GorgeousBlonde and Surfer Joe had this discussion on dopamine:
http://www.breastnexus.com/showthread.php?tid=8081&pid=27851#pid27851
Dopamine increases HGH, but reduces prolactin.
There is a lot of work on the potential of puerarin in lowering the need for L-dopa medication in Parkinson's disease patients. Puerarin can keep up dopamine levels:
"Analysis of the dopamine, dihydroxyphenylacetic acid, and L-dihydroxy-phenyl-alanine contents of 6-hydroxydopamine-treated animals by HPLC revealed that puerarin was capable to restore the contents of dopamine and its metabolites":
https://www.thieme-connect.com/ejournals...30-1249976
http://kysy.ahtcm.edu.cn/UploadFile/60/2...107_wm.pdf
All of the work on puerarin and dopamine was done on pueraria lobata (kudzu), but puerarin is also in PM. If PM does increase, or at least keep up dopamine, a lot of observations on PM can be explained.
- dopamine increases HGH: one of the reasons why PM users need little else, and effective PM programs can be quite simple.
- dopamine reduces prolactin: PM users experience swelling after stopping or decreasing PM.
- dopamine causes a feeling of immediate reward, e.g. in addiction. This explains why PM users report feeling "much better" after a few days on PM, and it also explains why their mood still improves between 3 and 6 months on PM.
(14-09-2011, 06:07 PM)Isabelle Wrote: [ -> ]Susan and I were wondering if it's possible to use phyto-estrogens to up the estrogens estradiol, estrone, and estriol separately. It is. Hops, flax, and soy digest to estradiol, but the miroestrol in PM mimics estrone. It's on p. 21 of this book:
http://books.google.nl/books?id=eMnI7Y9LYLsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Chemicals+from+plants:+perspectives+on+plant+secondary+products&hl=nl&ei=ZtpwTp0uwpw6zOC8mgk&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=miroestrol&f=false
Estrone is the predominant estrogen in postmenopausal women:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrone
In pregnant women, it's estriol, and in others, estradiol. So this still doesn't explain why Susan felt like she was pregnant 
Hi Isabelle,
Been back since Monday but not into writing much..but been reading alot.. maybe the reason I felt prego at that time could have been from the maca maybe.. that was the only thing I took dif.. and havent been on it for over a week now and when I reduced it but mainly stopped taking it notice my symptoms were better and just about gone when I been off them for just a good couple days..even if I took 1 which I did over a week ago it made me just feel crappy..go figure Isabelle SP is doing good for me maybe my body is different now, more adjusted..I have been reading more on SP and finding out how good it is for the titas and overall health..haha speaking of it ..gots to take one now..hehe
..hehe back, just got another thought, I think I was taking a small amount of FG too at the time of feeling prego but not sure but I know I was taking at least 4 maca at that time, anyway when I was taking it whether it was then too but when I was taking it later at the end of the first cycle and most of the second I wasnt liking it.. I just didnt like the way it made me feel..plus my pee stunk it was grossing me out..since not taking FG and Maca I feel better, look better, smell better (I thinks so
), overall I feel great..so dont know what to say about FG mainly as for maca it just gives me chin hair and some acne but mostly the chin hair next day, once I take a SP it is better, I will add I have been eating more sweet and simple carbs and not much chin hair and acne but almost immediately the next day I get it with maca..PM helps tremendously sp? so I think the combo of PM and SP is doing great..wow sorry so long..I just thought of something you wrote about menopause..well I am 47 and most likely in peri..so that is probably why PM works great for me.
Thank you Susan,
Happy to read you're doing well. You are right again: you could have been making estriol out of the DHEA from maca. And I'm not sure about FG myself any more. I am experimenting with replacing FG by GR. The beginning was rough, but now I can drink a whole pot of GR tea with 3,000 mg FG. The swelling is great
I know you could be almost peri by now, but you have the tools and the insight to make your cycles run a little longer than they normally would have.
Have fun,
Isabelle
I've got "dry chapped itchy skin". That's a symptom of too much progesterone:
http://livingtherhythm.com/?page_id=60
I've also got about a third of the other symptoms on that list.
I'm not drinking any FN tea. So the progesterone can only come from the FG. That figures: hops and maca are running out, so I try to save some to make it to early October. But I've been generous with the FG lately.
Since there are three weeks left to wean myself off all three (maca, FG, hops), I'll just decrease FG too.
Susan again needed little time to think through to the ultimate consequence of the different functions of Estrone (E1), Estradiol (E2) and Estriol (E3):
http://www.breastnexus.com/showthread.php?tid=10024&pid=36578#pid36578
For maximum growth, you need two estrogens, maybe even three.
Eve M's program has three phyto-estrogens that digest to 17β-estradiol: soy, hops, and flax. I would prefer to add a source of estriol to my program now. In the previous post, I found one source: panax ginseng, which is commonly called "Korean Ginseng". I'll check if there are any other herbal sources of estriol, and find one that fits into my program.
Today I bought 600 g of Korean panax ginseng root from Kaesong. It was € 27.50 at the oriental supermarket. It is a whole root packaged in a large tin, and the price beats most supplement prices, considering this is a stock for 6 or 9 months.
The wikipedia page says how to prepare it: "The ginseng is traditionally hewn and a few slices are simmered in hot water to make a decoction:"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginseng
There is also a good list of overdose symptoms on that page. So I can just try it out. I'll wait until after Monday, because that is tape day. This week I already added Goat's Rue, and if I make several changes to my program in the same two weeks between two measurements, I'll never know what did what.
I was looking for a second phyto-estrogen to add to my hops, because I feel I get too much anti-androgen from the hops. Panax ginseng is not likely to contain anti-androgens, because it increases libido, albeit not via an increase in testosterone or dihydrotestosterone (DHT), but via an increase in nitric oxide, like a popper.
Panax ginseng is also anti-inflammatory (so maybe it increases cortisol, I don't know). Furthermore, there are some promising leads in anti-cancer and anti-HIV research. That's reassuring, because an increase in nitric oxide is often associated with an increased cancer risk. Panax ginseng also does something to the central nervous system, so I'll have to be careful, to avoid an experience like Karen's withdrawal symptoms from PM.
One overdose symptom is swollen breasts, so panax ginseng may increase prolactin too. I'll read more original scientific literature on scholar.google.nl, before I start using it.
i'm currious to see how you'll do on panax ginseng. i didn't know about the 3 types of estrogen. i'm learning so much from you!
i'm thinking of adding panax ginseng to my program as well...
are you finding that you're getting better swelling on goat's rue?
Hi lled,
The first cup of panax ginseng tea will be on Wednesday. It's also hypoglycemic. Almost too good to be true
Since I can manage 1,000 mg of Goat's Rue as tea each afternoon, I woke up with a big swelling every morning. But I also ate more. I'll measure on Monday, to see if GR broke the tie between Waist Hip Ratio and bust size. But even if it does, the extra inch may still be just the swelling.
There is certainly "more to grab", but a tape measure may not pick up on that, because that measures around the ends of the milk ducts. And only the estrogens grow the milk ducts. My goal with GR was to reduce FG, and yesterday I decreased it from 3,000 mg to 2,000 mg, because of the dry skin. So that worked. The advantage of less FG may be less insulin spikes.
The goal for the panax ginseng is to lower hops to the point where a litttle libido returns, without hair loss or break outs. I hope to grow more too, because the panax ginseng increases estriol instead of estradiol. But Eve M grew well on estradiol alone, from hops and soy and flax. Susan is experimenting with soy now, with an estrone effect from the PM, and Ginie grew well for a month on flax.
How is your program going? It's zero insulin and zero cortisol. Did you notice an improved WHR? I measure like this, with "hip" actually meaning the widest circumference around my butt:
http://www.breastnexus.com/showthread.php?tid=8419&pid=35801#pid35801
The conversion factors for metric units are here:
http://www.breastnexus.com/showthread.php?tid=8419&pid=35665#pid35665
GorgeousBlonde found a great article about WHR:
http://www.breastnexus.com/showthread.php?tid=9852&pid=35469#pid35469