[Isabelle]

81.5 kg this morning. Not bad for a Wednesday, considering I have until Sunday afternoon to reach a record low, before the kids arrive and my eating habits can't be all diet and NBE any more.

I don't have the courage to whip out the measuring tape, but my breasts still feel full. So maybe I'm not losing that much

[Pansy-Mae]

Well done on the weight loss.
It gets harder and harder as the weight goes down. I've found that I tend to lose steadily for a short while and then, for some inexplicable reason, it will wobble and maybe even go up a little before starting to drop again. I've learned to look at the longer term view ( i.e over 2 or 3 weeks, not 2-3 days) and as long as the overall trend is down, I'm satisfied. It still gets disappointing when it goes up by half a pound instead of down, though!!

[Isabelle]

Yes, Pansy Mae,

Those inexplicable reasons bother me. In ten months on this forum, I was never heavier than 85.5 kg, and never lighter than 80.5 kg. I was lighter at the end of summer, and heavier at the end of winter, which is perfectly normal. But I'm beginning to wonder how the weight will go off. With any statistical significance, I can only say it stayed the same over those ten months.

So now I'm trying to hit a low by Sunday morning, and a high by Tuesday morning. How these highs and lows evolve from week to week is what matters. I do get nervous as Sunday morning is nearing.

Maybe I need a structural change. Diet and exercise are OK now, so the next try is black seed.

[SarahSchilling]

I've been taking PM/SP for 3 months now, and was wondering if i should break for a week and take milk thistle. Or would simply adding it help? I know its gonna be one pissed off week if not ;p

It's been a whole lot of pills, and my father was diagnosed with liver cancer a few weeks ago. I figure I might want to take better care of myself

Thanks, sorry to hijack your thread.

[Isabelle]

No problem Sarah,

Don't break. Just take the milk thistle along with the rest, just don't take more than 250 mg. If you're worried about your liver, consider FG.

Meanwhile, I'm in doubt about the double dose of maca.

I'm amazed by how quick the results of my maca experiment were to disappear into thin air. True, I lost weight fast. But I'm doubting whether my high maca dose adds anything to breast or butt size at the moment. The maca is doing something: libido is embarrassingly high, my otherwise regular sleep pattern is completely disturbed, and each time I go for a walk, I'm tempted to make it two hours instead of twenty minutes. For some reason, I also tend to adopt a revisionist view on just about anything in my life, which may of course be the very reason why I doubt the value of this maca experiment.

So what does maca really do?

I used to be skeptical about the amount of evidence that supports maca meeting the criteria for being called an adaptogen:
http://www.breastnexus.com/showthread.php?tid=11015&pid=43660#pid43660
but more evidence has been added since then. Maca is a hot topic in scientific literature right now.

The wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maca
suggests maca restores hormone deficiencies because of its nutritional qualities. So it must either increase cholesterol, or increase Luteinizing Hormone (LH) so more pregnenolone is made from cholestrol, or increase pregnenolone in another way. I've never read anything about maca increasing pregnenolone, though.

Maca does increase estrogen in ovariectomized rats, but not testosterone or cholesterol:
http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOT...824011.htm

In studies that find effects of maca and include measuring LH, no effect on LH is found:
http://journals.lww.com/menopausejournal...on.24.aspx
http://content.karger.com/produktedb/pro...doi=264618

So I'm thinking of finishing this experiment, then finishing the maca stock, and then quitting maca altogether. In my program, it does nothing that oats couldn't do, or maybe soy.

[Isabelle]

I don't do scheduled massage. Only when my breasts hurt. The reason is I didn't believe oxytocin has a role in breast growth. Or any other effect of nipple or breast stimulation.

It looks like I may have to re-think that:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19700_the-5-weirdest-reasons-we-have-sex-according-to-science.html?wa_user1=2&wa_user2=Sex&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=popular

If women keep their breasts because of the shape of babies' faces, there must be a relation between nursing longer and maintaining breast size. But how does it work? Oxytocin is the first thing that comes to my mind. But the first thing I have to do is more reading.

[Isabelle]

The story I linked above about the evolutionary meaning of breasts really got me thinking. The miracle is not that they grow in the first place, the miracle is that they stick around after the job is done. Suddenly the noogleberry makes more sense. Anything that could be related to the presence of babies could make sense. Even the heating pad. And even Rock Melon makes more sense now:
http://www.breastnexus.com/showthread.php?tid=5419
The rockmelon ringtone is supposed to have sounds in it that only crying babies make. I just downloaded it, and have it on repeat now. Click the first link in the thread, and type 'rockmelon' in the search box. Click the button 'or get it to your PC' for any of the three ringtones shown. That button opens a new page with a progress bar. Right click that bar and check 'loop'.

[Isabelle]

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.

[Isabelle]

Weight is down from 82.0 to 80.5 kg. Breast circumference has decreased dramatically, from 45" to 43", but my under bust circumference has decreased too, from 37" to 36". So I haven't only lost my D cups, but also dropped from a band size 42 to 40, and 40C is a sister size of 42B, which is what they look like. So those 3 lbs cost me a lot really. And they didn't bring me much: Body Mass Index (BMI) is down to 25.3, which is still overweight, and Waist Hip Ratio (WHR) stayed the same at 0.84.

I was in a hurry to lose weight, because the NBE season starts now, and I know I'm not going to grow if I keep losing weight now. I decreased the maca dose from a heaped to a flat teaspoon, the hops from two heaped tablespoons to two flat tablespoons, and the flax seed from an egg spoon to a teaspoon. And I just chewed my first teaspoon of black seed. Tastes like road bitumen, but it's on a lot of Turkish bread, so I'm just gonna have to suck that up too.

Height: 178.5 cm = 5 * 30.48 + 10 * 2.54 = 5' 10"
Weight: 80.5 kg * 2.2046 lbs/kg = 177 lbs
Body Mass Index (BMI): 80.5/1.785/1.785 = 25.3
Breast: 110 cm = 43 "
Under: 92 cm = 36" Difference Breast - Under = 110 - 92 = 18 cm = 7 ", US bra size 40C
Waist: 84 cm = 33"
Hip: 100 cm = 39" (actually the widest part around my butt)
Waist to hip ratio (WHR): 84/100 = 0.84

Progress in 2011:
Day 11/7 26/7 08/8 22/8 05/9 19/9 3/10 17/10 31/10 14/11 28/11 12/12 27/12
BMI: 26.5 26.4 26.2 25.7 25.3 26.0 25.70 25.70 25.70 25.60 26.00 25.90 25.90
B-U: 8.00 5.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 10.0 10.00 13.00 11.00 14.00 15.00 16.00 16.00
WHR 0.95 .945 0.94 0.92 0.92 0.96 0.930 0.940 0.910 0.880 0.880 0.880 0.870

Progress in 2012:
Day 09/1 23/1 06/2 20/2 05/3 19/3
BMI: 25.7 26.7 26.4 25.9 25.7 25.3
B-U: 17.0 18.0 18.0 18.0 20.0 18.0
WHR 0.84 0.86 0.84 0.88 0.84 0.84
B-U = Breast - Under in cm

[lostacres6]

Hello Isabelle,
So what exactly does your new spring program consist of now? If you don't mind also explaining what each item does too (e.g. Hops = estrogen). I read from you that it takes about 4 mo. to see progress but at my age (61) 4 mo can be a long time to waste if I'm doing the wrong program to begin with. Then I have to start on something else & wait another 4 mo. Before long a yr. is gone & I have nothing to show for it.
Sorry to whine but I'm so frustrated & impatient.
One more question - what, if anything, combats the mood swings from the herbs? Something that won't hinder NBE. So many NBE ers have this problem, me especially. Do the mood swings mean the herbs are working? I should be a quadruple X if mood swings are indicative of growth!!!!!!!!!!