[Isabelle]

Woww Susan,

These are tough questions. I wouldn't make tea from horse tail, because orthosilicic acid is the one you want, and it's not thermally stable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicic_acid
http://www.breastnexus.com/showthread.php?tid=7660&pid=25026#pid25026

Strange that you need to get up often at night. I used to have the same problem, but it was caused by the pressure from gas. I don't remember everything I changed, but moving fenugreek to noon helped.

SP blocks DHT no better or no worse than hops. But a friend recently showed me this:
http://www.jbc.org/content/265/11/6048.full.pdf
This sentence struck me:
"125I-SHBG could be prevented
from binding to its receptor by a variety of steroids
whose relative inhibitory activity (dihydrotestosterone
>> 2-methoxyestradiol > testosterone > estradiol >>>
methyltrienolone > cortisol) was almost identical to
their relative ability to bind to SHBG."
So DHT binds to SHBG stronger than testosterone. That's no surprise, but somehow I never thought about that. That means if hops or SP won't completely block testosterone becoming DHT, SHBG will pick up the DHT that does get made. So SHBG is a kind of safety net, picking up the last DHT the anti-androgens don't stop.

Taking large amounts of flax for weeks or months increases SHBG. So now I understand why flax is in NBE programs, and why it worked well in my experiments. It's a different kind of anti-androgen.