24-05-2012, 10:19 PM
Hi Lenneth,
When I joined the forum in June, I hadn't grown in over three years. So I did what traditional wisdom on the forum calls a "break": stopped everything, took milk thistle for a month (3 * 250 mg), and started over.
I ramped up on hops first, instead of opting for the safer fenugreek. I had trouble ramping up, and still lost an inch in the first two weeks. After that, my growth picked up.
The idea of a break is getting all phyto-estrogens off the receptors and starting afresh. Milk thistle is an herb that's also used for liver function, and it improves insulin sensitivity. So there's a lot of confusion between this type of program break and the pre-packaged "cleanses" or "liver cleanses" that are sold by natural remedies stores. Estrogen receptors that are important for NBE are in breasts, not in the liver. But if they set free a lot of phyto-estrogens in a month, I can imagine that causes an extra load on the liver, which is the organ that metabolizes steroids. So maybe a break and a cleanse are related.
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.
When I joined the forum in June, I hadn't grown in over three years. So I did what traditional wisdom on the forum calls a "break": stopped everything, took milk thistle for a month (3 * 250 mg), and started over.
I ramped up on hops first, instead of opting for the safer fenugreek. I had trouble ramping up, and still lost an inch in the first two weeks. After that, my growth picked up.
The idea of a break is getting all phyto-estrogens off the receptors and starting afresh. Milk thistle is an herb that's also used for liver function, and it improves insulin sensitivity. So there's a lot of confusion between this type of program break and the pre-packaged "cleanses" or "liver cleanses" that are sold by natural remedies stores. Estrogen receptors that are important for NBE are in breasts, not in the liver. But if they set free a lot of phyto-estrogens in a month, I can imagine that causes an extra load on the liver, which is the organ that metabolizes steroids. So maybe a break and a cleanse are related.
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.