Hey everyone!
It's been quite some time since I last posted here. Got super busy with school, so kinda moved all NBE matters to the back-burner for a while, still monitoring it and everything of course. It having been more than a year, I felt it was only appropriate to come back with some updates on how everything is going.
I have actually had good progress since my last post. Towards the end of last year I dropped PC from my regimen, and kept only PM, RC, WP, and astaxanthin. Then around the beginning of this year I picked up applying PM liquid to my chest to see if it would respond well to it, and it actually did! From my monthly progress log photos I could see that it was actually helping nipple/areola size. About three months ago, though, it would seem Ainterol decided to discontinue the liquid, so it became impossible to restock; it was at this point that, after looking everywhere and failing to find anyone still selling the liquid, I decided to replace it with the breast cream, not expecting much, of course, as the perception is that it is less potent than the liquid. To my surprise though, my chest seemed to respond way better to the cream, and in around a month and a half of usage I can see that it's really helped overall breast and areolae size. Around two months ago I also decided to change astaxanthin for reishi mushroom, as, even though astaxanthin is supposed to be better at supressing DHT, it is still not very widely used, and I just did not want to play around with my supressing of T.
Speaking of supressing androgens, around a month ago I began looking into upgrading to the really big guns. I figured that it would be best to keep PM/RC, as they have worked very well so far, but I was not so sure about WP and reishi, or the other ones that I had used before; so, upon some research, I decided that the best way to go would be to replace the AAs that I was taking for cyproterone. I am not yet taking it, but have already got all the relevant bloodwork done that is important to get done to make sure the liver is doing fine and all, as well as a hormone panel to see how well the AAs that I had been taking did, just as a baseline. Fortunately, my T was doing good, at just below male range, but not quite in female range, so it still had room for improvement, which is what I'm seeking with cypro. From my hormone panel results I also noticed that my estradiol reading was extremely low, even out of range, reading just "<5.0", but I figure this might be due to PM deriving miroestrol, which I believe I remember reading doesn't really show up in bloodwork.
Working on these big changes to my regimen led me to wonder, however, what's the general consensus on taking pharma AAs but keeping PM/RC? I don't believe this kind of regimen is particularly common, as I don't remember seeing many regimens in the past, or any at all, that went like this. I decided to go with these changes to my program, though, as it only makes sense to bring T as low as possible, which would only allow PM to work better; but still, any feedback, experience, or perhaps some knowledge if anyone knows of someone else with a similar program, would be greatly appreciated too! I will also attach my bloodwork readings in case they might be interesting, as I understand it's not particularly common for people on NBE to get bloodwork done, or at least not as common as bloodwork for HRT.