Re: hormonal imbalance question for janaki

My experience has been that it takes longer than two weeks. I think it depends on how deficient your body is, kind of like it has to catch up that deficit first. For me taking a capsule a day didn't do squat. I had to take a tablespoon daily for about the first three weeks, and only then did I get relief. And I mean TOTAL relief!

I've also read they're estrogenic and I also feel I have plenty of estrogen but am lacking progesterone. I don't know what kind of hormonal imbalance you are dealing with. I'm 48 and probably in perimenopause and everything I've read pointed to too much estrogen and not enough progesterone. I tried progesterone cream but it didn't help much. My big problem was pms that was getting worse over time till I was spending two weeks or more in heavy pms and cycles that had gradually shortened to 23 days. I've tried everything from the subtle (giving up plastic wrap and plastic food containers because they're estrogenic) to the obvious (every supplement I've ever read as helpful.) I've done over a dozen liver flushes, bowel cleanses, fasting, and the raw food diet. (The last two were before I found out I was vata.) The pms just stuck to me like a toddler at a new day care.

I tried vitex until I read that it causes a drop in testosterone levels which I definitely didn't need. That's how it got it's common name (chaste tree berry) because the monks used it to kill their sex drive. My poor longsuffering husband didn't need THAT on top of all the rest of it. AND it didn't work at all for me.

My personal opinion is that the hormone problems are not the problem, they're a symptom that something in the body is off. I don't want to take a pill to cover up the symptom, I want to cure the underlying problem. Bottom line - I have a vata body. It needs extra fat. It especially needs extra fat with omega 3's. That makes sense to me because for most of my life I've eaten unnatural foods like corn oil, and other refined fats that have an unnaturally high level of omega 6 and very little omega 3. Now I'm correcting that underlying imbalance and learning about what my particular body needs to give me abundant health. And no more freaking pms!!

One little tip. I make my coconut oil fudge recipe (posted in the coconut oil forum) and substitute flax oil for two thirds of the oil and make fudge with it. I cut it into cubes and just eat a piece a couple of times a day. That's so much better than guzzling a tablespoon of oil day after day! Plus it's more convenient and I like splitting into smaller portions instead of the whole thing at once.

Sorry this is so long! Hope some of it's useful to you.