Just an update to my milk thistle experiment in case j-lo or Tina or anyone else is interested. Actually, no major revelations, but I’ll post anyway.
So I was on 1/2 tsp of the milk thistle for just over 2 weeks. I was going to try and go for 4 weeks, but my acne is getting out of control, so I’m stopping. A couple random internet sites said not to use it for more than 2 weeks anyway (of course, there were no scientific studies, etc, cited on those pages, so I don’t know where they came up with 2 weeks).
After those first few cysts, my skin was actually mostly normal for several days. Then around day 12 or 13 of taking the milk thistle, I started to get a couple bad cysts. Also, I sometimes get a reaction on my skin– not exactly acne, not exactly a rash, but something in between. I started to get that again too.
I think part of the reason I started to break out is because where I’m at in my cycle (estrogen higher right now, progesterone hasn’t started to rise yet). But the acne seems a bit worse than at this same time in my last couple cycles… so maybe the milk thistle is having an estrogenic effect and it isn’t providing enough support to my liver to clear out estrogen.
Or maybe my body just doesn’t like milk thistle and it’s more of an allergy/intolerance. Who knows?
Interestingly, the pains around my liver are better the last couple weeks… but they usually get worse sometime the next week in my cycle, so we’ll see how that goes.
I guess my n=1 experiment didn’t yield any major revelations. But right now I think the milk thistle might be adding to my estrogenic load. I’d love to believe it was just a “detox reaction,” but I’m not really sure those actually exist.
=)