Monday, December 28, 2015
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015
Rodan & Fields
18 Dec 2015
I just got back from the dentist getting my teeth cleaned. As I was making my next appointment the receptionist complimented me on my makeup. I had to tell her I wasn't wearing any...IT'S MY SKINCARE!! 😜
02 Dec 2015 Just getting my REDEFINE mask on! I LOVE getting ready for bed just so I can wash my face!
06 Nov 2015 Here it is!!! No makeup selfie! 😜
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Monday, December 7, 2015
Busy Boy - Facebook 07 Dec 2015
Peter picked all of the low hanging Christmas ornaments off the tree to have an Easter Egg Hunt of sorts with Aaron, basket and all with my ornaments. Wrong holiday, kid. After he got bored with that he went into the bathroom to spread Vaseline all over the world. When he finally got put into highchair lockdown, he managed to get out of the straps and escape so he could find a pencil with which to stab me. #toddlerlife
Update: Toothpaste in the toilet!?!? I can't keep up!
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Terrific or Terrible? Facebook 03 Dec 2015
You know you have a terrible two year old when Mom is repairing the hole in the couch while Daddy is tearing the toilet apart to unclog the dinosaur that was flushed. 😖
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Festival of the Trees - Facebook 01 Dec 2015
Took the kids to the Festival of the Trees in Vacaville earlier today! So many beautiful trees to see! Peter had a hard time keeping his hands off the decorations and his hugs off of all the stuffed animals! Donated for the local food banks! Fabulous way to start the holiday season! 😊
Friday, November 27, 2015
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
iPad destruction - Facebook 24 Nov 2015
It was not a matter of IF but WHEN. My naked iPad was thrown to the floor in a fit of fury by the two year old when power was disconnected. The screen is now shattered. Why was the iPad naked? The otter box was unceremoniously picked apart by the children (much like vultures). Why, FOR THE LOVE, did the two year old have the vulnerable naked electronic? Good question....Daddy?
OMGsh it's been one of those days!! 😖
A Child's Routine - Facebook 24 Nov 2015
Me: Why are there a bunch of golf balls in the fridge?
Children: For the same reason there are pencils in the toaster, Mother. What a ridiculous question! Can you not see our curious little minds must work through the intricacies of thermodynamics in our youth so that we can unleash the power of free energy in the prime of life?
Me: Uhh....right. That must be it.
Children: There, there, Mother. Now return to your pots and cooking instruments that you may prepare for us a perfectly balanced delicious meal from the Canary Islands to which we will turn up our noses come meal time. We shall demand oatmeal as soon as bedtime has been announced.
Me: Just like last night.
Children: See, Mother? You're getting it already! Bravo!
Monday, November 23, 2015
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
That's all Folks - Facebook 18 Nov 2015
Tender mercies: I had surgery today. Nothing major, but still. Last night I took dinner to a friend who, as it turned out, gave me more comfort toward my anticipation than my silly lasagna did for her recovery for the SAME surgery. 💕 Guess who my nurse today was? My angel! The same one who delivered Samuel's head in the parking lot 5 1/2 months ago! 💕 Afterwards Michael took me to get something to eat and who should we run into? My Visiting Teacher! 💕 Coincidences? Not on your life! I'm a Daddy's girl and He just reminded me of it today through LOTS of little miracles! 💕
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Parkour - Facebook 17 Nov 2015
The lobby of parkour. You have to be at least seven before you can participate. Aaron didn't get the memo! LOL #allmuscle
Monday, November 16, 2015
Saturday, November 7, 2015
Pressure canned some chicken today!!!
03 Nov 2015
I still have two spots available for my canning class this Saturday! Any takers? Free-99! Just bring your own jar and chicken!
Supplies to bring:
2 pounds chicken and one wide mouth quart jar, one NEW ring and one NEW lid. Optional: one bullion cube. The chicken may be breast or dark meat, but it is best to be boneless
It's recommended that you bring a journal or notebook and a pen to write the steps down.
Naomi, Rebecca (please tell Julie), Leah, Nelia,
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Decibels - Facebook 05 Nov 2015
Hunter uses earmuffs to read at home. LOL! What?!? Home isn't quiet enough for you kid? #cantimaginewhy #familyofnine
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Wanna bet? Facebook - 04 Nov 2015
My husband tells me that I'm the only one who can consistently beat him at Rock-paper-scissors....and yet he always gambles when it comes to wiping bottoms!! 😂😂😂😂 #askingforit #iwinagain
Saturday, October 31, 2015
He's mine! Facebook 31 Oct 2015
Last year I started a pink blanket. Today I finished off a very long pink scarf instead. It's bitter sweet. Seven is the number of perfection. Alas there is no second girl in my future, only daughters in law. #ANDwearedone
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Sunday, June 14, 2015
The virtues of being a nudist
The children shed clothes EVERYWHERE. They're like long haired dogs but worse. I wonder what people must think when they come over and it looks like the washing machine barfed all of the front room. Socks, underwear (shamefully, yes), shoes and random pieces of clothing all over the front room floor. And how is it that while at home I am constantly tripping over shoes, but when it's time to go, nobody can seem to find a matching pair?
When clean clothes are taken from the laundry room to the bedroom the children are given strict instructions to put them away. Inevitably the clothes are dumped out in a big pile and jumped in like a pile of fall leaves. This poses an entirely new problem. Since there were already dirty clothes on the floor each article of clothing must pass the sniff test to determine whether it goes into the drawer or into the dirty bag. It's not that we're not picking the clothes up. We DO! Every evening we get the children ready for bed and pick up ALL the dirty clothes off the floor...just like we did the night before. I just don't get it. Where does all these dirty clothes come from? I'm starting to suspect the knomes again.
Socks are by far the worst. The children will run outside in their socks. Come inside take them off run around barefoot. Want to go outside, get a NEW pair of socks. Mom insists on shoes this time. Come back in. Shoes go off. Run through spilt water on the floor. Take socks off. Get new pair. Within just a few days a two week supply of socks is exhausted. Since the socks get thrown to random places instead of into the dirty bags they don't get washed in the regular rotation. Then I get blamed for not providing them with clean socks.
Getting dressed in the morning is like pulling teeth. A broken record can't possibly repeat itself as much as a mother does with her children. Elle will wander around quite happily in just her underwear.
I am starting to see the virtues of being a nudist.
The scraps of paper left behind after making an army of paper people. I love that they're so creative, but the mess left behind is epic!
When clean clothes are taken from the laundry room to the bedroom the children are given strict instructions to put them away. Inevitably the clothes are dumped out in a big pile and jumped in like a pile of fall leaves. This poses an entirely new problem. Since there were already dirty clothes on the floor each article of clothing must pass the sniff test to determine whether it goes into the drawer or into the dirty bag. It's not that we're not picking the clothes up. We DO! Every evening we get the children ready for bed and pick up ALL the dirty clothes off the floor...just like we did the night before. I just don't get it. Where does all these dirty clothes come from? I'm starting to suspect the knomes again.
Socks are by far the worst. The children will run outside in their socks. Come inside take them off run around barefoot. Want to go outside, get a NEW pair of socks. Mom insists on shoes this time. Come back in. Shoes go off. Run through spilt water on the floor. Take socks off. Get new pair. Within just a few days a two week supply of socks is exhausted. Since the socks get thrown to random places instead of into the dirty bags they don't get washed in the regular rotation. Then I get blamed for not providing them with clean socks.
Getting dressed in the morning is like pulling teeth. A broken record can't possibly repeat itself as much as a mother does with her children. Elle will wander around quite happily in just her underwear.
I am starting to see the virtues of being a nudist.
The scraps of paper left behind after making an army of paper people. I love that they're so creative, but the mess left behind is epic!
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
The Nature of Stress
Stress....seriously.
It's not something that should be lightly dismissed. I would know. I, myself, was on the fast track to an auto immune disorder. How is that exactly? Well, cortisol is the stress hormone. When it is present in your blood stream too often your body will start to get allergic to it.
In January of 2012 I was under extraordinary stress. I ought not go into great detail on the nature of my stress, but suffice it to say: we had just bought a new house, were starting a new business, juggling FIVE different houses while trying to relocate two different households, trying to get zoning for my mother amidst massive neighborhood opposition. Add into that mix the family chaos that involved a 100 pound television falling on top of my three year old shortly after we had moved (a miracle it didn't kill him, but when I walked in and saw his feet sticking out from underneath a pile of "rubble" I really thought it was a possibility)... among other things. Anyway, the point is: emotionally and physically I was tapped out.
My reactions were both external and internal. Different parts of me would swell up. Sometimes my eye lids would swell. Sometimes my lips. Sometimes I would break out in hives all over my body. I took pictures of myself during some of the more horrific episodes, but when I started breaking out in hives on a nightly basis...additional pictures seemed rather redundant. The only one I showed them to was my husband. So...ugly pictures of myself weren't high on my priority list.
This is a picture that I have used as my profile picture on Facebook.
I look like I've been beat up, attacked by bees, or am suffering a stroke. Nope that's just the stress manifesting on the outside.
The hives and swelling wasn't limited to my face. I broke out in hives everywhere. On two occasions I could feel internal organs start to react in a similar manner, but doctors were dismissive because they couldn't see anything happening.
The first time it was my heart. I felt like I was having something like a heart attack. Everything was going in slow motion and my heart felt, for lack of a better description, swollen. It wasn't a heart attack, since I didn't have any other symptoms like the numbness in my left arm. But it was something. And for me it was scary.
The second internal swelling happened past 10pm one night. It felt like my lungs had swollen and were foaming up. Again, there was nothing external to clue that anything was happening. But I started coughing to the point that I was coughing up blood. I coughed so much and so hard that my voice became hoarse within 10 minutes. We called my dear friend Mindy who immediately came over to stay with the children so Michael could take me to the Emergency Room. I took a dose of anti-histamine which kicked in and eliminated all of my coughing by the time that we arrived to the ER. The doctor listened to me, and upon hearing my raspy voice declared that I was a hypochondriac who had a cold.
I was disgusted. However, to be fair, this doctor probably had already been through 100 legitimate cases of people over-reacting to cold symptoms. The only solution they could have offered me was to diagnose me with something horrible and prescribe ongoing prescriptions to manage the condition.
My brother got married in Utah late December of 2011. While at the reception one of my children started throwing up. I went to assist him in the men's bathroom and found the situation very embarrassing especially when other wedding guests would walk in and see me standing there holding my barfing child's head over the toilet. Being in new social situations, for me, adds to my stress. I'm not an extrovert and being around strangers stresses me out. Being around strangers while my face is swelling is even more stressful, so it was a really ugly cycle: Embarrass. Swell. Embarrass. Swell.
To this date, my lips have never gotten so big as they did that night. The tissue on the inside of my mouth split in multiple places, unable to handle the sudden volume, and is still, 4 years later, permanently damaged from the swelling that night.
The bottom line was: the medicine didn't FIX the problem. It "managed" the symptoms. I use air quotes because I can hardly qualify what it did to me as managing. No spank-you.
So, the solution.
The FDA has declared that people who are selling homeopathic remedies cannot discuss specifics of what certain approaches do. They cannot make claims. They cannot give specifics. I, do not, however SELL essential oils. So, I can tell you all about it.
I showed my friend Denee one of my more recent pictures of my horrific ugliness and told her that I was breaking out on a nightly basis. She had just been introduced to DoTerra essential oils and signed up to be a distributor. She rubbed some essential oils on the back of my neck (and at the time she said what they were, but I honestly don't remember now what it was). She probably used lavender, or Balance, or Serenity.
I never had another full horrific break out after that. Just like that.
No more lip swelling. No more hives.
Essential oils took the mess that I was and basically calmed my system that was swinging so wildly out of control and just simply and quietly brought everything back into alignment. I mean.... I didn't even have to use them over a long period of time.
Now, I have had moments where I get stressed. I will put Balance on the back of my neck or rub Serenity over my heart, and it helps.
Here's the advantage. I was never formally diagnosed as having an autoimmune disorder. I didn't have to use nasty zombie-inducing prescriptions for the rest of my life.
If I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed, I will take Valerian Root which helps me relax and sleep well during the night. It smells like stinky feet, but it's natural and it REALLY works. There are no weird side effects. I get to feel like myself.
I am still allergic to my own stress. How do I know this? One particularly stressful day this past October or November I went to bed without doing anything to address my stress from the day. Neither Valerian Root nor any of my essential oils. At 3am I woke up and the white of my right eye was red and swollen. It was itchy and bulging past the iris like a juicy boiled egg.
I didn't take a picture of that one, but you can google one to give you an idea of what it looked like. It's gross.
My first connection that any of this was connected to an auto immune disorder was THIS symptom. I did some research and swollen whites along with all of the other nasty swelling, hives, etc. were all textbook identifiers of autoimmune disorder.
And just so I would know that they weren't kidding, DEATH is one of the complications.
Stress leads to death. It's no joke.
We have come a long way in the medical field. No longer are we giving leeches to people to drain the bad blood, or going from patient to patient without washing hands. But something very effective and essential has been lost along the way. The natural remedies that our forefathers depended upon were lost. Fortunately they are making a comeback in a BIG way. Why? Because they work. And rather than masking symptoms they actually fix the problem. I'd say that's a much better approach, any day of the week.
I have much more to say concerning Essential Oils and all of the amazing ways they have blessed my family, but I wanted to focus on stress in this particular posting.
It's not something that should be lightly dismissed. I would know. I, myself, was on the fast track to an auto immune disorder. How is that exactly? Well, cortisol is the stress hormone. When it is present in your blood stream too often your body will start to get allergic to it.
In January of 2012 I was under extraordinary stress. I ought not go into great detail on the nature of my stress, but suffice it to say: we had just bought a new house, were starting a new business, juggling FIVE different houses while trying to relocate two different households, trying to get zoning for my mother amidst massive neighborhood opposition. Add into that mix the family chaos that involved a 100 pound television falling on top of my three year old shortly after we had moved (a miracle it didn't kill him, but when I walked in and saw his feet sticking out from underneath a pile of "rubble" I really thought it was a possibility)... among other things. Anyway, the point is: emotionally and physically I was tapped out.
My reactions were both external and internal. Different parts of me would swell up. Sometimes my eye lids would swell. Sometimes my lips. Sometimes I would break out in hives all over my body. I took pictures of myself during some of the more horrific episodes, but when I started breaking out in hives on a nightly basis...additional pictures seemed rather redundant. The only one I showed them to was my husband. So...ugly pictures of myself weren't high on my priority list.
This is a picture that I have used as my profile picture on Facebook.
This is to give anyone who may not know me a little bit of context of how I normally look. Well, on a good day and with some makeup on. But you get the idea.
As I was preparing some of these next pictures last night, my sister-in-law was looking at them over my shoulder. She would gasp at each new one, whispering, "I had no idea". Well, not many people did know. Similar to the hair loss post that I shared a few days ago, my personal problems are not something I like to broadcast to the world unless I simultaneously have a solution to present for those who may be experiencing a similar problem. I'm not looking for sympathy here. This is me trying to bless anyone else who is going through this and doesn't know how to fix it.
It started with just my lips swelling up. If my lips didn't swell I would break out in hives. If it wasn't hives, my eye lids, facial tissue, or hands would swell up. Like I said before, it was happening on a daily basis but I didn't take pictures every time. Here is a sampling: 
I look like I've been beat up, attacked by bees, or am suffering a stroke. Nope that's just the stress manifesting on the outside.
The hives and swelling wasn't limited to my face. I broke out in hives everywhere. On two occasions I could feel internal organs start to react in a similar manner, but doctors were dismissive because they couldn't see anything happening.
The first time it was my heart. I felt like I was having something like a heart attack. Everything was going in slow motion and my heart felt, for lack of a better description, swollen. It wasn't a heart attack, since I didn't have any other symptoms like the numbness in my left arm. But it was something. And for me it was scary.
The second internal swelling happened past 10pm one night. It felt like my lungs had swollen and were foaming up. Again, there was nothing external to clue that anything was happening. But I started coughing to the point that I was coughing up blood. I coughed so much and so hard that my voice became hoarse within 10 minutes. We called my dear friend Mindy who immediately came over to stay with the children so Michael could take me to the Emergency Room. I took a dose of anti-histamine which kicked in and eliminated all of my coughing by the time that we arrived to the ER. The doctor listened to me, and upon hearing my raspy voice declared that I was a hypochondriac who had a cold.
I was disgusted. However, to be fair, this doctor probably had already been through 100 legitimate cases of people over-reacting to cold symptoms. The only solution they could have offered me was to diagnose me with something horrible and prescribe ongoing prescriptions to manage the condition.
My brother got married in Utah late December of 2011. While at the reception one of my children started throwing up. I went to assist him in the men's bathroom and found the situation very embarrassing especially when other wedding guests would walk in and see me standing there holding my barfing child's head over the toilet. Being in new social situations, for me, adds to my stress. I'm not an extrovert and being around strangers stresses me out. Being around strangers while my face is swelling is even more stressful, so it was a really ugly cycle: Embarrass. Swell. Embarrass. Swell.
To this date, my lips have never gotten so big as they did that night. The tissue on the inside of my mouth split in multiple places, unable to handle the sudden volume, and is still, 4 years later, permanently damaged from the swelling that night.
I showed a doctor some of the pictures from that night and she prescribed to me some knock-you-on-your-butt medicine that made me a zombie and went through my breast milk and made the baby loopy. I didn't like taking it. On days when I felt overly stressed I really had to weigh my options: zombie vs. hives. I eventually dumped it all out down the toilet. The bottom line was: the medicine didn't FIX the problem. It "managed" the symptoms. I use air quotes because I can hardly qualify what it did to me as managing. No spank-you.
So, the solution.
The FDA has declared that people who are selling homeopathic remedies cannot discuss specifics of what certain approaches do. They cannot make claims. They cannot give specifics. I, do not, however SELL essential oils. So, I can tell you all about it.
I showed my friend Denee one of my more recent pictures of my horrific ugliness and told her that I was breaking out on a nightly basis. She had just been introduced to DoTerra essential oils and signed up to be a distributor. She rubbed some essential oils on the back of my neck (and at the time she said what they were, but I honestly don't remember now what it was). She probably used lavender, or Balance, or Serenity.
I never had another full horrific break out after that. Just like that. No more lip swelling. No more hives.
Essential oils took the mess that I was and basically calmed my system that was swinging so wildly out of control and just simply and quietly brought everything back into alignment. I mean.... I didn't even have to use them over a long period of time.
Now, I have had moments where I get stressed. I will put Balance on the back of my neck or rub Serenity over my heart, and it helps.
Here's the advantage. I was never formally diagnosed as having an autoimmune disorder. I didn't have to use nasty zombie-inducing prescriptions for the rest of my life.
If I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed, I will take Valerian Root which helps me relax and sleep well during the night. It smells like stinky feet, but it's natural and it REALLY works. There are no weird side effects. I get to feel like myself.
I am still allergic to my own stress. How do I know this? One particularly stressful day this past October or November I went to bed without doing anything to address my stress from the day. Neither Valerian Root nor any of my essential oils. At 3am I woke up and the white of my right eye was red and swollen. It was itchy and bulging past the iris like a juicy boiled egg.
I didn't take a picture of that one, but you can google one to give you an idea of what it looked like. It's gross.
My first connection that any of this was connected to an auto immune disorder was THIS symptom. I did some research and swollen whites along with all of the other nasty swelling, hives, etc. were all textbook identifiers of autoimmune disorder.
And just so I would know that they weren't kidding, DEATH is one of the complications.
Stress leads to death. It's no joke.
We have come a long way in the medical field. No longer are we giving leeches to people to drain the bad blood, or going from patient to patient without washing hands. But something very effective and essential has been lost along the way. The natural remedies that our forefathers depended upon were lost. Fortunately they are making a comeback in a BIG way. Why? Because they work. And rather than masking symptoms they actually fix the problem. I'd say that's a much better approach, any day of the week.
I have much more to say concerning Essential Oils and all of the amazing ways they have blessed my family, but I wanted to focus on stress in this particular posting.
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Baldness. The Embarassing Truth Before Regrowth.
Three years ago I took a family picture. My hair was starting to thin, but I managed to hide a lot of the loss with the volume that was otherwise made up by my naturally curly hair. I got away with it for some time.
However, due to stress (another post entirely) and post baby hormones, my hair started falling out to the point that I was looking like a drown rat. The length was still there, but I was looking like a homeless, scraggly mess. I first realized this when one of my children took a picture of me from behind and I saw the gaping holes in my hair. I lost my patience with myself and took a pair of scissors and chopped off the length of skinny pony tail I had left. The next day I went to my friend and professional hairdresser who had to try to fix my compulsive moment of frustration.
I was hoping with short hair that perhaps I could get some of the volume back. I tried taking high doses of biotin and rubbed jojoba oil into my hair to clean out the follicles. My hair continued to fall out and now my shorter cut was no longer able to mask my onward march toward baldness.
I'm not normally a very vain or high maintenance person, but female baldness is beyond even my threshold for feeling good about myself. Summer of 2014 rolled around and I had precious little hair left.
I started researching hair loss causes, solutions and had to wade through a lot of commercialized hype. Anything that sounded fantastic would be revealed as a complete fraud on an independent review outside of the promotional website.
Let me cut to the chase. There is a hormone called DHT that is primarily responsible for hair loss. Dihydrotestosterone (commonly abbreviated to DHT), or 5α-dihydrotestosterone. Do you see the testosterone that is involved in that name? I'll let your imaginations go wild and place the blame as you will. (As a side note: this was AFTER my stress was managed through homeopathic, natural means because stress, when unchecked, can lead to autoimmune disorders where hair loss is one of the side effects).
I found two products that were highly rated on Amazon from people who had actually used them. One was a caffeine shampoo made by Ultrax. Another was a generic herbal supplement (Saw Palmetto) that, based on my research, was an effective and natural DHT blocker. I did try some of the specific DHT blocker mixes (Ultrax Hair Maxx) but I ran out quickly and for the price, it didn't seem worthwhile if my much cheaper Saw Palmetto accomplished the same thing.
WoW! It was like I had a whole new crop of bangs coming in! I knew that it was working!
One note about the Ultrax shampoo: As a shampoo, it really stinks. It doesn't foam up and clean unless you use a LOT. With the price of it being nearly $50 for a puny little bottle, it's not something that I want to have to use a lot of each time. So I would wash my hair with my normal shampoo to get it clean and then use a single pump of the expensive Ultrax shampoo and it would foam up and get distributed throughout my hair much better. I'd let it sit for as long as possible to make sure that I was getting the most benefit.
I kept taking the Saw Palmetto both morning and night and using the caffeine shampoo. The more expensive Ultrax DHT-blocker mixed vitamin ran out within a month, but I didn't get any more due to the price. I figured if I saw any negative effects or hair loss I could always get more. But things kept chugging right along just using the Saw Palmetto as my DHT blocker.
I took the kids to the Exploritorium for a fun Science field trip in January. While there I climbed into their triangular mirror exhibit. I saw the back of my head for the first time in months. I was AMAZED! I didn't see my scalp, but my hair had actually filled in and looked full. Hallelujah! So four and a half months after I had begun the regimen, on January 11, 2015, I took a second set of pictures.
If you notice, my hairline regrew, whereas before it was VERY receded. The hair looks thicker and my scalp was not showing through. I took both set of pictures with wet hair right combed back so that my curls wouldn't mask what was going on.
I've kept up the process with Saw Palmetto and the caffeine shampoo and at this point I'm just working on getting my length back. When I comb my hair now the pick drags quite a bit more through the new thickness.
There is a prophecy from Isaiah about the daughters of Zion having baldness instead of well set hair. Before I found a solution to my hair loss I felt rather like I was personally fulfilling the prophecy. But I know I'm not the only one who may have this problem. So as embarrassing as it is to post this for the whole world to see, I feel obligated to share this with my sisters who may also be experiencing this very embarrassing affliction. I have gained so much from all that you share. This is me paying it back.
As a recap, here is a progression of regrowth side by side:
I was hoping with short hair that perhaps I could get some of the volume back. I tried taking high doses of biotin and rubbed jojoba oil into my hair to clean out the follicles. My hair continued to fall out and now my shorter cut was no longer able to mask my onward march toward baldness.
I'm not normally a very vain or high maintenance person, but female baldness is beyond even my threshold for feeling good about myself. Summer of 2014 rolled around and I had precious little hair left.
I started researching hair loss causes, solutions and had to wade through a lot of commercialized hype. Anything that sounded fantastic would be revealed as a complete fraud on an independent review outside of the promotional website.
Let me cut to the chase. There is a hormone called DHT that is primarily responsible for hair loss. Dihydrotestosterone (commonly abbreviated to DHT), or 5α-dihydrotestosterone. Do you see the testosterone that is involved in that name? I'll let your imaginations go wild and place the blame as you will. (As a side note: this was AFTER my stress was managed through homeopathic, natural means because stress, when unchecked, can lead to autoimmune disorders where hair loss is one of the side effects).
I found two products that were highly rated on Amazon from people who had actually used them. One was a caffeine shampoo made by Ultrax. Another was a generic herbal supplement (Saw Palmetto) that, based on my research, was an effective and natural DHT blocker. I did try some of the specific DHT blocker mixes (Ultrax Hair Maxx) but I ran out quickly and for the price, it didn't seem worthwhile if my much cheaper Saw Palmetto accomplished the same thing.
I took some before pictures on August 30, 2014 with some confidence that I would have some results to compare within a few weeks. A little more than a week later (Sept 8, 2014) I saw some of the immediate growth that had been reported by other users.
One note about the Ultrax shampoo: As a shampoo, it really stinks. It doesn't foam up and clean unless you use a LOT. With the price of it being nearly $50 for a puny little bottle, it's not something that I want to have to use a lot of each time. So I would wash my hair with my normal shampoo to get it clean and then use a single pump of the expensive Ultrax shampoo and it would foam up and get distributed throughout my hair much better. I'd let it sit for as long as possible to make sure that I was getting the most benefit.
I kept taking the Saw Palmetto both morning and night and using the caffeine shampoo. The more expensive Ultrax DHT-blocker mixed vitamin ran out within a month, but I didn't get any more due to the price. I figured if I saw any negative effects or hair loss I could always get more. But things kept chugging right along just using the Saw Palmetto as my DHT blocker.
I took the kids to the Exploritorium for a fun Science field trip in January. While there I climbed into their triangular mirror exhibit. I saw the back of my head for the first time in months. I was AMAZED! I didn't see my scalp, but my hair had actually filled in and looked full. Hallelujah! So four and a half months after I had begun the regimen, on January 11, 2015, I took a second set of pictures.
If you notice, my hairline regrew, whereas before it was VERY receded. The hair looks thicker and my scalp was not showing through. I took both set of pictures with wet hair right combed back so that my curls wouldn't mask what was going on.
I've kept up the process with Saw Palmetto and the caffeine shampoo and at this point I'm just working on getting my length back. When I comb my hair now the pick drags quite a bit more through the new thickness.
There is a prophecy from Isaiah about the daughters of Zion having baldness instead of well set hair. Before I found a solution to my hair loss I felt rather like I was personally fulfilling the prophecy. But I know I'm not the only one who may have this problem. So as embarrassing as it is to post this for the whole world to see, I feel obligated to share this with my sisters who may also be experiencing this very embarrassing affliction. I have gained so much from all that you share. This is me paying it back.
As a recap, here is a progression of regrowth side by side:
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