Quote from: Devlyn Marie on March 08, 2015, 08:13:08 AM
In my case, I'm not looking for them. I'm getting the desired results from herbal supplements. Every time I mention that, I'm shouted down and told to see a doctor or go informed consent.
OK... a number of things
1) Herbals do not work
I took these for about a year before starting "proper" HRT. Results varied depending on the herbal but one of them was particularly effective and produced
breast tissue and
softer skin. When I had my pre-HRT assessment by my endo I showed him the herbals, told him the dosage and his opinion of them was that they clearly worked as I had some feminisation. Some herbals obviously do work.
I mentioned to him that I took herbals because I believed that they were like low-dose HRT and I wanted to start the process without having the harmful effects of getting normal HRT wrong on self-medding. He commented that there could be anything in the capsules, that no estrogen showed up in my blood work, but my SHBG was through the roof. Once on HRT it came back down. My liver enzymes were high as well, but not dangerous. My testosterone was low but still in the male range, just near the bottom.
2) Dosages
The elephant in the room around Susan's Place and yet it really matters in this discussion and here is why. To get the herbals to work for me I took what I thought was a moderate dosage but my blood work said otherwise. There are no standard medical blood tests for phytoestrogens so nobody can measure them. You can have other things such as liver, kidney, SHBG, prolactin, etc measured and hopefully they would give warning of something going wrong before it is too late.
The real danger that I was unaware of was my dropping testosterone. Men's health is very sensitive to low testosterone and it is the trigger for a number of conditions and phytoestrogens are not estrogens so they are not really a good replacement for the missing T. In normal transition the drop in T is made up by the huge increase in E, but this switch has one important effect which is often overlooked - your metabolism slows by 25% or so to female levels. Your energy and strength both lessen, naps, break and snoozes become more important and if you continue your standard intake of food your weight will shoot up rapidly.
3) HRT Dosages
I know a couple of crossdressers self-medding on Progynova (Estradiol Valerate). They are cross-dressers, happily male for 95% of the time but they want some effects from HRT. One of them wants a "fleshier" chest so that it can be plumped up into what he called "Saturday night boobs". The other wanted better skin as it is known that HRT often improves skin tone. So they take very low dosages because they are both married and do not want to feminise. One wife knows about the CDing the other's wife does not.
The problem is that the HRT is having no effect. The dosages are so low that the effects of estrogen are less than minimal. One of them had a blood test and it showed normal male levels of T and E so he upped the dosage and had a retest. Still no effect. Levels of T were medium-high. If he goes much further he will be on a transitioning dose and he does not want that. The boobs have not arrived nor has the skin tone improved. Nor is it likely to.
4) Success?
What happens if you succeed and get feminisation or at least effects from the pills? The answer for some seems to be that the desire to cross dress goes away. Also what about the other effects? If T lowers then your metabolism slows, erections usually decrease or become softer (explain that to the wife) and you may get
sore boobs which will cause many day-to-day problems - lifting things like most guys do is out, contact sports are out and the 'jiggling' can be very unpleasant necessitating a bra. What about the mood swings as puberty #2 hits? What if you start thinking like a girl and all your male friends become incomprehensible to you, their motivations, likes and goals alien to your new viewpoint?
5) Informed consent? Maybe not...
I cannot see why a cross-dresser would want to do this except for the wrong reasons. HRT is a very blunt instrument, very much something which is all or nothing. Generally speaking, cross-dressers identify as male and most of the time have a male identity. HRT is the start of a journey into the female world. There is a big, big difference between being female for the mirror and being out as female and the danger is that if HRT succeeds it may very well out you. Then what?
Most doctors know little about male to female HRT, that is why we see specialists but I am willing to guess that even fewer medical people understand the full effects of HRT and how it radically alters your
mind. Most of their guidance will be for standard dosages and not "oddly low" dosages so how can they talk to you about this in sufficient depth to really make the consent
informed? All they can really do is throw a few generalities in your direction and get you to sign a legal waiver saying you understand what they failed to inform you of because they do not really understand it either.
Over to you Devlyn ....
