Curious About Your HRT Side Affects/Gender Therapist?

[Dee Marshall]

It's what works for you. As I recall, I was on lisinopril when I started spironolactone. My PCP tried to keep me on it but my blood pressure dropped way too far. Since the spiro was doing double duty the lisinopril got dropped. My BP is just fine these days.

[Cimara]

I sometimes get food cravings but I don't know if it is from hrt or if I am just weird.Lol.  One weird thing I sometimes crave is onion and mustard sandwhices. And sometimes I crave candy. I can kill a bag of double salted black licorice when the craving hits. (Double salted licorice is just that. Black licorice coated in salt. It's a Swedish thing.) I also take progesterone the last 10 days of the month. The first 2-3 days I am on the progesterone I get morning sickness. I don't usually throw up but for about an hour after I get up I am really nauseous.  The thought of food makes my stomach turn over. Ginger tea helps but it always goes away within an hour and I am fine the rest of the day. The only thing spironolactone does to me is make me pee a lot. I am moody but I started hrt very young so I can't really compare my moods if I was not on estrogen.  I am more inclined to think I am just a moody person than to say hrt is the cause.

[amberwaves]

I see the bp affects of Spiro talked about often.  The salt thing comes up frequently as well.  Personally, my issues with Spiro revolve around potassium.  My baseline levels were near the high end of the range (5.0 not sure of units and too lazy to look). My endo put me on Spiro and E as is the usual starting point.  Despite avoiding potassium rich foods it still spiked my levels (5.6 at highest, 5.1 being top of the reference range).  I didn't have any symptoms of hyperkalemia and my levels slowly crept back to baseline over a year.  Unfortunately, we couldn't use Spiro as an effective method to lower testosterone.  Luckily, continued increases in E lowered my T levels.  Just putting it out there so others can read that it can happen.  I did discuss other options for anti-androgens, but my doc is very conservative it seems.  Not sure what I would have done had E not been sufficient since I can't afford orchi at this point in time.  Not life threatening,but an annoying hurdle.

[jjordynn]

I sometimes get food cravings but I don't know if it is from hrt or if I am just weird.Lol.  One weird thing I sometimes crave is onion and mustard sandwhices. And sometimes I crave candy. I can kill a bag of double salted black licorice when the craving hits. (Double salted licorice is just that. Black licorice coated in salt. It's a Swedish thing.) I also take progesterone the last 10 days of the month. The first 2-3 days I am on the progesterone I get morning sickness. I don't usually throw up but for about an hour after I get up I am really nauseous.  The thought of food makes my stomach turn over. Ginger tea helps but it always goes away within an hour and I am fine the rest of the day. The only thing spironolactone does to me is make me pee a lot. I am moody but I started hrt very young so I can't really compare my moods if I was not on estrogen.  I am more inclined to think I am just a moody person than to say hrt is the cause.

The cravings are the same thing for me! I was told that the high estrogen dosages makes your body feel as though it's pregnant/similar. So of course moodiness and cravings. The Spiro is a diuretic, so it will make you pee more often than not.. sucks because I ALWAYS have to pee. I've almost pissed my pants numerous amounts of times while getting on spironolactone. lmfao

[laurenb]

Garlic Dill Pickles. You need the garlic to thin the blood.... Need a refrigerator door emoji LOL.

[CarlyMcx]

I wonder if it's ok to be on bp meds while on spiro? I'm on lisinopril and metoprolol.


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When I first started HRT, I had been on metoprolol for about ten years for high blood pressure, anxiety and panic attacks.

After I started HRT, I had to drastically reduce my metoprolol intake, and my spiro intake, because my blood pressure crashed, and I started having fainting spells.  So if you are on both metoprolol and spiro, then you need to monitor your blood pressure daily and adjust your meds (with doctor's permission of course) accordingly.

[Georgette]

My readings of all this are more informational, than actual usages.

Never took any Anti-T medications during my days of HRT in the 70s-80s.  Had never heard of that usage until recently.  I do take Lisinopril/HCTZ for HBP/Hypertension (started medications back in the 90s).  I have had marginal HBP for my post teen years on.  My HBP is still marginal, wonder if Spironolactone would be better for that.  I obviously don't need it for Anti-T.  Are there any others that have HBP but have had SRS.

Never had heard of any Gender Therapist back in those days.  Hard enough finding a Psychiatrist that new of TS/gender identity.  TS was not in DSM II.  No Gender Clinics or any such, and the surgeons and hospitals had minimal contact prior to surgeries.

Wonder if Dena would be able to answer these as she went thru it in the early 80s.  Have not had much contact with any from the 70s-80s to compare our journeys.  Are there any others reading these from the 70s-80s.

[Dena]

While T blockers were known when I transitioned, they were reserved as one possible treatment for sex offenders. Using them on transgenders seems to have started in the last 20 years but I don't know the exact date. We transitioned without blockers and for some of the lucky one, estrogen was sufficient to block the T. For those of us where estrogen didn't do the job, we lived with a mix of both hormones until we had surgery. For me surgery was deceptive because I though having my body match my mind removed the last of the dysphoria but I now know that it was the lack of testosterone that did it.

We didn't call it that but I may have had one of the very first gender therapist. I found it to be an important part of the transition because it helped me deal with any baggage that I had from the past and it exposed me to the issues I might face in the future. Surgery was more or less a graduation ceremony because the real work had been done in RLE and therapy. After surgery, I had a new life and faced it without any problems from the past. That's why my signature says Rebirth day, because I was starting a new life with a clean slate. You may need several appointment close together for evaluation but you may find that once a month is sufficient after that.