My doctor took a much more cautious approach, ramping me up on the hormones very slowly over time. So it's hard to tell in terms of timing how my own experience would compare with someone who went "full blown" all at once. However... I do have a lot of dark body hair and a lot of pale skin, so this has been an area I've been keenly watching in myself over time. So here's my observations.
I didn't see any hair reduction from the anti-andros (also spiro in my case) alone. However the hair did seem to slow its rate of growth quite a bit after five or six months. That meant I didn't need to shave quite as often, but I still eventually needed to shave my chest, arms, & hands as well as my legs fairly routinely.
After I started on estrogen (estradiol patches) things started to change more noticably. I started the "ramp up" process at quarter strength last August. I was at full strength only in late October. By early November the hair on my arms & hands had started to lighten noticeably. And by now I no longer have to shave there at all. I effectively don't have hair on my arms & hands now. Replacing the former dark, thick hair is that super-light, downy-soft, short stuff, which you almost need a magnifying glass to detect. I haven't shaved them in weeks, and yet when I run my hand over my arms it still feels smooth instead of the course & stubbly feeling I used to get shortly after shaving as the hair started to grow back.
I've also noticed that the hair that grew on my feet & toes, which I used to shave off when I did my legs, isn't there anymore. My spouse has told me that the hair on my back and shoulders (which was never super heavy, but I did have some, and eww
) is just about entirely gone now also.
And just in the past few weeks, I've started to notice the same kind of thing beginning to happen on my chest. The boobs is where it seems to be starting. The hair is definitely beginning to grow lighter and finer, just as it did on my arms. However it's still coming in course enough that they don't feel truly smooth there shortly after shaving. I'm hoping that changes soon. And I still have the darker stuff through my cleavage area and down a strip to my belly button. I was planning to have my chest laser treatments start soon. But I think I'm going to wait to see whether the hormones make it unnecessary... or at least change the need from massive deforestation to more targeted electrolysis.
That's my experience. Your mileage may vary.
