Susan's Place Transgender Resources

this is my mother's current argument against my transition, along with "youre messing with mother nature." she claims to have heard this from a nurse.

is this statement even remotely true? and are there any other possible dangerous consequences? id also appreciate any links to reliable sources. im eager to prove her wrong, because right now she seems to only be listening to people with the same conservative trump-supporter ideas that she has.

i appreciate any information you can provide!

-Isaac Ezra

That is one of the stories that keeps popping up and it totally false. I started HRT at about 26 years old and I am now 64 years old. I am in good health, take a two mile walk each day and don't often get sick. If you are treated by a skilled doctor, there is very little risk to HRT. Self medicating is another story as without the blood tests, it's impossible to know if you have an issue developing.

If anything, HRT seems to be good for me as it drops my already low blood pressure a bit more and my blood test surprise doctors when they take my age into consideration as they would expect those results from a 20 year old.

Taking chemotherapy to cure cancer is messing with Mother Nature too.  It's curious that such a sentiment would come from a nurse.

I think my life expectancy would be pretty short at this point without HRT. Anything else is a bonus. Plus it's just plain ignorant rubbish.

Quote from: AnonyMs on August 03, 2016, 06:58:43 PM
I think my life expectancy would be pretty short at this point without HRT. Anything else is a bonus. Plus it's just plain ignorant rubbish.

Indeed. I would be dead for a decade by now, had I not started HRT and went from there.

Being that this is in the FTM section and men have a shorter lifespan than women it's a valid question. 30 years sounds excessive though.

Best review evidence for ftm on hrt is of no  evidence of harmful side effects as long as medically monitored. Some risk in mtf from hormone driven cancer but insignificant compared to depression driven morbidity without hrt.

from what I've read the only risks of T are the ones that Mother Nature exposes cis males to by making them produce higher levels of T  :laugh:

Being on T can affect things like cholesterol and blood pressure, especially if you are predisposed to it. After starting, my blood pressure got higher, but a bit of weight loss fixed that problem. But no, you won't die 30 years early. In fact,  with all the blood draws and health checks we get, I would imagine that our doctors and us are more likely to spot potential health problems. 


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The only effect of T that might cause someone to die a whole lot younger is a an increased propensity to challenge Darwin's Law and do really risky things.

Quote from: Ayden on August 04, 2016, 10:23:57 AM
In fact,  with all the blood draws and health checks we get, I would imagine that our doctors and us are more likely to spot potential health problems. 

That's a good point, whether you are on T or E.

Yeah, my parents used this against me also. For Testosterone, there have been no proven hugely negative side affects besides increase in aggression, which in of itself is also rare. So no, you don't lose any life by starting T. In my opinion you gain life because you get to live as you truly are!

My doctor said that by taking testosterone, my health risks would begin to look more male. So like a cisgender man, I will have a greater risk of heart disease and high cholesterol. I will have a shorter life than most women, but it will be on par in terms of length with that of a cisgender man.

For me, the benefits outweigh those downsides. As long as you are being proactive about your health (seeing your doctor on a good frequency, getting lab work done regularly, staying active, eating well, etc.), HRT shouldn't otherwise have a negative impact on your health or quality of life.

The lifetime risk of suicide of a trans person is 40%. The lifetime risk of suicide in the whole population is less than 4%. The risk of suicide of an FTM post treatment is less than 1%. Dr. Gorton says the Hippocratic Oath should guide a medical profession to look at that reduced relative risk of 2000% and weigh in favor of action over inaction.

There is NO risk to HRT in an otherwise healthy person that stacks up to the suicide risk in a trans person who goes untreated (especially who is untreated and without family support).

Have a study.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150224143110.htm

If you search for it I'm sure there's more, but this one is recent and apparently "the most comprehensive to date".
Spoilers: Medical professionals who know what they're talking about consider correctly administered HRT to be safe. There's some risk of side effects, but that can be said of many medications that people take to improve their quality of life.

Here's an interesting article:
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/06/22/3672506/transgender-suicide-rates/

Appropriately administered HRT is relatively safe. Lack of treatment, discrimination, etc. not so much.

Even setting all that aside, there's the matter of personal choice and quality of life.
For me top surgery + T definitely extended rather than decreased my lifespan. The genital dysphoria still gets me in a major way sometimes, but I am overall happier and more functional than I ever was before. I am a happy and productive man instead of a miserable shut-in. If I had known beforehand it would be this big a difference in quality of life, but it would kill me in five years, I would've signed on anyway. And it's been demonstrated to be much safer than that. Unless something other than HRT side effects kills me - accidents and illness happen regardless of HRT -  chances are in my favor of having many more awesome years of not even considering suicide anymore, where for awhile there, it was a daily consideration.

As for "messing with nature" everyone who uses that as an argument against something is, in my experience, a gigantic hypocrite (do they enjoy air conditioning? Toilets? Food that they did not have to personally hunt or gather? Modern medicine?) with no rational objections to the thing at hand, so they desperately grasp at emotional straws instead.

Quote from: Deborah on August 04, 2016, 11:11:48 AM
The only effect of T that might cause someone to die a whole lot younger is a an increased propensity to challenge Darwin's Law and do really risky things.

This is probably the best (most true and funny) answer, haha.

I've never read anything that claims T causes you to lose such a huge chunk of your lifespan. Even if it's true, cis males would be dropping like flies at a young age since they produce much higher T levels than what FtMs are given.