LearningToLive - congratulations! I read a very interesting passage on an endocrinologist's website last night, that got me thinking.
As sex hormones impact on breast or buttocks, skin or bone, they do so slowly, because the small hormones, unlike the far larger peptide hormones, enter easily into the substance of their target cells and act upon receptors that are intracellular. Once activated these receptors alter the expression of genes located within the nucleus of the target cell, and this process takes quite some time to take effect. As a result for example, a woman cannot suddenly swing from D cups to A cups over a period of seconds, minutes, hours or even days, no matter how erratic her hormone levels may have become. The same is not true however, of the brain. Sex hormones influence the brain not only through the classic receptor mediated effect on the genes of the nucleus, a truly slow, sluggish and lingering effect, they also act directly on the outside surfaces of brain cells, through mechanisms that operate at very high speed, indeed within milliseconds. As a result erratic levels of sex hormones, operating on the brain in a brief and rapid manner can and do translate promptly into major psychological problems including disturbances of emotion and intellect, such as mood swings, depression, anxiety and perhaps suicide. On the other hand stabilizing hormone levels in the transsexual can lead to marked improvements in the emotional and intellectual states of those patients who used to suffer from psychosis and schizoidal conditions.
Your euphoria may very well be from the estradiol.
