CJ Bellwether
@Impossible_PhD but hey, in all three polls, whether low, medium or high sex drive, the vast majority of all recipients saw either a neutral or positive change to their sex drive, and the majority saw a positive change to their sex drive.
So its a win for progesterone overall.
CJ Bellwether
@Impossible_PhD yeah the continuing ALLO wars in studies atm are one im staying out of and just waiting to see what people figure out.
Doc Impossible
@siege I guess the question then is whether the allo is indeed the agent responsible for sleepiness in oral uptake. Allo isn't the only metabolic downstream in oral MoA. It's well-observed that allo causes sleepiness, but it's also possible that the sleepiness is part of the downstream *from* allo, and the difference in processing speed is the cause for drowsiness. Could just be subclinical in rectal because of the *rate* of decay.
CJ Bellwether
@Impossible_PhD Yeah, though as someone who takes it rectally i can report i dont notice anything i could call sedative to the degree i experience orally, maybe it makes me a bit calmer, couldnt say for sure but yeah never drunk or woozy.
Doc Impossible
@siege Re: possible unexpected metabolic chain: it would certainly be damn weird to get any significant amount of allo out of rectal admin, but it's not unheard-of that something like this has an unexpected result.
Now you've got my noodle cooking.
Doc Impossible
@siege This is very interesting, and the very tight parallels in response between the two main polls actually suggests a third option: that the rectal method of action and uptake chain may differ from what we think it is, regardless of depth, and allo is produced in an unexpected way. A comparison study of oral/rectal MoA's that tracks the full metabolic breakdown chain over time would be fascinating.
Cool work! Thanks for doing it!
CJ Bellwether
allopregnanolone also has a difficult issue with some people, for most women it acts as a sedative / anti-anxiety / pro-dopamine response, but its been shown in studies that women with PMDD, being given allo actually gives a paradoxical response of stimulating their amygdala, fight or flight response, ie anxiety. The reasons on why is still being investigated in studies on cis women.
But this is one of the reasons Progesterone has such a dubious and hard to pin down factor with transfem health - because the same situation seems to occur.
Some transfeminine people report taking oral progesterone (which leads to high allo levels and low progesterone levels) increases their dysphoria / anxiety, some say they dont notice any sedative effects, while seemingly the majority become woozy and relaxed on it. Which aligns with the cis female response.
So it is interesting that even with this factor, the oral poll showed a very closely similar percentage of people experiencing an increase in sex drive as the rectal group who shouldnt be getting any allo in their bloodstreams or only a smaller amount (vaginal usage of prog shows zero allo conversion, but there are no studies to show if the same is true of rectal prog taking - it is assumed because the pill only goes in 1-3 inches deep it doesnt, but 6 inches deep in the upper rectum there is a large portal vein which would take some of the progesterone to the liver.)
CJ Bellwether
so whats the big deal?
well, according to most studies done, progesterone is assumed by many endocrinologists to stop sex drive in women, if you look online youll find a few womens health blogs that suggest otherwise and its about "balance" but many say it firmly is about shutting off sex drive.
https://www.futurity.org/progesterone-says-%E2%80%98stop%E2%80%99-to-female-sex-drive/
And yet the prevailing result of these first two polls shows a majority of transfeminine people who had low sex drive, found it increased when they started taking progesterone either rectally or orally, to pretty much the same degree.
Taking progesterone orally means the majority you take doesnt end up in your bloodstream, instead it gets broken down by the liver to allopregnanolone (allo). Rectally use we know a far higher amount of progesterone ends up in the bloodstream and lasts at quite high levels through the next day or and either little or none of it is turned into allo.
Although the results here are a small poll of 164 people we can atleast hypothesise that this shows not actually a lot of progesterone that is required to induce this response, and the stark similarity in results suggest that allo does not play a key role - even though for some it can induce a dopamine / anti-anxiety / sedative effect.
CJ Bellwether
Transfeminine people (57) with low sex drive who took progesterone rectally found sex drive:
Increased: 56%
Neutral change: 42%
Decreased: 2%
Transfemine people (107) with low sex drive who took progesterone orally found sex drive:
Increased: 55%
Neutral change: 41%
Decreased: 4%
CJ Bellwether
we're closing in on 200 respondants across the survey, which again i think is damn cool, with an hour left on the first two, and 4 hours left for the third poll which i realised later was necessary to greater clarify the results as a whole. I dont want to state why yet so as to not influence anything until they've finished running.
CJ Bellwether
I think this is the largest ever data study of trans women taking progesterone.
which is idk just kinda neat.
at the moment we're at 125 trans women giving their anecdotal data on what micronised progesterone did to their sex drive split into three categories.
CJ Bellwether
@Impossible_PhD @goatsarah well i personally meant it as a positive value in the basis that many transfeminine people who consider adding progesterone do so for its anecdotal benefits to sex drive so the fact that it seems to fill that role is a positive result.
for those who'd rather not have a sex drive then, dont they can continue to not take progesterone? or try it out and if there is an uncomfortable increase then that person can stop taking it.
as long as everyone has more options to achieve what they want from their lives and bodies thats the importantant positive.
Doc Impossible
@goatsarah @siege In this case, I read it as positive=increase, from a scientific perspective. IE, there's a positive correlation or there's a negative correlation. Not a value judgment, just a denotation that the delta is one where you'd use a +, not a -.
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