CJ Bellwether
if nothing else in my remaining life, i want to see progesterone offered as a common medication to transfem patients.
i want to see cis male doctors stop thinking the only possible reason for trans girls to take HRT is to make be attractive to men.
i want to see the bones of the endos who refuse to prescribe it becuase "well theres no studies that say it makes your tits bigger" ground to dust at my feet and then i shall keel over satisfied.
CJ Bellwether
as my hormone specialist said to me on day 1 "you're a woman, why shouldnt you have all the normal female hormones?"
CJ Bellwether
oh it decreases anxiety response in women by a third?
huh!
well, sorry until you can prove it makes your tits bigger im afraid theres just no possible reason to give it to you.
Transasaurus Reks
@siege I forget to take mine a lot because I'm supposed to take them before bed, so because I usually have a surplus, I double dose before tattoo appointments. It's not just anxiety. Estrogen increases blood pressure and lowers your pain threshold. Progesterone helps with both of those issues, so when there's a sadist stabbing ink into me for 4+ hours straight, I bleed less and I'm calm as a cucumber.
CJ Bellwether
@Nonbinussy yep, its like so many things it affects, ciculatory, heart, brain its the point of transmisogynistic absurdity to ever boil it down to "tits bigger or not"
CJ Bellwether
@GLaDTheresCake yes, ive been waging my own battle in the UK for the last 7 years to slowly push more endos to adopt it.
The argument against is unfortunately down to a historical failure in the european endocrinology community. There was a bureacratic error in a guideline that attributed the risks carried by synthetic progestins to bioidentical progesterone (while referencing studies that said the opposite) and every endo for over a decade took the position that synthetics were safe and bio carried risks of VTE/Heart/Cancer. So its a large act of negligence/incompetence that a lot of endos dont want to admit to not reading the studies.
The mistake has been corrected now but yeah, sadly its now entrenched and too many old men who dont take HRT themselves dont want to admit they were dangerously wrong and the ones in trans health have been arguing against transfem patients on this topic for so long its become a grudge.
Lillian Violet
@siege I'm quite annoyed by living in the Netherlands. I've been busy but considering giving my endo a collated list of sources and reasons I want progesterone. But it won't help at all. The medical field is so much more stratified here than the US, and the (private!) insurers have the last word on access. But I still feel like I should bring it up.
CJ Bellwether
@GLaDTheresCake oof sorry to hear that, my best advice is try for a foot in the door technique where you approach it just from the known benefits it has for mental health, heart health, and brain health while also leaning on the idea of cisgender "naturalness" and therefore you having natural female hormones benefiting to your health in terms of reducing "dysphoria". Use cissexist framing to your benefit.
Lillian Violet
@siege Worst thing is my endo is a late 20s early 30s cis woman and still won't do it.
CJ Bellwether
@2d I dont recommend it out of the gate for others purely out of abundance of caution of that uncertainty as there arent any studies on transfems taking progesterone so it has to be peoples personal decision - but i will say the one study that fear hinges upon is pretty bunk in that they gave rabbits an absurd amount of medroxy for average body size of a bunny, and thats a synthetic progestin known to cause breast cancer due to having a high proliferative cell effect while bio-identical/micronised prog has a pro-apoptotic or neutral effect so for caution.
I personally started progesterone about 2 months and 1 week into HRT - 200mg rectally and the 2 months part was just on Pueraria Mirifica off Amazon (which turned out to be real and actually surprisingly did work and got me to tanner 2). Prog definitely did not seem to stop my breast development or lead to shape issues at all as i went from cup size measurements of AA to DD (bust 33.5 inches to 42 inches) over the following 3+ years. But i have no version of me who waited another 9-10 months to compare it to. Shape ended up round and full tanner growth.
For me part of the usage of progesterone was most important as an anti-androgen as i was doing estrogen monotherapy with prog and transdermal estradiol only which brought my testosterone down to 3 nmol/L or 86 ng/dL by month 3.
vea 💖💖
@siege would you recommend progesterone straight out the gate when starting HRT, or do you think the year after E makes sense?
CJ Bellwether
@2d if i was going to make a call, id say as long as youve reached the point of late tanner 2/early tanner 3 where its no longer buds and you're talking about the cells have spread fully across the entire breast area and are now growing then whatever month that is for you its probably ok. And I think for some people thats going to be much sooner than 1 year which seems overly cautious.
CJ Bellwether
@2d good luck, i hope its fruitful for you
vea 💖💖
@siege honestly I think that occurred after like.. 1 month or so for me. It was the first thing E did to me lmao. I have an appointment for my three month check in next week. I will mention it to the doctor then and see what she thinks
CJ Bellwether
@traumaphoenix yeah to be clear it doesnt cut it by a third, if you compare stress/anxiety response between cis men and cis women, the difference is about 12.5-13 and 17.5-18 respectively on the scale, but when women are given progesterone it drops to 14.5-15. So it halves the increased anxiety arousal that women feel compared to men.
Nyx Phoenix
@siege fuck, really?
i should really try some sooner rather than later, i just don’t want it conflicting with my antiandrogen 🦋
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