truth-about-transition

This young, well informed filmmaker (who did a great service by making this video) says, “a lot of guys don’t know about” the major side effects of testosterone. Why is this? Are their doctors not telling them what they need to know? Or are too many of them getting their “T” on the black market?

Some highlights:

Hair loss: “I always wear a hat.”

Takes high blood pressure meds every day: “Now I’m a big dude, but before that I was a big girl. But I never, ever had high blood pressure before—ever, ever. Like, never.”

“A friend of mine…who didn’t have time [to get T levels checked every 3 months] now has cysts and tumors on his liver…that are benign, noncancerous, but now he has to get liver scans on top of his bloodwork. Testosterone rapes and ruins your liver if you do not take it correctly.”

“This is some serious shit you’re injecting.”

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The whole thing is well worth watching.

truth-about-transition FTM testosterone testosterone effects testosterone blood pressure testosterone liver

The testosterone guinea pigs aren’t being recruited

After reading a bunch of medical horror stories resulting from the anabolic steroid (aka testosterone) doping of East German female athletes in the 1970s-80s, I scoured the web for solid information about testosterone’s effects on FTMs today. I found very sparse published research. There is one 2009 meta-analysis of 16 studies looking at 651 FTMs for cardiovascular risks (link below) that concludes:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2265.2009.03632.x/abstract

Very low quality evidence, downgraded due to methodological limitations of included studies, imprecision and heterogeneity, suggests that cross‐sex hormone therapies increase serum triglycerides in MF and FM and have a trivial effect on HDL‐cholesterol and systolic blood pressure in FM. Data about patient important outcomes are sparse and inconclusive.

[for the non-scientists reading this, it means the few studies that even qualified for the meta-analysis were fatally flawed]

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Ok then, I thought. Given the lack of published evidence, obviously FTMs are now being actively recruited into studies looking at the physiological effects of “T” --right? This is a giant research need. What with the huge increase in women transitioning, there should be plenty of willing research subjects out there.

The go-to place to find active, world-wide research studies is: 

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/home

All you have to do is enter your search terms/keywords. As you can imagine, search terms like “prostate cancer” return thousands of results. I figured there should be a least a few dozen on testosterone’s effect on transitioning women.

I spent 45 minutes entering every conceivable combination of search terms, including: transgender testosterone, FTM testosterone, female-to-male testosterone, transsexual testosterone. I found one German study,  “Observational Study on Metabolism and Psychopathology in Transsexual Patients,” which should be a very interesting one to read once results are published, but it’s not about health effects of testosterone. 

Apart from that? I found five. Not a single one was looking at possible adverse effects of testosterone. There is some basic science looking at testosterone and serotonin transporters, but nothing, nothing about T’s health effects.

Try searching clinicaltrials.gov yourself. See if you have better luck than I did ferreting out any significant research on this mass, uncontrolled chemical/pharmaceutical experiment currently being trialed on young women. I’ll be interested in hearing about any studies.

Meanwhile,  I guess the guinea pigs have to just keep on keeping on.

FTM research FTM clinical trials testosterone effects I guess they just don't matter they asked to transition so who cares
xaidread

Anonymous asked:

I like reading your blog. I don't umderstand why it's never brought (well, it's women stuff) but many top female athletes were taking testosterone to improve their results (USSR for ex.). Follow up on these athletes shows how many health problems they've had but i don't have studies. It's very long-term so a good indication. You might consider loonking into it. :)

4thwavenow answered:

Thanks for the great suggestion. Would anyone like to reblog this who has good info/links right now about female athletes who have used testosterone?

roslynholcomb:

roslynholcomb:

I don’t have any research, but I do know that it was a big deal with the East German swimmers back in the 1970s. At least one transitioned because the hormones impacted her so much. Others complained about being sick and there might have been legal settlements made. 

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/dopings-darkest-hour-the-east-germans-and-the-1976-montreal-games/

http://www.newsweek.com/east-germanys-steroid-shame-253840

And another reader sent me more links. Excerpt from the 2004 New York Times piece:

The words used in court were that the giving of relatively high doses of Oral-Turinabol to a girl around puberty has significantly contributed to development into transsexuality,“ said Franke, the molecular biologist whose research into the East German doping system formed the basis of the criminal prosecutions.          Although the complex decision to have a sex change could not precisely be connected to steroids, the psychologist Ungerleider said,

"Emotional fallout from high levels of testosterone can make people unsure who they are.”  

http://www.exberliner.com/features/lifestyle/doped-and-dropped%3A-the-endless-plight-of-former-east-german-athletes/

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/10/31/1193618974100.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/sports/othersports/26STER.html

xaidread testosterone effects anabolic steroids

Anonymous asked:

I like reading your blog. I don't umderstand why it's never brought (well, it's women stuff) but many top female athletes were taking testosterone to improve their results (USSR for ex.). Follow up on these athletes shows how many health problems they've had but i don't have studies. It's very long-term so a good indication. You might consider loonking into it. :)

Thanks for the great suggestion. Would anyone like to reblog this who has good info/links right now about female athletes who have used testosterone?

testosterone effects
daybeams

daybeams:

words-have-meaning:

evilfeminist:

appropriately-inappropriate:

the-fly-on-fire:

appropriately-inappropriate:

flannelvandal:

plansfornigel:

FTM- The truth about hormones

Really important discussion of some seldom talked about side effects of HRT

really good look at the bits of hormone therapy that aren’t mentioned a lot.

And even so, he’s short-sighted. He’s worried about thirty years down the road—so, fifty. What’s going to happen in sixty years down the road?

It’s a scary, scary thought.

hopefully 50-60 years there will be a better treatment of the side effects if they follow him that long

I really hope so. This scares me. They’re untested hormones being given off-label to young females that mutate their bodies into those of post-menopausal females thirty or fourty years ahead of schedule.

After two years. Say the average FTM takes T at eighteen. By the time they’re 20, their bodies have started to fail. After five years, what then? Fifteen?

I think of trans men like Buck Angel and I cringe, because that’s years and years of hormone therapy there. If two years does so much damage, I can’t imagine twenty.

And the risk of cancers is so so high. And trans men—females—already have some of the shiftiest health-care stats. It’s like playing Russian roulette with your health, and I’m deeply concerned about this community in the future.

My estimate? Cancers, early-onset osteoporosis, the works. It’s gonna be really awful. And I don’t even want to think about the kids who are put on puberty blockers, too. Their bodies will have never known natural hormones, and that’s REALLY not good.

Well hell, look at what happened to Buck Angel

Until I got an infection in my uterus! What happened was that the use of the testosterone over 15 years started to make my cervix and uterus atrophy. The cervix basically closed and so anything inside my uterus could not get out. Who knows how long this was going on for, but one day I just got so sick that I had to be rushed to the emergency room. They had no idea what was wrong and did exploratory laparascopic surgery. They did an emergency appendectomy and they saw the infection in my fallopian tube and uterus and found that my cervix fused closed. I was really, really sick and spent 4 nights in the hospital. I needed tons of antibiotics to get over the infection.

They said I would have to now have a hysterectomy because now that I have had that infection it will always have the ability to come back.

So here I am now going into surgery because of the fact that the doctors basically had no idea what long term use of testosterone does to the reproductive system! DUH!! But I listened to my doctors. Well, that is why I am documenting this procedure for the benefit of others. So they do not have to go through this horrible experience as well.

I always said that there was no reason to get a hysterectomy. Well now I am saying something different. I don’t think you need to do it right away, but if you plan on staying on testosterone longer than 5 years, I would recommend looking into getting this done just to eliminate the chance of this happening to you.

One other thing, they found some lesions on my cervix, so now they have to do a biopsy during the surgery. If the lesions are malignant then they cannot do a laparoscopy to remove the uterus through my Vagina—they would have to do an open procedure.

Trans people like to talk about the “violence” of being misgendered.

What about the violence of having your body chemically mutilated because your concept of gender won’t allow you to simply dress and behave against stereotype?

Be who you want to be but don’t put yourself at risk. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re beautiful/handsome and healthy the way you are. Let people’s concept of gender catch up to you, the way you are; you don’t need to mutilate yourself to keep up with people’s concept of gender!

SO important. People who take hormones and have difficulties and people who choose to detransition are silenced in the trans community, particularly ftm people. We need to listen to their experiences and learn. That’s honestly the least we can do.

daybeams gender critical testosterone effects FTM testosterone
Increased arterial stiffness in female-to-male transsexuals treated with androgen. - PubMed - NCBI ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
J Obstet Gynaecol Res. 2008 Oct;34(5):890-7. doi: 10.1111/j.1447-0756.2008.00857.x.

“The systolic and diastolic blood pressures in FTM transsexuals treated with androgen were significantly higher than those in untreated FTM transsexuals…

Conclusions: Long-term and high-dose administration of androgen is likely to cause increased arterial stiffness in FTM transsexuals.”

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There is a honeymoon period when a person first transitions. The honeymoon is what many gender nonconforming teens see on YouTube. Information about long term health effects, and doubts about transition (expressed by FTMs themselves) is out there–but you have to hunt for it.

gender critical FTM testosterone effects testosterone effects
Should transgender hormonal treatments and surgeries be banned in the same way Body Dysmorphic Disorder sufferers aren't allowed to have their body parts removed? • /r/GenderCritical reddit.com

dbrvnk:

4thwavenow:

I’ve been thinking about this lately, I kind of tend to say yes but I’d be willing to compromise if trans women stopped trying to demand entry to…

This is a fascinating thread which touches on several posts I and others have made on the subject of the medicalization of GID/gender dysphoria. Read all the comments if you have time; there is some interesting nuance. The big question that arises for me after reading all the comments is: 

Given how extreme surgery and hormones are as a treatment—a lifelong, highly invasive treatment—why aren’t they seen as the very last resort? 

…


* Actually, the other problem is that hormone therapies aren’t equal. Testosterone is irreversible, period. If your body’s ever been on testosterone, whether natural or artificial, there’s no going back. When MTF kids call testosterone a poison they’re being literal (shortens your lifespan, increases risk of heart disease, etc… to say nothing of reshaping the body). Estrogen really doesn’t do much and can be taken for psychological benefits. Yet everyone treats the two as being Exactly The Same Thing

THIS^

If I had to give ONE reason why I’m writing this blog, it is that testosterone treatment, in only a few weeks, creates permanent changes–if nothing else, to the vocal cords. If a teen girl takes T and decides later that she has changed her mind, she will still have committed herself to a deepened voice and likely ambiguous gender presentation for the rest of her life. It’s huge and irreversible, like dbrvnk said. And the detransitioned women I’ve read about also say the changed voice is a major issue in their lives.

gender critical FTM testosterone testosterone effects gender critical parenting
Men's heart disease risk linked to high testosterone and low estrogen sciencedaily.com
Why men have more heart disease than premenopausal women has been unclear, but a new study shows that the sex hormones testosterone and estrogen alter cardiovascular risk factors in a way that raises a man’s risk of heart disease.

Testosterone increases the risk of heart disease. And since a full hysterectomy reduces estrogen, wouldn’t a transman on “T” who also had the procedure be at even higher risk for heart problems?

testosterone heart disease testosterone effects FTM testosterone gender critical parenting

Anonymous asked:

Trans men going through a hysterectomy will not experience long term effects of menopause because they supplement testosterone in their body. As long as there are healthy levels of T, they are not at risk of osteoporosis or heart disease or other menopausal symptoms. Menopause happens because of a lack of estrogen production in females but HRT is basically countering that (be it estrogen or testosterone). Don't spread misinformation.

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Thank you for writing your comments in a respectful way. Testosterone is a high-risk factor for heart disease, apart from whether there has been a hysterectomy or induced menopause or not, both in men and transmen. It’s one of the warnings given to transmen who are taking “T” and it’s something that has to be monitored by one’s MD. Also, many of the comments I’ve received about hysterectomies have addressed other consequences of the procedure apart from menopausal-induced changes. 

I’d like other readers of this blog to weigh in on Anon’s points. Anyone?

FTM hysterectomy trans hysterectomy testosterone heart disease testosterone effects gender critical parenting
genderdeceit

Baby pouches & egg bags

genderdeceit:

4thwavenow:

Anon said: re: hysterectomies. If a woman also gets her ovaries removed, she WILL go through menopause. It seems like young FTMs getting this extremely drastic surgery is just another manifestation of how little we are taught about our bodies. A uterus isn’t just an empty baby pouch, ovaries aren’t just egg bags, our reproductive system has a function beyond being a placeholder for a potential fetus
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From what I understand, testosterone treatment for FTMs is so toxic to the female reproductive system, the decision to have a hysterectomy, sometimes leaving the ovaries intact, sometimes not,  is a way to do away with the problem.

It’s one of the reasons why “just trying T”—which some women wanting to transition talk about doing—is a terrible idea; testosterone sets in motion a cascade of effects, including chronic yeast infections, uterine adhesions, and a raft of other problems that I hope some of the detransitioned women (or current FTMs?) reading this blog can tell us about.

The problem with testosterone treatment for females is that it is essentially uncharted territory. There is so little long term research that we can’t say that there’s a 20% risk of X or that you need to do Y within three years. There is really nothing more than vague guidelines (which vary from doctor to doctor) and no one is tracking the long term health of FTMs. Most of what we have to go on is personal anecdotes.

If the prevailing method of informed consent hormone treatment is going to be maintained (which I do not think it should be), then the consent guidelines need to be rewritten to emphasize that any of the expected changes and possible side effects are little more than educated guesswork, especially regarding long term use.

It’s a huge uncontrolled experiment.

genderdeceit FTM testosterone testosterone effects gender critical parenting