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HORMONES

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The subject of hormones is a hot one. These chemicals are essential to feminization and transformation, and yet they are very poorly understood. Medical experts around the country stand firmly behind the information they supply. The problem is, they all disagree! So what's a girl to do? How can learn the REAL story on hormones? Well, as a small step in that direction, I am opening the discussion here today. I would like to hear REAL LIFE comments from those who are on or have taken hormones about the effects and side effects they experienced. Pills vs. Injections, emotional effects, physical complications, desired physical effects. In short, let's gather our OWN data base of information from real people who are actually USING hormones.

The most important thing to remember is that

HORMONES ARE DANGEROUS!!!!!

They are not candy, they are not recreational drugs, they are not womanhood in a bottle. So, in the traditional warning: "Don't try this at home!" You could kill yourself.

I know a doctor here in LA who will give you whatever you want. Just tell him the dose and he'll inject it or sell you the pills. Now THAT's REALLY dangerous!!! Unless you know what you are doing, you might just end up on a slab or a mental vegetable.

You see, one of the gravest dangers of hormones is blood clotting (or Thrombosis). When clots form, they might be so small as to be undetectable. Yet if that clot is dislodged and thrown into the blood stream, it can lodge in the heart, lungs, or brain, and cause everything from heart attack to stroke.

And then there is the liver. Anyone taking hormones by pills needs to have regular checkups to test for impaired liver function. Injections bypass the liver, going directly into the bloodstream, but pills are processed by the liver and the wrong dose can permanently damage it. The liver does not regenerate. Once it is damaged, it STAYS damaged for the rest of your life.

So, a physicians care is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for ANYONE on ANY KIND of hormones. Now, many of us ignore that, trying to get on the 'mones without anyone knowing, or afraid that a doctor would not prescribe them. And even those of us on professional care often change dosages to our own idea of what they should be because we are dissatisfied with our own progress.

That last point is pertinent to me. My doctor saw me through all my hormone therapy and all the way through surgery. He had always told me that after surgery, you need to drop your dose. But, right after surgery, he retired and moved out of the area with no forwarding address. He turned over his records to another doctor, but the new doctors were just general practitioners, not Transsexual experts. So, I switched to my S.O.'s HMO plan. The doctor there was very accommodating. He looked at my dosages and said, "I don't have much experience with hormones, but these levels look about right." So he just rubber-stamped my pre-surgery levels, not even knowing they were supposed to come down.

Doctor Biber gives you an "ad lib" or "for life" prescription for HIS recommended dosages: .05mg Estinyl daily, 10mg Provera one week per month. He does not believe in "cycling" like with birth control pills, for example, where the standard prescription is three weeks on and one week off everything for a 28 day "cycle".

Now the dosages I was taking from my HMO were .25mg Estinyl (5 times as high as Biber recommends) PLUS 5.0mg Premarin on a 25 day on, 3 day off cycle. Then 10mg Provera on the last 10 days of the cycle. Quite a difference!!! But, this was all prescribed by my doctor. So, who is right? What is right?

Well, that brings me back to the purpose of this article: to find out! To start the effort off, here is a portion of a letter I wrote an online friend earlier in the month about my attempt to find the proper hormone type and dosage.

"I have been dissatisfied with my bust development. I knew it felt like there was more of an effect when I first started on injections three years ago, but I don't want to go back on them because I had some severe mental effects. That's why I switched to pills after two months. Before the injections, I used B.C. pills. I used the 1/50 kind, which I understand to be 1mg of Provera and either .05mg or .5mg Estinyl. Now, after about 60 days of that, I developed trouble breathing and a general lethargy and tiredness and weakness. I stopped and the effects went away. I was not sure if they were caused by the pills or not.

On the dosages I had from my doctor, which ended up at .25mg Estinyl and 5.0mg Premarin daily on a 25 day on 3 day off cycle with 10mg Provera on the last ten days, I had no ill effects. But I also never got that breast tenderness I had experienced with the injections and only ended up an A cup. I had heard that Estinyl was 10 times as powerful as Premarin, meaning the 5.0 Premarin amounted to .5mg Estinyl. But the two drugs also have slightly different effects. The Premarin sneaks past the glands and is not noted as an increased Estrogen level, but the Estinyl is noted and before surgery, the body increases Testosterone to counteract the Estinyl. But the Estinyl is what increases the breasts best, so it is a catch 22. But AFTER surgery, you don't need the sneaky Premarin, and you can use all Estinyl with no backlash, thereby getting the good effects.

After surgery, you are supposed to lower your dose. Well, my doctor moved out of the area after 16 years here, just after surgery. So I went to the HMO and they just rubber stamped my old prescriptions. So I wanted to lower the overall dose, but get more effects. So, I stopped the Premarin, (the equivalent of .5mg Estinyl, and added .25 to the Estinyl to bring it up to .5 total. That way, it cut down the effective dose by 33% but added more of the good stuff. I also switched to a daily dose of 5mg Provera, amounting to the same overall amount taken over the full month.

Well, I got a BIG boost in development (especially around the nipples from the Provera). But the weakness and breathing problems came back. So, I am in my 3 day off cycle now. I stopped the Provera and Estinyl. I will go back on the regular cycle except I will use the .5mg Estinyl daily and only use the Provera on the last 10 days as before at 10mg daily. I cannot be sure if it is the higher estrogen level or the Provera that causes the problem, nor which one is the cause of the extra development, but this last test should clear that up. I'll let you know what happens.

Okay, so there's an opening salvo in the war against Hormone Ignorance. If YOU have any REAL experience or knowledge of hormones, PLEASE take the time to make that information available to the community, so we can be all that we want to be at the smallest possible risk to our health.

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