See title. I’m on HRT for over 11 months now, thoroughly enjoying it. I’ve a hunch the dose is a bit low, though. I get androgen blockers every 2-3 months, my last one was one month ago.
Normally my arm hairs aren’t very visible, so I didn’t have much dysphoria from that. However, recently my arm hair seems to be growing a lot and thicker, and I’m concerned. Is this normal?
My mum doesn’t really have a lot of arm hair, nor do other gals in my family.
Lenzetto spray, 3 doses a day, once a day. Never skipped a day.
Blood levels, not sure. Next test will be in two months, though I think I should get it much sooner (last was many months ago).
I take antiboyotics, last jab was one month ago. I get them every two to three months.
Hey, I have used Lenzetto 3 sprays with 12.5mg of CPA every day for around six months, as per the indication of the endocrinologist. The 3 pumps are usually not enough for proper feminization. Estradiol levels with Lenzetto fluctuated a lot and usually stayed below 100pg/mL (<365pmol/l). It is the only treatment that is given officially in our territory, so after talking to some other transfems in my area and looking at their analysis, they all had the same problem. Some were even taking 4 pumps without much better results. Lenzetto is just not very strong as an estradiol delivery mechanism, some of us went DIY after realizing that. Antiandrogen seems to be working fine although like it has been pointed out it’s still pretty high.
I really don’t know much about spray as a route of administration, nor an anti-androgen administered only once every 2 - 3 months (!?), so your HRT regime is very easy to feel skeptical towards because it’s so unusual.
Blood levels would be really helpful for clarifying whether your T is sufficiently suppressed, E sufficiently high - but yeah, androgens can cause thicker darker hairs, and it’s possible that’s the cause.
Once I’m home (in about 2.5 hours) I’m gonna look for the blood levels. I have the results there.
As for the anti-androgen, there are some injections on a monthly basis, or even every three months. I had something like that
I don’t mean to say it’s not a possibility that this is a reasonable HRT regimen, just that I’m very much unfamiliar with it (sorta meaningless, just trying to declare my ignorance and the resulting bias or uncertainty).
Just for curiosity’s sake - do you know what anti-androgen was injected on a monthly or 3-monthly basis? I would really like to learn more! Was it an oil that was injected, or a pellet that was surgically implanted?
Some doctors in the US are willing to implant an estrogen pellet, and sometimes that can be done roughly on a 3-monthly schedule like that (I’ve heard once every 3 months, once every 6 months, once a year - so I suspect it depends on the pellet that is implanted?).
So in my case it’s called decapeptyl. It’s one of the most common anti-androgen prescribed in France because it has no common side effect (I mean… Apart from the ones we’re actually looking for that are due to a lower T level).
I know that it’s a low release formula, I don’t have more details, sorry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triptorelin
omg, that is beautiful
in the US the equivalent drug is Lupron:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leuprorelin
basically these drugs act by telling your brain to shut down production of sex hormones - like you said, they don’t have side effects and they’re pretty much perfect drugs to function as anti-androgens (at least in terms of stopping production of testosterone by the gonads) … to my mind, it’s an absolute crime that the US doesn’t prescribe drugs like this to treat trans patients (they do for trans minors, but not adults), and it has everything to do with the costs of Lupron, which insurance companies don’t want to cover.
Thank you so much for sharing the drug name. I’ll look into the slow release formula to educate myself more!
No problem, always happy to share!
And yeah when I used it it was the most expensive drug I had been on, it was 100% reimbursed, but it was around 100€ for a month. So yeah, it’s just a question of money… As usual :/
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