Ops… That Didn’t Work, Let’s Try This.

We are the Guinea Pigs, there is very little research in to the long term effects of Cross Gender Hormone therapy and they are learning from us. Because we are such a small community the drug companies really don’t care about us, why spend money on 0.5% of the population when we can make billions studying ED.

Hormone Therapy is Lifesaving — But Why is No One Studying Its Long-Term Effects?
Out
By Diana Tourjee
TUE, 2016-09-20

Charlene Incarnate had been taking Spironolactone, a testosterone-blocking medication, for several weeks when she noticed that she was feeling tired and out of it all the time. “It has a stony effect that just makes you want to lie in bed and sleep all day,” she says. The drug plays a central role in male-to-female hormone replacement therapy, but its listed side effects, which include drowsiness and confusion, are sometimes too much for patients. Incarnate isn’t alone in her lament. Last fall, her friend, trans musician Macy Rodman, wrote “Lazy Girl,” a song about the foggy effects of early gender transition. It contained lyrics about exhaustion and never leaving your bedroom. “I just can’t deal with the dehydration — especially in the summertime — and the brain fog,” Incarnate says. “There’s never a clearheaded moment.”

Informed physicians have been routinely prescribing cross-sex hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to transgender people for decades. These regimens are designed to produce the secondary sex characteristics of the opposite gender, effectively causing the patient to undergo an alternate puberty. Providers generally agree that this treatment is safe and lifesaving, as does the American Medical Association, which endorsed medical transition for trans people in 2014. There have been other major advancements in trans health care in the United States in recent years. Health insurance companies that have historically denied coverage for trans care are beginning to change their policies, and Medicaid programs in states such as Massachusetts, New York, and California are now obligated to pay for gender transition, as is Medicare nationwide.

Is the lethargic feeling because of the spiro or is it because of low testosterone? I doubt we will ever learn because no one wants to study us because research takes money.

The fact that HRT consists of generic drugs that have been on the market for years makes it far less likely that pharmaceutical companies will ever spearhead further research. “There’s no money to be made,” Deutsch says. “Nobody’s going to go do Phase III trials on a medicine that’s been generic for 15 years.”

When I was starting out on CGH therapy the doctor stepped up my dosage of spiro until the increase in spiro didn’t cause any more of a drop in “T” and then he backed me off one step, as a  result I am now taking 150 mg.

She was initially prescribed 200 milligrams of Spironolactone a day, but she cut her dose in half, hoping that would cause her testosterone levels to drop significantly without eliminating them altogether. “Even on [100 milligrams] my testosterone [level registered] at a cold zero,” Incarnate says. “That’s not a normal human body — male, female, or otherwise. That’s not a normal level of testosterone for anyone.” According to the Boston University School of Medicine, the side effects of low testosterone in women include sexual dissatisfaction, muscle weakness, and mood problems. Incarnate recently halved her dosage again, down to 50 milligrams per day.

Bottom line; don’t expect any research unless the moneys come forth.

But there is research being done and once again we are being used as lab rats.

New research discovers how opposite-sex hormonal therapy influences the brain
News-Medical.Net
Published on August 24, 2016

Women and men often show marked differences as regards mental illnesses. In order to learn more about this phenomenon, a project supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF explored how opposite-sex hormonal therapy applied to transgender individuals influences the brain.

In basic research, breakthroughs are often the result of a combination of curiosity and chance. In order to explore biological factors in mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety disorders, a team of researchers at the Medical University of Vienna (MedUni Wien) investigated the impact of sex hormones on the brain. Working in close cooperation with the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, the Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy and the Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, the scholars from the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy were rewarded with a significant new insight. They demonstrated that gender identity is reflected in the brain, including the brains of transgender individuals, formerly also known as transsexuals.
[…]
HORMONAL EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN
Using magnetic resonance tomography (MRT), the researchers examined both transsexual subjects and control subjects to observe what happens in the brain when opposite-sex hormones are administered over a prolonged period in order to achieve opposite-sex hormonal blood levels. "We were able to demonstrate the effect of hormones on language processing, on functions such as risk-taking behaviour, spatial cognition and impulsiveness, as well as on structural brain connections between female and male subjects", Lanzenberger explains. It was interesting that the scans also showed that, prior to hormonal treatment, the brain structure of transgender individuals exhibited levels falling in the mid-range between the two sexes.

TESTOSTERONE AS A KEY FACTOR
In concrete terms, the research teams from MedUni Wien were able to show that an increase of blood testosterone levels induced a decrease in the volume of two brain regions of central importance for language processing, and it also changed their connections. "This suggests that the impact of testosterone on language processing occurs via the influence it has on the structure of grey and white matter in the corresponding brain region", notes Lanzenberger and goes on to say:

We assume that some of the difference in white matter we found may emerge very early on, perhaps in the womb or before puberty. That would make it a type of biological information, a marker for gender identity.

The knowledge that brain connections and their functions can change as a result of hormone administration even in adulthood may be important in certain situations, for instance when the neuroplasticity of the brain is reduced, as is presumably the case in depression. Using another imaging procedure, positron emission tomography (PET), the researchers therefore explored the impact of hormones on the neurotransmitter serotonin, which is known to improve an individual's mood. The result showed that testosterone significantly increased serotonin transporter density.

Oink, oink