Estradiol for hair growth without feminization

[mj9]

Hi all,
I'm trying to determine an effective topical estradiol regimen for hair growth, but with minimal feminising side effects.

What would be an effective dose for topical application? It sounds like people are applying 0.75mg E2 daily.

Also, is it better to apply this once or twice daily e.g. 0.5mg morning and then again evening? Any benefits of applying once over a smaller dose twice?

How about length of time for regimen? Hair takes a bloody long time to grow, but is it worth "cycling" it? 1 month on then 1 month(?).

 

[Isneezedsohard]

Hi all,
I'm trying to determine an effective topical estradiol regimen for hair growth, but with minimal feminising side effects.

What would be an effective dose for topical application? It sounds like people are applying 0.75mg E2 daily.

Also, is it better to apply this once or twice daily e.g. 0.5mg morning and then again evening? Any benefits of applying once over a smaller dose twice?

How about length of time for regimen? Hair takes a bloody long time to grow, but is it worth "cycling" it? 1 month on then 1 month(?).

I got sides from 2 weeks of topical! So start small, and don’t dive right in like me

 

[mj9]

I got sides from 2 weeks of topical! So start small, and don’t dive right in like me

What was your regimen? Dose and how often?

 

[JaneyElizabeth]

It depends on the level of baldness. It has taken me about 18 months to go from bald to something akin to my 19 year old hairline. Younger folks without much hair loss might get results in six to 12 months but the longer one uses the same amount of estradiol, the stronger the feminizing results because it will re-set the axis over time. Cycling might work once a full head of hair is restored but probably not before that. It probably would work better for maintenance and hair improvement more so than for restoring dormant follicles but the truth is that we don't know. Three or four years ago people, even many MtF's claimed that restoration was largely impossible and that only transplants work. Many of the university and hospital sites indicate (wrongly) that hair regrowth is not a side-effect of HRT while indicating that breast growth largely is, which is pretty much backwards. Hair regrowth is more likely in substantial amounts than is breast growth or development.

For some reason, there are essentially very, very few studies. The most well known one is from 2016 and only involves one MtF. That study unfortunately reached the conclusion that becoming chemically female is necessary for substantial regrowth.

 

[Pls_NW-1]

Imo just take sublingually E2 low dose. The estrogel/-cream you take goes trans-dermal and goes systemically. It's such a hassle. But transgender and menopausal women take estrogel/-cream so they don't need to take pills because they plan to stay on exogenous E for a looong period of time. But we just want to do a E cycle for hair growth, around 1-2 years till the follicles are "healed".

If you want only to localize the effect, maybe try Estriol, as it gets metabolized in the skin better than other estrogens.
Remember, E2 is far superior than E3. E2 breaks down into E1 and E3 as well.

Nevertheless, my knowledge on Estrogens is based on the experiences and knowledge of others on the forum, others like @JaneyElizabeth might help you here out!

 

[Pls_NW-1]

It depends on the level of baldness. It has taken me about 18 months to go from bald to something akin to my 19 year old hairline. Younger folks without much hair loss might get results in six to 12 months but the longer one uses the same amount of estradiol, the stronger the feminizing results because it will re-set the axis over time. Cycling might work once a full head of hair is restored but probably not before that. It probably would work better for maintenance and hair improvement more so than for restoring dormant follicles but the true is that we don't know. Three or four years ago people, even many MtF's claimed that restoration was largely impossible and that only transplants work. Many of the university and hospital sites indicate (wrongly) that hair regrowth is not a side-effect of HRT while indicating that breast growth largely is, which is pretty much backwards. Hair regrowth is more likely in substantial amounts than is breast regrowth.

For some reason, there are essentially very, very few studies. The most well known one is from 2016 and only involves one MtF. That study unfortunately reached the conclusion that becoming chemically female is necessary for substantial regrowth.

Oh here you are! Haha

 

[trialAcc]

Imo just take sublingually E2 low dose. The estrogel/-cream you take goes trans-dermal and goes systemically. It's such a hassle. But transgender and menopausal women take estrogel/-cream so they don't need to take pills because they plan to stay on exogenous E for a looong period of time. But we just want to do a E cycle for hair growth, around 1-2 years till the follicles are "healed".

If you want only to localize the effect, maybe try Estriol, as it gets metabolized in the skin better than other estrogens.
Remember, E2 is far superior than E3. E2 breaks down into E1 and E3 as well.

Nevertheless, my knowledge on Estrogens is based on the experiences and knowledge of others on the forum, others like @JaneyElizabeth might help you here out!

I would assume most people in this category should be using estriol/estradiol, right? Most people do not want the feminizing sides.

 

[Isneezedsohard]

What was your regimen? Dose and how often?

1 mg morning and night

 

[Isneezedsohard]

1 mg morning and night

Topical of course

 

[JaneyElizabeth]

This is not a study but an article by Rob English that convinced me to go all in in terms of HRT. Before that I had been using Biestro on my scalp with only middling improvement followed by periods where things got worse if I tried to reduce dosage. At first HRT made my hair worse but I started out on very small doses that did much less for hair than they did for below the neck feminization.

After two years, I decided to greatly increase dosages well past cis-female adult levels as per @bridgeburn. That appeared/appears to have done the trick but I am swimming in E2 and I am non-binary trans. I can't recommend such large doses for males unless they are desperate but many are and feminization is definitely better than being alone and perseverating on suicide or wallowing in depression for life.

Trans Hormone Replacement Therapy Hair Regrowth: The Science

Read time: 20 minutes Men Who Transition To Women Regrow Hair... But How? When Bruce Jenner transitioned to Caitlyn Jenner, many people noticed a change in Caitlyn's hair quality. During and after the transition, her hair grew

perfecthairhealth.com

 

[mj9]

It depends on the level of baldness. It has taken me about 18 months to go from bald to something akin to my 19 year old hairline. Younger folks without much hair loss might get results in six to 12 months but the longer one uses the same amount of estradiol, the stronger the feminizing results because it will re-set the axis over time. Cycling might work once a full head of hair is restored but probably not before that. It probably would work better for maintenance and hair improvement more so than for restoring dormant follicles but the truth is that we don't know. Three or four years ago people, even many MtF's claimed that restoration was largely impossible and that only transplants work. Many of the university and hospital sites indicate (wrongly) that hair regrowth is not a side-effect of HRT while indicating that breast growth largely is, which is pretty much backwards. Hair regrowth is more likely in substantial amounts than is breast regrowth.

For some reason, there are essentially very, very few studies. The most well known one is from 2016 and only involves one MtF. That study unfortunately reached the conclusion that becoming chemically female is necessary for substantial regrowth.

Say I use 1mg topical daily, what kind of side effects can I expect? I would probably only use for 6 months.
What was your regimen for E2 and what feminization did you see/feel in 6 months?

I'm hoping I can get regrowth (my crown area is diffuse/bald) and stop before feminising effects and then maintain with dutasteride/finasteride

 

[JaneyElizabeth]

Because I had a premonition that I was on the right path, I have taken thousands of pics over the last six years, split between transition pics where I usually wear my wig--mostly the last 12 months and between hair pics going back to 2015. I provide a pretty good overall view of my up's and down's here:

Sensitive Content Warning

There are also beard, facial and dermatitis pics to show the substantial facial results along with the growing facial feminization. I have had no surgery but I have had botox and salon treatments. The more recent hair pics are on my thread on here and go back about nine months but that is the heart of my improvement when it began happening fast so that I could almost see new hair every single day. Imagine waking up and doing the whole baldness routine in reverse but maybe even more quickly than the hair was lost. It's pretty thrilling and no, it doesn't seem to wear off in terms of how great it feels.

https://www.hairlosstalk.com/interact/threads/hair-is-not-life-but-its-pretty-damn-close-hrt-and-pictorial-posts-prove-it.130425/page-42

 

[Isneezedsohard]

Say I use 1mg topical daily, what kind of side effects can I expect? I would probably only use for 6 months.
What was your regimen for E2 and what feminization did you see/feel in 6 months?

I'm hoping I can get regrowth (my crown area is diffuse/bald) and stop before feminising effects and then maintain with dutasteride/finasteride

I lost my libido and my boners were prob 75%

 

[Pls_NW-1]

I would assume most people in this category should be using estriol/estradiol, right? Most people do not want the feminizing sides

Sure, I would prefer Estradiol however.
Feminization is inevitable when estrogens are used. However, there are users who did use estrogens for a while, then stopped and continued to use Dutasteride and/or other AA's in combination as a maintenance. And yes, they reversed the feminization.

It's a personal decision going for the hormonal route, but what I can say is that this path will provide you with a true "cure" to your baldness lol.

male pattern baldness is a result of:
Genes x Hormones

 

[JaneyElizabeth]

I would assume most people in this category should be using estriol/estradiol, right? Most people do not want the feminizing sides.

To my knowledge we have no studies differentiating between the three main types of natural estrogens. There are people on here and on the Dr. Will Powers reddit site who conjecture about using different metabolites for different purposes but pretty much all of that is conjectural and not based on anything but that. Some say that E1 is better for breast growth eventually while others state that E2 is always better due to its strength. Nobody to my knowledge says anything scientific about estriol except that it appears that it might cause less breast development. But this is largely not an MtF belief because most MtF's desperately want more breast growth. Estriol is also very, very weak.

Finally, the pituitary signals to start menstruation/breast growth in cis-females require only very small amounts of estrogen to set off puberty. So strangely enough, low-dose estradiol might cause more feminization over time (up to eight years) than using E2 in amounts similar to cis-female adult levels to commence. MtF's starting on large doses of estrogen and often AA's, generally conclude "second puberty" in about 18 to 36 months. Others report second puberties <raises hand> of up to seven and eight years!

All of these conundrums are why using HRT for hair growth has never really been a thing going back to the 1930's when the different metabolites were largely identified. I think that Amazon offering Biestro and estradiol otc is what really gave people a chance to play around with estrogens for hair growth and that is true for me. Getting a prescription or finding a reliable offshore vendor until recently was a big hassle and not cheap.

 

[Obsessive]

Feminization has not been a problem for me while using estradiol topically on scalp. If you have normal T levels, estro will not have a dramatic anti masculinization effect. My experience after ~ 3 years.

 

[Obsessive]

FYI, one packet of Divigel (0.75 mg estrogel) applied to only scalp 1 hour before bloodwork gave me an estradiol blood level of 73 pg/mL. Normally estradiol is 30-35 pg/mL.

 

[JaneyElizabeth]

FYI, one packet of Divigel (0.75 mg estrogel) applied to only scalp 1 hour before bloodwork gave me an estradiol blood level of 73 pg/mL. Normally estradiol is 30-35 pg/mL.

That's an elevated amount and that's sort of what we don't seem to know yet. Will middling/incremental increases of serum estradiol improve hair growth/regrowth/maintenance and how does this compare to hitting female targets of between, say 200 pg/ml to 300 pg/ml. Some doctors apparently thing that ~100pg/ml is sufficient provided that T is lowered as well. But it is possible to hit points where both estradiol and testosterone are altered but not into the typical ranges. What effects might this have?

We largely don't know but my regrowth was underwhelming at intermediate levels of T and E. It might work better for younger folks with less baldness but we don't know. We have one study that indicates that reaching adult female targets of E and T sort of turns on regrowth like a light switch but it was only one person. I think that it is encouraging that I have seen such extensive regrowth at ages past 55 because that indicates that follicles are never dead, just dormant. All of the different protocols by different people on here help provide data points. But for someone not out for science, who just wants to regrow hair, I would suggest one of the @bridgeburn protocols of which there are primarily three but all will be guaranteed to blow E2 into the stratosphere as will mine as I tested at @2,600 pg/ml the last time.

I do need to mention the shedding issue though. @bridgeburn was largely bald but with hair most places on top. He wasn't a cueball, nor was I. He didn't have to worry about shedding but I shed down to NW7 and I have posted several pics of this. So the issue with blowing through levels is that a person probably needs to have a plan in place to ride out sheds. I rushed with my beard removal so that I could wear a wig without it clashing with five o'clock shadow, which is not a good look, trust me. But once I found a wig that I liked, I didn't have to sweat the last 12 months with urgency to have acceptable hair. I am getting closer and closer to having acceptable "female" hair but I could live with what I have already restored in a male context, happily forever. My crown is the best since I was 18 and my hairline is probably back to my 21 years of age point. The crown went first and came back first which is strange but temples generally lag in restoration and this is one of the last places where toddlers/children have their hair fill in.

 

[trialAcc]

Feminization has not been a problem for me while using estradiol topically on scalp. If you have normal T levels, estro will not have a dramatic anti masculinization effect. My experience after ~ 3 years.

How's the result on hair growth been?

 

[Norwoody]

How much more efficacious do you think estrogel is compared to biestro @JaneyElizabeth ? IIRC estrogel has twice the estradiol but what other differences are there?