Exploring The Hormonal Route. Hair=life.

franzliszt

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Medroxyprogesterone acetate aka Provera, aka Depo-provera aka MPA​

The wikipedia actually does a pretty good overview of medroxyprogesterone acetate as it functions in transgender females. Much of the entry is about its use as birth control and also its use in cases of hypersexuality. It has been used to treat sexual offenders and to lessen urges disfavored by society. CPA is also used for this form of what is know as chemical castration. Strangely enough, no estrogen appears to have been used in these treatments although estrogen is known to have similar effects on libido. There is very little about using for hair growth so I will have to keep looking into that.

I have been using 10 mg which based upon the extrapolation probably lowers circulating testosterone by about ten percent on its own. It's unknown what combinations with estrogen are used but the two together can easily reduce T levels to that of a castrate.

I can't seem to find any serious side effects, such as brain tumors and liver toxicity for cypro, cardiovascular disease+hepatoxicity for bica etc. It's said to have been well tolerated in studies of 5000mg a day (alhough I can't find the study Wiki mentions). As I think you've said before, it doesn't increase testosterone levels such as bica, as a result Less testosterone can be converted to DHT (I think the problem i ahd with Bica).
You can't find someone at all due to hairloss? I'm sure you can find a girl that's 5/10 to date but you probably don't want to settle that low. It's just unfortunate the degree hair contributes to our looks and how much looks effect the way people treat us.
I got kind of a weird face, attractive with a good haircut but hideous without hair framing it properly. It really does effect the way people interact with you. Being unattractive, people assume that your looks accurately reflect your personality.
 

NickGardner0651

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Thanks Janey. Also, another question I have is would I get better regrowth dropping the spironolactone and just adding a small does of cpa 12.5mg daily? I’ve seen some good results in others and I think that the missing ingredient in a regrowth regiment for cis males is in fact estrogen. How much without having too feminizing side effects is the tricky part. What are the pros and cons between a low dose cpa and low dose estradiol?
 

Catagen

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He had the greatest exit ever. Stated that now that he had hair, he had better things to do than hang out here.... It was pretty Clint Eastwood-like.
He also stated using AA's are not a good option anymore because his life has value now.
 

NickGardner0651

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Well. I am not sure that I am aware of anyone having significant success at regrowth without using estrogen. There might be a couple but then again, not many people have necessarily had success with estrogen during HRT. The difference is, I think, that we are specifically trying to target hair growth but it could be that it is just based upon reaching adult female T and E2 levels.

We/You need to think this through now. I know you are Mr. Stealth but age makes a difference and even size/mass makes a difference. If you look at transgender females, the larger one's have chests and rib cages that are so broad that yes, they have breast growth but it's not really noticeable through say a sweat shirt. I posted several pics of myself on here last month with me covering the sensitive parts so that people could see a worst case scenario but I have been doing this for seven years and later learned that by using small amounts and titrating, that actually increased my chances for substantial breast growth.

It seems like it should be the opposite. So everyone who is cis, should chew on that a bit. There is also the option of using serms and I think that we used to have somebody posting about that. I see different people on the reddit sites and they usually indicate good success with avoiding breast growth so maybe you should read the wiki entry:


This is an important topic anyway and one that I think that all cis-males should investigate before starting.

but the possibility still exists, especially for petite males of ending up like me. I have zero deniability, which is what I call it when a person is on HRT or transitioning but other people can't tell. I had to make a decision because I hadn't met my hair goals so I plowed on through and increased my dosage.

Janey, this is all very interesting stuff. I am without a doubt going to be starting a new regimen and will take it slow with the dosages (nowhere near bridgeburn's). Being a cis male and wanting to regrow my hair so no signs of thinning are apparent will be a difficult, but I do think it is possible granted I am starting at a good baseline in terms of my current hair situation (nowhere near how far gone bridgeburn was). My last question for now before I begin sourcing the new regimen would be is there a major difference between CPA and straight Estradiol in terms of increasing Estrogen?
 

NickGardner0651

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If anyone would know, I think that it would be Noah, who used to post more but Noah's on every week or two. They were pretty good friends and lived near each other. Probably 200 to 300 pages back, they posted scores of pictures of what appears to be a weed-assisted frolic with some Marx brothers type photos that were cute while they basically mugged for the camera and flaunted their beautiful locks! Something to look forward to. Noah is now trying to maintain only on dutasteride so that is really interesting and exciting to see what level of success he has without estrogen.

This goes beyond your short question but the following is for NIck's question that he made previously and just some other things that might be helpful for folks like Nick eager to put in an attempt.

I have been trying during the plague to answer all questions both on here, and much less so, on the Reddit DIY and MtFHRT sites when I have time since it sucks to post a question and not get an answer. I used to try to do the same on Tressless but that site is a mess full of so much mis-information that it is barely worth the effort. There's no real ability to do follow-ups and by the time I answered one question about minoxidil-dependent hair (imaginary), several more of the same question had already popped up. So many of the others just try to ruin finasteride and dutasteride for others via scare-mongering. I note when people try that here, we just ignore them and they move on, just as they do, some, when they declare this just a "tranny" thread.

Unlike Tressless where they are always touting next year's cure, I think people here realize that it can take decades sometimes and are ready to push the envelope some. It's a nice plague project for me and I have really enjoyed hanging out and the high level of discussion and lack of sniping.

I do recommend for anyone really into this to spend some time at DIY and MtFHRT to get a more holistic idea about the different issues that can crop up during full-blown HRT. It will alleviate somewhat, I hope, the desire to keep changing meds because everyone on there claims the Med X isn't working for them and wants to switch after two weeks or six weeks or whatever. People with serious sides should desist though sometimes tolerance or titrating can relieve the symptoms.

I all but worship estrogen as is clear. I have never come across anything remotely real that can be ingested and do all of the amazing things that estrogen can do. Older people like me who haven't given up on their hair, may decide to tolerate more femininization than they anticipate because the hormone appears to re-matrix and repair all sorts of tissue when used at high enough serum levels. I am simply in awe and that is why I am such an acolyte of estrogen.

I think OP has moved on. It would be great to have him back but in a certain sense, he did what he set out to do and I don't know if he was as much of a "teacher" as a reporter doing what turned out to be a very long feature article.

I found reading this thread fascinating before I ever posted. It ruins it a little because you get the answer that he is successful on page one but I really enjoyed the wonder in all of the cis-folks questions early in the thread. They all expected him to get a breast reduction or removal and there was some disappointment, I think when he appeared to change his approach to hair for hair's sake and to having less of a focus on what is possible for a cis-male without feminiziation or by minimizing it. I have read the early parts of the thread several times and have slogged through most of it as it slows a bit as OP gradually loses interest and turned more into a recipe-corner or a place where people whined a little bit, similar to the Reddit MtF sites sometimes. I get it. For the longest time, I have been similar:

Goddess, where's my hair?

The road is clear for someone else to try to do that important job of regrowing hair in a minimalistic and not a "see what sticks" method similar to me. I started out that way but priorities change. Someone starting off now could plan out a road map similar to what some of the other guys on the thread tried, which were much more conservative in terms of protocol and I will try to throw out suggestions about that. But essentially, several folks who were trying to follow in @bridgeburn's footsteps struggled with the AA's because of the sides. There were some even with sides from reductase inhibitors.

Some people seemed to make gains and then fall back and several people seemed to have on and off sheds on the AA's. There was a guy from before the thread named AntiDHTor from Poland who was an early advocate of oral minoxidil who had bizarre results whereby he took an attractive male ageing hair line and ended up looking like Eddie Munster and that scared me and probably others off oral minoxidil for a while. Somewhere between maybe page 5 and page 15 you can see a picture of this character, who apparently got banned and moved to a Polish-speaking site. People were changing meds like mad and you can't do that unless you are evolving forward and these were sideways moves, just like MtF's where people assume all the other AA's work better than the one that they are on when the three do more or less the same thing. That's why MPA is interesting to me because it is less involved in spoofing the system and more involved in just lowering testosterone in conjunction with estrogen.

I think the best approach probably for non-MtF's is to start off with Life Flo Estriol Care or Biestro Care available from Amazon and simply rubbing that into the scalp or balding areas and then reassessing after three to six months. The problem is that hair growth is slow and people get too impatient who aren't MtF's or they start feminizing and drop out for that reason. I note that Amazon cheerfully informs me that I have purchased Biestro Care 78 times since October of 2013 so that was basically the starting date of my ugh journey--hate that term but it is firmly established. I also bought at least a score of estriol, estradiol and competitors' similar brands throughout that period ending in May of this year when I declared victory in the breast area and then changed to what I deem, a hair regrowth protocol.

This is a slog, not a sprint, to a life-long solution or at least to a point of pulling back and maintaining. That's why the oral minoxidil may be exciting for beginners now. I have been using topical minoxidil since 1988 and like many on Hairlosstalk will frankly state, it just doesn't do a lot for many/most people so the idea of having a minoxidil that works similar to what Homer used on the Simpsons is a huge possible step forward. That was in season two episode two and was called Dimoxinil

Janey, Will the Estriol care cream actually go systemic and increase estrogen levels? What was your experience with the cream and what did you notice by taking it? when you say start with .5 or 1mg are you talking about the cream or consuming a pill orally? I appreciate you taking the time to reply to my messages in this thread. When I start my regimen in a few weeks I will make a long post and start documenting my progress once a month with pictures. I will also be getting my bloodwork done before, and once a month to see how my body is reacting on a hormonal level.
 

Norwoody

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It appears that all topical estrogen goes systemic. The hope is that the localized effects, I believe, in essence magnify the effects because the hair follicles get in essence two shots at the apple, first the localized estrogen that is rubbed in and then the circulating estrogen that is systemic.

The benefit of starting with OTC menopausal creams from Amazon is that except for the estradiol version, they are not particularly strong and they can be had in two days from Prime. Some say that estriol is to be preferred because it more so targets the non-breast tissue receptors. There are a couple of guys on a smaller more experimental thread trying estriol. One fellow had pretty decent growth for a male but he was using large amounts beyond what most would want to try. This is somewhat arbitrary but I tend to distinguish between estradiol and the other estrogens and I place their use more in the experimental category like RU486 and the other RU's and fluatamine, in that we don't have much to document that they work very well or work at all. I haven't seen any full heads of hair regrown from estriol but in terms of maintenance for non-balding guys, estriol is probably worth a try. I used it a lot when Biestro was sold out.

The downside of topicals is measurement so you know how much you are using. Estrogel includes a red stick that is not very useful but since I slather it doesn't matter to much in my case. Part of the value of topicals is that they give you a sense of self-control over your hair loss. That is probably one reason why people try marginal treatments. It is better psychologically sometimes. Yes, when I give precise amounts of estrogen, I am virtually always referring to E2 swallowed. I haven't used injections so I can't advise there but folks on reddit will gladly help for anyone who wants to inject. The injection folks are almost like a club and they help each other.
How much more powerful would you say bi-estro is compared to estriol?
 

Catagen

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Good for him. It takes a while for these things to circulate. Spring of 2019, I was begging for spironolactone from my endo.

Can you remember what page more or less where Mr. Bridgeburn said that? Thanks.
Unfortunately cant find it, its not this thread. Its somewhere else, it should be in mid 2019 or something.
 

JaneyElizabeth

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Final 2020 purchase of five tubes of Estrogel from Amazon4Health in Thailand. I have dropped a lotta coin on estrogel since July but when things are going well, let it ride. By the new year, I am going to have to greatly curtail my estrogel purchases. My insurance company doesn't like to pay for estrogel and certainly not the way that I use it but I am trying to test out many aspects of the localized effects vel non and I feel like things are peaking. I have heard of some alternatives that might be cheaper if anyone wants to check out /r/estrogel. I probably will try to buy an off-brand version from Brazil and use it more sparingly. In the long run, the goal is not to need oral minoxidil or anything but estrogen tabs. The patch works great but it is a hassle to find places that are new each week to place two of them. Pills are just so easy.
 

ReturnOfExtreme

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Does increasing your estrogen dosage induce a shed? I went from 2mg (once at day, at night) to 3mg (twice a day, 2mg at night and 1mg 12 hours later) and I’m not sure if I’ve induced a shed or not. Tomorrow, I’ll be increasing to 4mg (2mg twice a day, 12 hours apart).

I’ve recently been washing my hair every 6 days, and the amount of hairs shedded once I’ve washed my hair is insane.
 

NickGardner0651

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Low dose is relative but usually .5 mg to 2 mg swallowed. Did you look here: HRT.cafe? Otherwise, just shoot me the link or post the names and I will try to figure it out. If you see Premarin, that is a birth control med that is best only used in the short-run but it comes in very low doses. I started off at .30 mg and then titrated every six months by doubling and reached 2.5 mg last spring when I switched to the patch because they are safer when using substantially higher amounts of estrogen. Premarin is cheap too. Synthetics are okay in the short-run too as you are getting your feet wet. Any danger is usually because MtF's use these meds for twenty to fifty years but folks often forget get that and act as though CEE's and synthetics are poison. My endo still prefers Premarin.

I just saw my source listed on HRT.cafe. Would Progynova (Estradiol Valerate) 1mg be better than Premarin for the results I am seeking in terms of hair growth/mitigating feminization?
 

NickGardner0651

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Safer for the long term. Premarin is slightly stronger mg for mg and it has different mg tabs. Progynova is pure estradiol and safer in the long-run. If they cost the same then I would get the progynova but I think that you will need to score them if you want to start at one mg since I think they come in 2 mg tabs.

The place where I source them has both 1mg tablets and 2mg so I will get the 1mg which will be easier to accurately increase dose if I need to. I will be ordering my stuff later today. Is the biestro cream you linked on amazon the best form of a topical estrogen compared to others?
 

franzliszt

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Estrogel is best.It is pure estradiol. Amazon sells one too but it is more expensive and harder to apply but great in a pinch.
Hi Janey,
There's seems to be a lot of conflict between whether or not progesterone is good for hair. On one hand it's an anti androgen competing for the ar, on the other it desensitizes the ER and can create a backdoor pathway for DHT. During pregnancy appoximately 90% of hair follicles are in the anagen phase, maybe for optimal hair regrowth we need to replicate the female pregnancy i.e. titrating up to 65-290 ng/mL progesterone and 1278 - 7192 pg/ml E2. I'm not sure about what doses would be needed to reach the progesterone figures, and the risk of blood clotting would significantly increase with that level of E2, but it's an idea. what are your thoughts on this, at least for achieving regrowth in a short amount of time (I doubt this is a practical and safe long term regimen).
 
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