Incredible recovery from NW5: the power of super aggressive regimens!

[Folliman]

You have transformed into a butterfly! I prefer the girl version picture you posted to the male one but that is just my taste
Without disrespect, though, I think that if minoxidil and finasteride had been the key players in your recovery, we would have seen more cases like yours. On the contrary, the only case similar to yours is @antydhtor, who has been taking androgen nukes as you.

FTFY

 

[recedingyt]

My hair is in a similar sate to yours, with the vellus down to NW0 and all. I hope histogen is the extra boost we need. Also, have you looked into LiCl after dermarolling?

I was doing it for quite a while there but I fell off the wagon with LiCl, dermarolling, and a couple other treatments I had been doing. One of the main reasons I let it fall to the wayside is that I heard LiCl and wounding tend to have a hair growth reducing effect. So, I figured I would try cycling it. I'm not entirely sure how long my cycles should be though since I'm pretty firmly in broscience territory here. Also correct me if I'm wrong but wounding/LiCl is primarily aimed at reviving old follicles and/or creating new ones. My hairline is already full of enough vellus hairs that I would be in NW0 territory if I could just get them to go full terminal and grow like normal hairs. That's why I'm so excited about Histogen, since that seems to be exactly what it does.

You have transformed into a butterfly! I prefer the girl version picture you posted to the male one but that is just my taste
Without disrespect, though, I think that if minoxidil and finasteride had been the key players in your recovery, we would have seen more cases like yours. On the contrary, the only case similar to yours is @antydhtor, who has been taking oral anti-androgens as you.

Well the thing is, I quit minoxidil back in like March of 2015 after having had a pretty large amount of success with it. I believed, perhaps like you do, that most of my success was from the estrogen/spironolactone I had also been taking. Well, by June 2015 I was pretty much back to baseline (marginally above, I guess?). That's why I tend to attribute most of my success to minoxidil. I think I'm just an extremely good responder to minoxidil, although I do recognize that being on estrogen and nuking my T/DHT is likely only making it that much more effective for me.

 

[Singularity2045]

And here's one in girl mode for anyone curious about that

You look great!! And way younger

 

[Folliman]

I was doing it for quite a while there but I fell off the wagon with LiCl, dermarolling, and a couple other treatments I had been doing. One of the main reasons I let it fall to the wayside is that I heard LiCl and wounding tend to have a hair growth reducing effect. So, I figured I would try cycling it. I'm not entirely sure how long my cycles should be though since I'm pretty firmly in broscience territory here. Also correct me if I'm wrong but wounding/LiCl is primarily aimed at reviving old follicles and/or creating new ones. My hairline is already full of enough vellus hairs that I would be in NW0 territory if I could just get them to go full terminal and grow like normal hairs. That's why I'm so excited about Histogen, since that seems to be exactly what it does.

You are right about that, it's mostly for neogenesis, but it should also help existing hair tissue repair itself. Maybe minoxidil should be enough over time since it signals on the same pathway, it's just a lot weaker.

 

[rclark]

You look great!! And way younger

It's strange, but true. She does look younger.

Her hair looks fantastic. People should look at the first post, and compare that.

From a Norwood FIVE. That's right, and that's being conservative. She went from five, to zero. She even
has much more hair than she did in 2015. There's no temple recession at all.

 

[GiveMeAccessToMyAccount]

I'm jealous there aren't any hair loss drugs that work this well for straight men. Are there anyway safe estradiol regimens that will work better than finasteride/dutasteride/minoxidil but won't turn you into a girl? Like what if you take it 3 times a week, will it still be effective but not turn you into a chick? Basically is there any safe way to get on this treatment without the crazy side effects?

Congrats on your transformation and beating hair loss.

Edit: let me be more clear. So this 17b estradiol gel, let's say I use minoxidil 5% every day, nizoral shampoo 3 times a week, and finasteride 1.25mg a day, and the 17b gel like 3 times a week will that still be risky? Or would I be okay + I will see better results than I would with just big 3?

 

[recedingyt]

I'm jealous there aren't any hair loss drugs that work this well for straight men. Are there anyway safe estradiol regimens that will work better than finasteride/dutasteride/minoxidil but won't turn you into a girl? Like what if you take it 3 times a week, will it still be effective but not turn you into a chick? Basically is there any safe way to get on this treatment without the crazy side effects?

Congrats on your transformation and beating hair loss.

Edit: let me be more clear. So this 17b estradiol gel, let's say I use minoxidil 5% every day, nizoral shampoo 3 times a week, and finasteride 1.25mg a day, and the 17b gel like 3 times a week will that still be risky? Or would I be okay + I will see better results than I would with just big 3?

Using estrogen of basically any kind is not safe if you are worried about side effects.

 

[hanginginthewire]

What about spironolactone? Didn't you say that cis gay men take it? Is there no part of your treatment plan that a cis person could benefit from?

Not asking this in an accusatory way, I know you've been up front since your OP.

 

[recedingyt]

What about spironolactone? Didn't you say that cis gay men take it? Is there no part of your treatment plan that a cis person could benefit from?

Not asking this in an accusatory way, I know you've been up front since your OP.

I've always maintained the notion that this thread's target audience isn't really cis men. My regimen isn't practical for cis men to take, regardless of their sexual orientation. There was a gay man by the name of Alan Turing who aided in cracking the enigma code in WW2 who was later outed as gay and forced into taking a very similar cocktail of drugs that I currently do to essentially chemically castrate him, and he ended up dysphoric and eventually killed himself due to the side effects. It isn't just about whether or not it produces visible feminization - your body is used to running on T. You, as a guy, will enjoy running on T much more than you will running on E. You will feel off, because that's not what your brain/body expect to be running on as a guy. You'll start feeling more like a girl, which for you would be a very bad thing most likely if you're cis.

Really the only thing that cis men can take from this is that amazing regrowth is possible under the right conditions. Perhaps another treatment that stimulates the same pathways that make estrogen/spironolactone so beneficial to your hair will come along someday, but without the side effects. Other than that I'm mostly just trying to put this out there for other trans people struggling with hair loss because it was one of the primary things holding me back from transitioning. I hated the idea of being reliant on wigs for the rest of my life and I was trying my best to suppress being trans because I didn't want to be a bald woman, especially with how important good hair is to a woman's appearance (to me it's like pretty much the first thing I notice about a girl I'm attracted to).

 

[hanginginthewire]

But as crazy as it sounds, I feel like I'd almost be willing to give it a try if the physical feminization part is not likely. If we read our Judith Butler and practice good intersectionality we know that gender is a social construct and "feeling like a girl" could mean lots of things. Hairloss makes me feel like a whiny little beta b**ch anyway lol. : )

But seriously what were the outcomes for the gay men you saw on Reddit who dabbled in these treatments? We're there no success stories?

 

[Singularity2045]

Like what if you take it 3 times a week, will it still be effective but not turn you into a chick?

Even if you took something like estradiol valerate at 2 mg every other day (it has a fairly long half life), you'll still get the feminizing effects from it over a longer period of time. Most of the effects are reversible, but you should always assume that development of gynecomastia won't be. If the gland grows big enough, it won't atrophy enough to go away completely when you stop estrogen. You can see here how it develops if you hover over small, intermediate, and larger.

The growth might only be small, but you might also be really receptive to estrogen even at small doses.

And you'd probably at the very least probably become androgynous looking. If you don't have very strong masculine features, then you'll probably look like a girl even on a small dose.

 

[rclark]

But as crazy as it sounds, I feel like I'd almost be willing to give it a try if the physical feminization part is not likely. If we read our Judith Butler and practice good intersectionality we know that gender is a social construct and "feeling like a girl" could mean lots of things. Hairloss makes me feel like a whiny little beta b**ch anyway lol. : )

But seriously what were the outcomes for the gay men you saw on Reddit who dabbled in these treatments? We're there no success stories?

She was talking about a famous mathematician named Alan Turing. He was sentenced to castration because at the time, it was illegal to be gay in England.

Here's a link.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing

 

[hanginginthewire]

Thanks. Earlier in the thread she was talking about cis gay men who dabble in taking these things because they are afraid of losing their hair and to stay smooth or whatever. She said they "usually" regret it so I was just wondering if she has seen any of them retain a masculine appearance and get some regrowth.

 

[GiveMeAccessToMyAccount]

Well damn, I was ready to buy the stuff from inhouse pharm if I got some comforting answers. Thanks receding and singularity for the information, i'm bitterly steering clear of the stuff then. I guess i'm stuck on big 3 and getting slow, mediocre "gains" and just slowing down hair loss for the most part.

 

[recedingyt]

But as crazy as it sounds, I feel like I'd almost be willing to give it a try if the physical feminization part is not likely. If we read our Judith Butler and practice good intersectionality we know that gender is a social construct and "feeling like a girl" could mean lots of things. Hairloss makes me feel like a whiny little beta b**ch anyway lol. : )

But seriously what were the outcomes for the gay men you saw on Reddit who dabbled in these treatments? We're there no success stories?

Well, it is likely. Anyone who uses estrogen is likely to run into some level of physical feminization. Just because some people don't doesn't mean it's a gamble you should take. Antydhtor didnt seem to get much boob growth even from a pretty aggressive regimen - he has complained about sexual side effects though! And I can say in my case my ability to get hard and to achieve orgasm is greatly diminished. My dick barely works at this stage without a v****. And trust me most gay men would wanna die if their dicks suddenly stopped working so I doubt it's something they would attempt. Plus, idk if you know but most gay men REALLY enjoy being men, it's why they're gay. Being femme is not seem as a good thing in the gay male community generally. Idk if you're operating under the stereotype that all gay men are girly or what but yeah that's not how it is in real life.

The case of David Reimer pretty much disproves the idea that gender is purely a social construct. If we were discussing gender roles you might have a case, but gender identity is pretty much an innate sense of self. David Reimer was born as a male and the surgeon performing his circumcision botched the procedure and he basically ended up losing a large portion of his penis in the process. Eventually the doctor decided to try and prove that gender was a pure social construct and so he insisted the parents raise him socially as a girl and they even gave him cross sex hormones and surgery to aid the process. From what I recollect he also had him watching p**rn and stuff to attempt to get his sexuality to line up with that of a typical girl. Also you should keep in mind that David didn't know that what he was going through wasn't normal. Long story short, he ended up hating being a girl so much that he eventually transitioned back to male after having been raised as a girl (sometime in his teens, I believe). He eventually went on to marry a woman and lived the rest of his life as a man. Unsurprisingly a myriad of mental health issues came from the traumatizing experience and he ended up taking his own life.

Also on the topic of gender being a social construct: if that were true, hormones wouldn't help as much as they do for trans people. You see for many people, the mental and emotional effects of hormones are quite profound. In my case, they are every bit as profound and life changing to me as the physical effects have been. That's because my brain has the gender identity of a girl, so it expects to have low T/highE like a girl does. When I don't have that (pre-HRT for example) I feel shitty/gross/dysphoric about everything, even my thoughts and my inner sense of self. Now that I've been on HRT for a while I feel so much more calm and at peace with who I am. You have a narrow perspective of what it feels like to go through that because you've probably only ever experienced what it feels like to feel like a man, but I've experienced both and the difference is definitely noticeable.

 

[recedingyt]

Thanks. Earlier in the thread she was talking about cis gay men who dabble in taking these things because they are afraid of losing their hair and to stay smooth or whatever. She said they "usually" regret it so I was just wondering if she has seen any of them retain a masculine appearance and get some regrowth.

The only gay guys I've known who started taking female hormones for one reason or another (keeping head hair, getting rid of body hair, looking young and twinkish, etc.) either quit not far into taking the hormones, or ended up getting so femme over time that they eventually were just like "alright guys it's not as if this is going to surprise anyone, but I'm totally trans"

 

[hanginginthewire]

Thanks for your response. I just wonder how different factors could effect the outcome. Would older guys ve able to feminize that much? If you are in your 30s and 40s and your tissues have been soaked in testesterone for 4 decades, would taking some estrogen radically feminized your appearance? We see transwomen who unfortunately come nowhere near to passing, right? Even if there on full blown hormone therapy? I don't know I'm not knowlegdeable on the subject, like most of us I just wish we could gleam some benefit from this routine without the unwanted effects.

 

[Youcandoit]

Well damn, I was ready to buy the stuff from inhouse pharm if I got some comforting answers. Thanks receding and singularity for the information, i'm bitterly steering clear of the stuff then. I guess i'm stuck on big 3 and getting slow, mediocre "gains" and just slowing down hair loss for the most part.

Taking Finasteride raises a persons estrogen http://finasteridesyndrome.blogspot.com/p/dht-role.html so it is already happening without taking estrogen. When you block your DHT taking Finasteride or whatever some of it is converted into estrogen. So would taking a little bit more be a bad idea? Maybe not. Estrogen increase may be part of the reason Finasteride works. DHT, Testosterone and estrogen are all related. Its about finding a balance for the body maybe that makes it grow hair on head.

Androgens, or male hormones, often increase as estrogen levels decrease. This causes androgenic alopecia, another form of hair loss. This is why kids dont bald and hair loss occurs when balls drop. Its testosterone and hormone balance related.

Typically hair loss is associated with men, hence the term, male pattern baldness. It is not very common in women because we have higher levels of estrogen which helps to balance out the effects of the male hormone, dihydrotestosterone or DHT. DHT is a potent form of testosterone that normally leads to hair loss.

My take is that a little bit more estrogen in your system can only do good if you are already having negative affects of testosterone or DHT, your body must be lacking estrogen needed to balance out the other hormones harming your body or hair.

 

[recedingyt]

Thanks for your response. I just wonder how different factors could effect the outcome. Would older guys ve able to feminize that much? If you are in your 30s and 40s and your tissues have been soaked in testesterone for 4 decades, would taking some estrogen radically feminized your appearance? We see transwomen who unfortunately come nowhere near to passing, right? Even if there on full blown hormone therapy? I don't know I'm not knowlegdeable on the subject, like most of us I just wish we could gleam some benefit from this routine without the unwanted effects.

Yeah it is true some trans women have no hopes of passing because of the damage done by male puberty. Most trans women do end up looking quite feminine though, even if they just look like really feminine men. If you're cool with being more androgynous then maybe it isn't a horrible idea, but I would expect androgyny to become more apparent at the minimum, if not outright feminization. Even in my boy mode I still get called she/her more often than you might think, and even though I'm 24 people literally think I'm like 16 at most due to how smooth and girly my skin is now. I actually had someone recognize my trans pride pin that I normally wear on my shirt at work and it was clear from our interaction she thought I was a pre-T FTM.

I have to be clear, I would NEVER recommend any cis guy to take estrogen/spironolactone. You're much better off taking dutasteride/using minoxidil for a couple years while you save up for a hair transplant (takes 2 years to reach peak effects I feel, possibly even longer - can you really not make smarter choices and save 6-10k in that time?) than to make yourself become a girl or a castrated male for the sake of hair. I did this because if I didn't I would've killed myself because of how much I hated myself and being a guy. If you're not at that point, or at least have some serious gender issues where being androgynous and/or feminine is appealing to you then steer clear. Bottom line.. sorry.

 

[DHTpolice]

Hi, recedingyt. Can you please answer some intimate questions: what is your height/weight? I know you don't want to hide your chest, like most girls don't, but I am only wondering is it possible on practice to hide them with clothes or binders? Eventually, what are you doing with them when you turn into a boy mode?