I need u to stop doing the whole "any testosterone is poison" meme/anxiety thing, and not even because it hurts trans people on a primarily testosterone endocrine stack (though this is a Pretty Good Reason too. but that's been litigated to death already)
especially when fully suppressed T makes physical therapy much much less effective, and T that gets you to the low average cis female range along with high enough estradiol and progesterone doesn't actually cause issues here?
the dirty secret is ovaries also produce testosterone, it's a precursor to other hormones.
but like, solving most of my chronic pain required taking it, it turns out, because now my body passively builds muscle to a much higher point, and I don't lose all my PT gains for the year if I'm too sick for a month.
it's probably more useful if you don't have those things. though you might have trouble getting it from your doctor without those reasons.
but I'm just so tired of cycles that aren't even informed, cargo culting whatever blogposts from six years ago said. and yes, a lot of it is ironic, but the thing about high density of literal thinkers and or stoners is, it becomes doctrine.
I wonder how many other people are hurting because no one (especially doctors in my case) thought to ask if "fully suppressed testosterone" was actually a good goal to have.
not to say T is for everyone, though.
note: depending on the person, body hair follicles may activate that weren't active if you started E in your early 20s so they didn't all already, but testing a month off T seemed to make them stop being as dark. but I shave everywhere anyway. (especially at the application site) and at this dose it seems to hold steady at "maybe 5 hairs above my legs where i wouldn't be able to tell anyway"
note 2: probably won't work if you're on blockers, even with testicles my T was near-zero with just IM estradiol cypionate and oral progesterone so I wasn't on blockers when I started this.
@gwenverbsnouns says in the comments:
hair facts from a trans electrologist:
vellus (light) hairs can be stimulated by androgens (like T) to progress to terminal hairs, and will sometimes revert back to vellus hairs if the androgens are reduced, if they haven't passed the point of no return. that point of no return varies person to person, but generally if a hair gets to be a full coarse terminal hair it won't go away
