(((I Will Outlive)))

Just a reminder that testosterone is not a magic "good at sports" potion, that humans all have both testosterone and estrogen, and that saying a woman's *natural* hormone levels give her an unfair advantage at sports is like arguing that tall women should be banned from professional basketball.

Some quotes from the article (my emphasis):

Testosterone is a powerful anabolic hormone—it helps you build lean muscle mass significantly—so it tends to boost your generalized strength, especially in areas like the upper body where your muscles have more receptors for it. It’s also a driver of red blood cell count, and the more red blood cells you have the more oxygen you can carry to your muscles, increasing your aerobic capacity.

It seems to follow logically, then, that testosterone would boost your athletic ability generally. But if that were true, we’d expect to find a strong correlation with performance and testosterone. And we don’t.

...

Complicating all of this is the fact that elite athletes’ testosterone levels vary quite a lot. One analysis found that 25 percent of elite male athletes have testosterone levels below what the International Association of Athletics Federations consider the lower limit for men. What’s more, it wasn’t the athletes in less strength- or speed-oriented sports. Some of the events with the most men below the limit were powerlifting, rowing, track and field, ice hockey, and rowing. Basketball players and alpine skiers had some of the highest levels. That all seems to imply, at least to some researchers, that high testosterone isn’t a universal performance booster.

Just a reminder that testosterone is not a magic "good at sports" potion, that humans all have both testosterone and estrogen, and that saying a woman's *natural* hormone levels give her an unfair advantage at sports is like arguing that tall women should be banned from professional basketball.

trans people who don't take hormones are trans enough.

trans people who don't have surgery are trans enough.

trans people who keep their birth name are trans enough.

trans people who use the pronouns associated with their AGAB are trans enough.

trans people who don't transition to a binary gender are trans enough.

trans people who present and/or identify more closely to their AGAB are trans enough.

trans people who don't change their appearance are trans enough.

all it takes to be trans is to not, or not fully identify with the gender you were assigned at birth. we are enough, our transition is real, no matter what it consists of. trans people don't owe anyone shit. 🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵

[ID: A post on r/TransMasc by u/amonaroll.

Title: "how did you know you wanted to take T and not just be a masc woman/person?"

Body text: "i'm really conflicted right now, because i don't hate my body or voice, but i feel like i do want more of the effects of T"

Comment by u/publicinjury: "i didn't hate my either, sure it could have been different but oh man, did the idea of a more masculine body, more body hair, facial hair, yeah <3

The thing is; you can also be a masculine woman on T if that's your vibe.

gender, pronouns, and presentation are all yours to fuck around with and find what vibes with you most!"

The post has 21 upvotes and the comment has 22. /End ID]

(source)

[Image description: A hand painted posterboard sign at what looks like a protest. Sign is in all caps and reads, "HRT is older than Viagra, Lasik, and heart transplants. Stop calling it "experimental" /end ID]

"People shouldn't post about how the contraceptive pill can be prescribed for non-contraceptive reasons because it's sex negative" feels like a take that can only come from people who don't realise just how young some people end up being prescribed the pill

Like, fine, you, person in your twenties, might be comfortable being like "this is the pill I take to fuck without getting pregnant", but I don't think it's sex negative for a thirteen-year-old who has been prescribed it for debilitating period pain to not want to have to hide their medication from their classmates on an overnight school trip because their classmates think that the only reason anyone would take it is that they're sexually active

Also, maybe more importantly than social perceptions, many people who are 13-18 may not have access to people who will let them know that you can use estrogen and progestin / progestin pills or hormonal IUDS to stop/lighten periods.

The number of young people menstruating right now who don't know that there is a viable option to not be menstruating is staggering. There's an option to Just Not Deal With That and many young people haven't been told about it or been offered that chance.

So for those young people, yes, birth control can lighten or stop periods. The birth control pill can do this, IUDs can do this, implants can do this and injections can do this. Birth control pills you take every day, injections you get usually every 3 months, and IUDs/implants require a doctor to insert an IUD into your vaginal canal or an implant into your arm. Not everyone has their period stopped, but a lot of people do and of those that don't have it stopped they usually have it lightened. Talk to a doctor about what's right for you. Planned parenthood is super helpful for accessing birth control if you have one nearby, if not, most doctors should prescribe birth control on request barring major health concerns.

Throwing out there that IUD insertion has a reputation for being extremely painful but the New York Times ran an article just this week about actual pain management options you can and should raise with your doctor before the procedure if they’re too lazy to offer the information themselves.

Spoopy Season Safety

Had to address this because I hate, hate, hate, when people online with zero medical or biological credentials write things like this

I spent the last half an hour trying to find any scientific studies that show activated charcoal effects HRT. There are none. There are a few conflicting studies, one study from 1986 claims charcoal interferes with estogen and progesterone in birth control  for up to three hours, and another study from 2001, found no changes after taking 5000 mg of charcoal three hours after they took birth control. I found nothing about it affecting T.  The amount of charcoal added to food items are extremely low also. It’s not going to “flush” your hormones from your body. That’s not how hormones work and it’s not how activated charcoal works.

If someone has any scientific medial papers that actually show it affecting HRT I’d love to see them. But right now this is just scaring trans people on HRT with information that is just straight up based on no solid medical evidence?

Human isn’t my thing, but activated charcoal is widely used to absorb organic toxins and medication from the gut, but it will not ‘flush things from your system’. It is used to reduce absorption into the system. Once you’ve absorbed a medication, it’s all yours.

We use it a lot for toxicology cases in veterinary medicine as a kind of cover-all, and this is a general guide.

So for a non-organic (contains no carbon) molecule, eg lithium, potassium bromide, activated charcoal will do nothing.

For a very rapidly absorbed molecule,e g alcohol, activated charcoal is unlikely to get a chance to do much.

The biggest risks would potentially be taking activated charcoal at the same time as fast acting medications, as they should be absorbed quickly but don’t hang around in the body very long, so you might see an effect from the reduced absorption. Things like anti-seizure meds, heart meds, and some anxiety meds spring to mind.

Hormones are different because they’re not an instant or short term effect, they produce their effects over a long period of averaging doses. Miss one dose of testosterone and you probably wont see a difference. Miss one dose of a heart medication, anxiety medication or anti-seizure medication and you might see a huge difference.

The two studies above are probably not conflicting. There’s this rule of thumb that there’s a window of opportunity of about 1-2 hours to administer the charcoal, and otherwise you’re probably wasting your time. So three hours after contraceptive pills I would expect to do bugger all. I suspect nobody has bothered to study it’s effects on HRT.

So I wouldn’t take charcoal at the same time as any oral medication, but a three+ hour gap is probably fine. And I’d avoid it if you’re on something ‘sustained release’, and check with your friendly neighborhood pharmacist if you take anything life-saving.

But it doesn’t magically ‘flush’ medications or toxins from your system - otherwise it would flush all the natural compounds as well! It simply binds to organic compounds in the gut.

For this reason, you can also use it to reduce flatulence.