I transitioned 9 years ago and these symptoms started to me around 4 years in. Usually they’re not talked about in trans spaces despite being documented.
-
Lower body temp than people who aren’t on HRT despite not feeling the cold. Sometimes I even feel hot despite my body being 36.5°C
-
Terrible blood pressure, my nails on my fingers and toes are always purple-ish and the nails grow thin and weak.
-
Dry skin.
-
Extreme dry eyes, they actually cause me vision loss.
-
Bruising, random bruises appearing on my thighs out of nowhere. One day I fell on my knees and even tho it wasn’t a hard fall I got a terrible black bruise on my knee.
-
Dizziness, people report headaches more often but I don’t get those as often as dizziness.
Some people say “wow HRT made me feel so good” and I’m here feeling like a corpse in recent rigor mortis 💀
Super interesting and things I’ll look out for as I get closer to the 4 year mark (half way there)! It is unfortunate that androgens and testosterone do a lot to regulate most of the things mentioned here- stimulates collagen so thicker more oily skin and stronger nails, and higher tear production so less dryness of the eyes. Estrogen tends to lower blood pressure while testosterone tends to increases it- could account for the dizziness. I think all these things become even more clear as we age and most definitely should be talked about! Much of it feels less about being trans and just more about being a woman 🩷
Yes, HRT is not exclusive to trans women. People in the comments are trying to tell me this is not caused by HRT but my doctors all said that HRT is well documented of doing all of this on cis women 😂
The truth is, there is virtually no research on the impacts of HRT over that length of time. There is no way for a doctor to be able to tell you anything authorative about your experience, because the best we have is anecdotal experience from folk in the community. Any doctor telling you anything with certainty about the impacts of HRT 10 years in, is coming from a position of bias (whether that bias is positive or negative).
If it is the consequence of HRT, you can experiment with dosages to find out. Reduce your E and/or T blocker and see how it goes. But also, talk to your doctor about possibilities other than HRT that you can explore. If they are absolutely insistent that it’s HRT (or if they’re absolutely insistent that it’s not) then they are passing off personal bias as fact.
The same goes with me. You shouldn’t believe me or anyone else when they tell you it’s not HRT, because it could be. But it could also be something else entirely, so you need a doctor that is willing to look in to it, because most trans fem folk do not share the experiences you’re having.
I’m not a doctor, nor am I trying to dispute anything your doctors say, but cis women rarely take HRT before their mid 50s at the earliest. There could exist normal side effects for HRT that are still causes for concern when experienced by a 21 year old.