I’m curious, how much of a danger is it in terms of health for someone to have lower than normal or no hormones at all.

I was wondering that because I was looking things up and I recently came across a thread on r/Asktransgender where the OP said if they didn’t have hormones they would physically die in a year and several other people said similar things. Is this true? I’m not an expert in medicine but it seems like misinformation to me. I know Osteoporosis is a long term risk.

I also know that personally that I have not taken Testosterone (or Estrogen) in 15 years, and I’m mostly fine. These people said it was fatal to not take it for a year or two.

What are your thoughts on what they said? Does this sound plausible or does it sound like misinformation or exaggeration?

  • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    20·
    7 days ago

    I medically cannot take HRT because it would kill me.

    Many trans people cannot take HRT because of its inherent medical risks.

    The type of misinformation/exaggeration that you are calling out is known as transmedicalism. It’s toxic and should be called out as such. It presents hormones as the One True Way to be trans. It implies that the other ways of being trans are not valid, even if they have existed for as long as humans have.

    We should pursue, uplift, and recover old cultural methods of being trans. It’s more inclusive, and avoids the often-downplayed medical and health impacts of HRT. We have forgotten these older methods because transphobic industrial/abrahamic societies erased them from our cultural memory. Now drugs are filling the void, but it would be healthier if we recovered these old methods as alternatives to drugs. Drugs aren’t for everyone and shouldn’t be treated as the default.

  • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.eeEnglish
    11·
    7 days ago

    I am confused about your question. Are you asking if not taking any hormones is dangerous or if not having any hormones in your body is dangerous? I can answer the second one with a definitive you would die rather quickly the first one is a lot more involved and would require consulting with a medical professional to get a definitive answer. Some cis people require hormones to maintain normal function.

    • disguy_ovahea@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      7 days ago

      This is correct. My mother had a hysterectomy ~30 years ago and has needed to take estrogen since.

      I think OP may have been mistakenly given advice regarding the need for the existence of hormones in the body.

    • First Majestic CometOPEnglish
      1·
      7 days ago

      Maybe a few were but many of them used wordage like “body will stop working and die” so those are clearly trying to say or imply that lack of sex hormones directly kills.

      I don’t doubt that suicide is a potential outcome of the misery associated with it. I do know it can be unbelievably miserable for many people, but they weren’t talking about that. They were talking about medical complication.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    7·
    7 days ago

    Well, anyone taking hormones needs to talk to their doctor before stopping. And stopping without a taper is not a good idea

    However, the medical effects of hrt cessation aren’t life threatening short term. Long term, there’s less info online, and that’s because we’re just now hitting the point where long term data is coming in decent amounts.

    But the fact that long term data exists for hrt cessation points to it not being a physical threat of a high order

    Now, it also depends on what hrt someone is on, and the state of their gonads, plus the rest of their endocrine system. I’m not sure how much you want some stranger going into the nitty gritty of that, because I know that discussing those matters can be very triggering. So I won’t elaborate much without a direct request to do so.

    With that disclaimer, don’t read further if you aren’t up for bare minimum elaboration. Pick back up after the spoiler section.

    !Generally, estrogen is more problematic to stop than testosterone. But stopping rooster either without the body having some hormone production of some hormone is going to cause issues. They shouldn’t be life threatening, but they could be, in the worst circumstances.

    The greatest threat would be to someone that had their gonads removed, as that would greatly inhibit hormone dependent body functions

    However, beyond that, the real danger to life is that not only is an cessation going to have a surge or onset of depression as a potential side effect, if the cessation isn’t voluntary, that’s going to make it even worse if it occurs!<

    The good news is that trans people sometimes have to stop hrt for medical reasons. From what I’ve seen in published literature over the last decade or so, as well as online discussion here and on reddit, the effects usually aren’t horrible. Most people, most of the time, lead a perfectly satisfactory life. As you may be aware, trans men deal with increased stroke and cardiovascular effects, as would a cis man taking supplemental T. When those risks climb high enough, or result in a medical event, cessation of hrt is necessary. The mortality rate after cessation is not higher than for cis men, though I cannot find my copy of that pdf to verify.

    For trans women, the last time I checked (maybe three years ago?) The greatest risk was osteoporosis, which isn’t a good thing, but it typically takes a long time to present. On the order of a decade or more.

    Which all adds up to the concept of cessation causing death directly being a myth. I did a quick search before starting this comment and could find no data indicating that it is a concern medically. Now, non-physically? When the cessation is involuntary, that is definitely a problem, and deaths do occur because of it. And there are deaths when it is voluntary, for the same reasons. But that’s not from the cessation itself, and that is a different, if still horrible, causation.

    Scrolling through the search results here, I’m not seeing anything to indicate a short term death risk. Long term, maybe, but not short term. My search query is “hrt cessation effects for trans people”, on ddg. The word choice was to minimize menopause results, and maybe pull up more medical hits as opposed to layman/social media via the term cessation. Tangential, but you’d be amazed how results can vary based on stopping vs cessation for things like this.

    The reddit stuff is showing things that would be expected, like changes to libido, mood, hair growth patterns, etc. But no mentions of anyone actually dying as a result of cessation. Not even unreliable reports, which I’d kind of expect on social media. Plenty of what you said; that people say that stopping will kill you, but no actual claims of someone dying because of it.

    My take? It’s either outright misinformation, or an exaggeration. It’s definitely a reasonable fear, as hormone changes can cause major disruption. But death just doesn’t seem to be a realistic risk. Certainly not if the cessation is medically supervised and done with a taper

    • TheLadyAugust@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      Hi, I actually think in this case, they might be saying their death might be related to an abrupt and sudden decline in mental health due to losing lifesaving healthcare. Great info you provided though!

  • Nawor3565English
    7·
    7 days ago

    If you take something to block your body’s natural production of hormones and don’t take anything to replace them, you will eventually develop osteoporosis, which is very much not fun.

    • First Majestic CometOPEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      Edited the title to clarify, probably wasn’t clear enough that I was specifically talking about sex hormones.

  • marcie (she/her)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    7 days ago

    Very, it can make your bones brittle and make it very hard to heal. Many trans people can’t produce their own hormones and have other health issues. I know one person that was intersex (had no hormones past age 20 due to something) and was close to losing their entire jaw in their mid 20s because of how brittle their bones were. They got better after they fixed their hormone issues.