Exploring The Hormonal Route. Hair=life.

[Solxama]

I am doubtful of the utility of raloxi or tamoxi without estrogen since the whole point of these is to selectively blog specific estrogen receptors but without estrogen, what's to improve your hair?

Just seen this post now, I have to remember to refresh the forum a lot. Anyway for the AAs plus Raloxifene regimen I was inspired by what people were saying on 4chan in a Femboy thread. They wanted feminizing effects without full HRT and the gyno thing that might happen even with just AAs. Then when I was going through this thread and generally reading about androgenic alopecia, I thought it might work for hair too, but I decided to ask people on here what they think about it as I'm not sure if my hypothesis is realistic.

 

[Norwoody]

The problem with the HRT route boils down to the fact that breast growth seems to precede hair growth in practically every case (and who knows what other sorts of effects). However, as seen in the types of estrogen thread, there is a little bit of a loophole. The ER-beta seems to be much less associated with breast growth and much more associated with hair growth. ER-alpha is the opposite. E2 has a high affinity for both and this is why it is effective at achieving both, desired or not. E3 has a very low affinity for ER-alpha, and has a much better ratio of an affinity for ER-beta, but the problem is that it's still very weak in absolute terms. There is a synthetic estrogen being made for research, I forget the name, but a couple of us looked it up a while back, and apparently it has a much higher affinity for ER-b and very little for ER-a, which in theory would be like 'steroids' for hair growth but without major feminizing effects. It was available somewhere but it was several thousands of dollars for an amount that might be considered a months supply lol. Other issues: sex hormone treatments can have negative feedback and become counterproductive. It is also possible that estrogens that are weaker than endogenous estradiol, such as estriol, have less of an antiandrogenic effect on the follicle (activation of ER downregulates that of AR) and cause a worsening of the hair, which is what some have said happens on E3.

 

[Solxama]

I believe that it is possible that while AA's tend not to lower estrogen levels, the three do spoof lower estrogen levels. As seen, since the estradiol levels needed to commence breast development are so low, purportedly one could get some feminization or breast growth just from the body's perceived experience of higher estradiol levels. This phenomenon might not be enough however to promote high regrowth or restoration. Some hair that "grows" back might have still been in cycle without the follicles actually being dormant. I lack in depth accounts, but reports of prostate cancer patients regrowing hair might be due to this aspect meaning that they don't tend to have full regrowth but noticeable but non-cosmetically significant regrowth which might be the same among non-responding MtF's in terms of significant regrowth without estrogen.

So from what I gathered from this, just AAs are a step above a Fina/Duta regimen, but still much weaker then E. The people on 4chan didn't really care about hair but simply feminization so the effects like softer skin, less body and facial hair etc. were enough for them. But for people like me it looks like E is actually needed for substantial regrowth.

This is shaping up to be a really binary choice, gyno for hair...

Maybe I could also try to cycle HRT like some other people have done on here, but then again they still got gyno in the end and had to use Raloxifene after their cycle and I can imagine that's not really that healthy for you.

A part of my mind that keeps getting louder and louder by the day is telling me to simply give up caring about gyno and just go full HRT.

Though choices are the best, I love them so much.... (Not really lol)

The problem with the HRT route boils down to the fact that breast growth seems to precede hair growth in practically every case (and who knows what other sorts of effects). However, as seen in the types of estrogen thread, there is a little bit of a loophole. The ER-beta seems to be much less associated with breast growth and much more associated with hair growth. ER-alpha is the opposite. E2 has a high affinity for both and this is why it is effective at achieving both, desired or not. E3 has a very low affinity for ER-alpha, and has a much better ratio of an affinity for ER-beta, but the problem is that it's still very weak in absolute terms. There is a synthetic estrogen being made for research, I forget the name, but a couple of us looked it up a while back, and apparently it has a much higher affinity for ER-b and very little for ER-a, which in theory would be like 'steroids' for hair growth but without major feminizing effects. It was available somewhere but it was several thousands of dollars for an amount that might be considered a months supply lol. Other issues: sex hormone treatments can have negative feedback and become counterproductive. It is also possible that estrogens that are weaker than endogenous estradiol, such as estriol, have less of an antiandrogenic effect on the follicle (activation of ER downregulates that of AR) and cause a worsening of the hair, which is what some have said happens on E3.

Very interesting stuff @Norwoody , will have to research what you said tomorrow as I'm going to sleep soon. But by just reading it looks like an interesting loophole, that could help but on the other hand could also be a bit counterproductive.

Boobs for Hair.... The toughest choice of the century.... I need to sleep on this (Not the first time in the past week.)
Anyway, goodnight and see you tomorrow hairlosstalk (I feel like this will be my home for a very long time.)

 

[Norwoody]

Very interesting stuff @Norwoody , will have to research what you said tomorrow as I'm going to sleep soon. But by just reading it looks like an interesting loophole, that could help but on the other hand could also be a bit counterproductive.

Boobs for Hair.... The toughest choice of the century.... I need to sleep on this (Not the first time in the past week.)
Anyway, goodnight and see you tomorrow hairlosstalk (I feel like this will be my home for a very long time.)

I cannot find the thread. I think someone deleted it. In any case though, the problem is that we probably won't be able to get our hands on a substance like that for a very long time.

The alternative might be to work with HRT cycles and lower dosages like some have been experimenting with lately. We'll probably start to grasp the efficacy of these much sooner than the previous.

My advice for anyone would be to simply take things one treatment at a time. Yes, time is of the essence and you don't want to waste more than you have to, but if you're someone who constantly switches treatments all the time you may not know what is working and what is not (or if you've perhaps even triggered T.E.) which will potentially waste all the time you have and you may never figure out what works better for you.

 

[Norwoody]

The great thing about estrogen is that it is both a growth stimulant and an antiandrogen, which makes any other stimulants/AAs from other pathways even more effective since you can now attack the issue from every possible angle. One of the problems is that, as Experimentality pointed out not long ago, we still have no great carriers out there for an effective topical that would target the intrafollicular level. And even then ER-a activation might still be an issue if enough E2 goes systemic.

 

[Experimentality]

The problem with the HRT route boils down to the fact that breast growth seems to precede hair growth in practically every case (and who knows what other sorts of effects). However, as seen in the types of estrogen thread, there is a little bit of a loophole. The ER-beta seems to be much less associated with breast growth and much more associated with hair growth. ER-alpha is the opposite. E2 has a high affinity for both and this is why it is effective at achieving both, desired or not. E3 has a very low affinity for ER-alpha, and has a much better ratio of an affinity for ER-beta, but the problem is that it's still very weak in absolute terms. There is a synthetic estrogen being made for research, I forget the name, but a couple of us looked it up a while back, and apparently it has a much higher affinity for ER-b and very little for ER-a, which in theory would be like 'steroids' for hair growth but without major feminizing effects. It was available somewhere but it was several thousands of dollars for an amount that might be considered a months supply lol. Other issues: sex hormone treatments can have negative feedback and become counterproductive. It is also possible that estrogens that are weaker than endogenous estradiol, such as estriol, have less of an antiandrogenic effect on the follicle (activation of ER downregulates that of AR) and cause a worsening of the hair, which is what some have said happens on E3.

Very good reply. It should also be noted that the scalp is abundant in ER-beta, whereas ER-alpha is hardly expressed in skin. However, we do not know where the antiandrogenic effects of E2 (i.e. AR downregulation) originate from (alpha or beta). The synthetic estrogens you refer to are Erteberel and WAY-2000070. I think Erteberel is quite promising, but does show HPTA suppression at higher doses (>25 mg, R). It is also a full agonist (R), which is a prerequisite as I wrote about at length in one of my previous posts on this thread. There is more interest from the HairLossTalk.com community in WAY-2000070, but the available data is sparse. We do not know whether WAY is a full agonist or only a partial agonist, like E3. Furthermore, these compounds are hard to acquire and need to be customly sythesized by a lab. All in all, I do think Erteberel is worth experimenting with. However, it is currently not worth the cost for me as I am still trying to establish topical E2 efficacy.

@JaneyElizabeth. You mentioned E2 goes systemic easily a few pages back. Actually that is not the case. Steroids are highly lipophilic and will not diffuse into the bloodstream for exactly that reason. The reason why E2 is used transdermally is because the effective dose is extremely low (circulating levels are of picomolar order, which is in turn the order of micrograms). I wrote about Estrogel being no good for local estrogenic action before. Additionally, it is vastly overdosed for such purpose (but of course not for transdermal purposes). Theoretically, we can make use of the EC50-concentration, which means the concentration at which 50% of the maximum transcriptional activity is induced. For E2, the EC50 is of order 0.1 nM (nanomolars, see multiple different papers), which means about 27 ng/L (nanograms per liter). The area at my temples where I apply my topicals is about 20 cm2 (square centimeters) and the scalp thickness there is about 5 mm (millimeters, R). Hence, the volume I need to saturate is 10 cm3 (cubic centimeters), which is 0.01 L. So, to achieve the EC50 I just need 0.27 ng (!) evenly distributed in that scalp volume. Of course, we have to take into account that the absorption is not perfect, but still this number is baffling. To empower these results, I have taken a figure from R, where they use an Azone-based vehicle (as I am using now) to assess the dermal and transdermal effects of E2:

As we can see, about 25% of the applied dose is absorbed by the tissue. This means that the dose to achieve the EC50 is still only 1 ng of E2. Thus, even by applying 'only' 1 ug (microgram) of E2, all receptors will be completely saturated. And here comes the good thing: it is very unlikely that one would have side effects from 1 ug of E2 (actually 0.1 ug, since only 10% reaches the receptor site in the study). Males produce approximately 50 ug of E2 per day on average, so this number is non-significant when speaking about systemic concentrations.

Of course, this is all purely theoretical, but a sound theory should always be the basis for experimentation.

 

[John Difool]

It was bridgeburn who applied oestrogel to his temples daily. I think he wrote a few hundred pages back that he had good results with 2mg?

 

[Solxama]

Well like I said, I'm back for more hair talk

OMG, thank you for all the interesting information @Norwoody and @Experimentality , it's truly mind blowing all this stuff. It looks like there is heaps of scientific evidence that E is the cure we are all looking for. The only problem is the side effects... The medical industry should focus on researching this, like the new E compounds you talk about...but no, they prefer to make money off scams, lying and pushing methods from the past century. It's sad that not many people take male hair loss seriously, like from what I read Fina/Duta were found out to help in androgenic alopecia by chance and nobody was really looking for a drug specially targeted at male hair loss.

Anyway If I understand this information correctly, it looks like a large dose of E might actually not be needed, as it looks like even small doses of E activate the receptors in the scalp? If this line of thought is correct, then it means that the cost-effect balance for using E could be a lot better then I previously thought.

And I understand completely about Eastern Europe being "late to the party" regarding LGBT issues. In some ways, there was less homosexual paranoia when I was growing up since most were in the "closet". Being gay in the 70's could not have been much fun. At least we have the net and the ability to find people like us even if we live in rural areas. One reason why so many LGBT individuals move to big cities is a numbers game to find support and possible partners. Now since many/most gay folks are not distinguishable by sight, trans folks are now bearing the brunt of discrimination on the front lines. Your English sure is good so the UK is going to be a real rush for you to live in if it still exists by then. Were you talking England or Scotland, or Wales or Northern Ireland?

I don't think it's as simple as Eastern Europe being "late to the party", it's a bit more complicated then that. During the days of the Soviet Union and it's Eastern Bloc allies, people seemed to be more tolerant, of course LGBT issues were not publicly talked about but people generally did not care what others did in the privacy of their bedrooms. This approach stemmed from two facts : One, that due to the ideology of building a new "Socialist society" people were encouraged by the government to look past their differences and embrace cooperation, brotherhood etc. The other fact was that due to traditional Slavic culture and customs, people generally used to be more trusting of each other, they used to look past first impressions and appearance, instead they judged others by their character. So If somebody was a good person things like being gay, cross-dressing etc. were overlooked. Homosexuality used to be illegal on paper in some Eastern Bloc countries, but so it was in some western countries at the time and it wasn't really enforced from what I gathered online and heard from older people.

Then came the 1990s, the USSR and the Eastern Bloc collapsed, and a bit of a "wild west" decade set in. LGBT people had it pretty well in my country during that time, as there were many open minded sub cultures, a notable one in my country were hippie like anarchists who used to be pretty gender non conforming, and homosexuality used to be very much accepted in their ranks. Then in the mid 2000s everything went downhill, oligarchs and career politicians who seized power during the 90s could not hide the horrible state of the economy any more, so to stay in power and avoid a popular uprising they turned up the nationalistic and reactionary rhetoric that they previously used to come into power. They created scapegoats who they blamed for the countries poor state, these were neighboring countries, leftists, made up foreign agents, migrants and of course LGBT people. Over 15 years of right wing nationalist propaganda did it's job, especially on the youth and here we are now. The same thing happened in many other Eastern European countries. Places like Russia and Belarus on the other hand seem to have avoided this, as the government there does not try to erase it's Soviet history so the old mentality of caring more about a persons personality then appearance is still alive and well there, like if you are a decent person most people won't give a crap about your sexual orientation etc. Of course there are extremists, but they are not as loud as in my country.

As to the UK, I have family there so I learned English when I was a kid, and I kept going there quite a lot during my school days for holidays, and still do now. But every time I kept coming back after a few months as my mum's health is not really good (That issue has been sorted now, thank God), plus in my dark days I used to identity with my country a lot and I used to hate on the UK for being "faggy", like I was never a nationalist, but still I felt pretty patriotic. Even now I don't exactly hate my country, it has it's positive sides like the beautiful landscape, interesting history, and the Socialist era bought a lot of technology and progress to this land, but now that's all destroyed and in ruins. So I've become more anarchistic towards politics as I have come to believe that power corrupts and big government, oligarchs, and corporate greed is a very dangerous mix.

I prefer not to disclose to what part of the UK exactly I'm going, all I can say is my family there is split between England and Wales, and I will be staying with one part of it. They are much more open minded then the family in my country, and the UK itself is also open minded, so I know for a fact nobody will bother me if I decide to go with a radical regimen for my hair.

 

[Experimentality]

Well like I said, I'm back for more hair talk

OMG, thank you for all the interesting information @Norwoody and @Experimentality , it's truly mind blowing all this stuff. It looks like there is heaps of scientific evidence that E is the cure we are all looking for. The only problem is the side effects... The medical industry should focus on researching this, like the new E compounds you talk about...but no, they prefer to make money off scams, lying and pushing methods from the past century. It's sad that not many people take male hair loss seriously, like from what I read Fina/Duta were found out to help in androgenic alopecia by chance and nobody was really looking for a drug specially targeted at male hair loss.

Anyway If I understand this information correctly, it looks like a large dose of E might actually not be needed, as it looks like even small doses of E activate the receptors in the scalp? If this line of thought is correct, then it means that the cost-effect balance for using E could be a lot better then I previously thought.


I don't think it's as simple as Eastern Europe being "late to the party", it's a bit more complicated then that. During the days of the Soviet Union and it's Eastern Bloc allies, people seemed to be more tolerant, of course LGBT issues were not publicly talked about but people generally did not care what others did in the privacy of their bedrooms. This approach stemmed from two facts : One, that due to the ideology of building a new "Socialist society" people were encouraged by the government to look past their differences and embrace cooperation, brotherhood etc. The other fact was that due to traditional Slavic culture and customs, people generally used to be more trusting of each other, they used to look past first impressions and appearance, instead they judged others by their character. So If somebody was a good person things like being gay, cross-dressing etc. were overlooked. Homosexuality used to be illegal on paper in some Eastern Bloc countries, but so it was in some western countries at the time and it wasn't really enforced from what I gathered online and heard from older people.

Then came the 1990s, the USSR and the Eastern Bloc collapsed, and a bit of a "wild west" decade set in. LGBT people had it pretty well in my country during that time, as there were many open minded sub cultures, a notable one in my country were hippie like anarchists who used to be pretty gender non conforming, and homosexuality used to be very much accepted in their ranks. Then in the mid 2000s everything went downhill, oligarchs and career politicians who seized power during the 90s could not hide the horrible state of the economy any more, so to stay in power and avoid a popular uprising they turned up the nationalistic and reactionary rhetoric that they previously used to come into power. They created scapegoats who they blamed for the countries poor state, these were neighboring countries, leftists, made up foreign agents, migrants and of course LGBT people. Over 15 years of right wing nationalist propaganda did it's job, especially on the youth and here we are now. The same thing happened in many other Eastern European countries. Places like Russia and Belarus on the other hand seem to have avoided this, as the government there does not try to erase it's Soviet history so the old mentality of caring more about a persons personality then appearance is still alive and well there, like if you are a decent person most people won't give a crap about your sexual orientation etc. Of course there are extremists, but they are not as loud as in my country.

As to the UK, I have family there so I learned English when I was a kid, and I kept going there quite a lot during my school days for holidays, and still do now. But every time I kept coming back after a few months as my mum's health is not really good (That issue has been sorted now, thank God), plus in my dark days I used to identity with my country a lot and hate on the UK for being "faggy", like I was never a nationalist, but still I felt pretty patriotic. Even now I don't exactly hate my country, it has it's positive sides like the beautiful landscape, interesting history, and the Socialist era bought a lot of technology and progress to this land, but now that's all destroyed and in ruins. So I've become more anarchistic towards politics as I have come to believe that power corrupts and big government, oligarchs, and corporate greed is a very dangerous mix.

I prefer not to disclose to what part of the UK exactly I'm going, all I can say is my family there is split between England and Wales, and I will be staying with one part of it. They are much more open minded then the family in my country, and the UK itself is also open minded, so I know for a fact nobody will bother me if I decide to go with a radical regimen for my hair.

Yes. If E2 does in deed work* topically then a small dose of the order of ~1-10ug/mL will saturate all receptors with the vehicle mentioned in the study. If that does not work I dare to say the whole topical estrogen receptor activation approach can go straight into the trash bin, also for the synthetic estrogens. There are other mechanisms that may be at play that might favor high systemic concentrations of E2, like non-ligand binding effects (AR suppression may not be mediated by the ER for all we know) or complete elimination of non-adrenal androgens. We don't know yet.

*'work' is an ambiguous definition, because what do we define as 'work'? Maintenance or actual regrowth? I think many on this thread are hoping for regrowth, but we should realise that even 'classic' oral HRT does not regrow hair for a significant number of individuals. I will therefore leave 'work' as open to interpretation, but keep in mind that regrowth will always be extremely hard no matter the treatment chosen.

 

[Solxama]

Yes. If E2 does in deed work* topically then a small dose of the order of ~1-10ug/mL will saturate all receptors with the vehicle mentioned in the study. If that does not work I dare to say the whole topical estrogen receptor activation approach can go straight into the trash bin, also for the synthetic estrogens. There are other mechanisms that may be at play that might favor high systemic concentrations of E2, like non-ligand binding effects (AR suppression may not be mediated by the ER for all we know) or complete elimination of non-adrenal androgens. We don't know yet.

*'work' is an ambiguous definition, because what do we define as 'work'? Maintenance or actual regrowth? I think many on this thread are hoping for regrowth, but we should realise that even 'classic' oral HRT does not regrow hair for a significant number of individuals. I will therefore leave 'work' as open to interpretation, but keep in mind that regrowth will always be extremely hard no matter the treatment chosen.

The experiences of the people through this thread seem to indicate E2 does work in some way, for example bridgeburn's hair situation was dare I see worse then mine, and he managed to regain a lot of his lost hair.

As for me, I would be happy with filling my crown in and getting some of my hairline back. I won't delude myself into thinking I will go to NW0, I'd consider NW2 big progress and NW1 a massive success.

 

[Solxama]

We will keep it on the down-low. Of course, for Yanks, British folks calling ciggies, "fags" was always fun. My main contact with Eastern Europeans was at a free market institute right after the fall of the Berlin wall and it was so interesting to me how close all of the languages were, some are almost dialects, similar to Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish.

Most Eastern Europeans are Slavic in origin, the only exemptions are the Baltic nations, Hungary and Romania. And yes, it's true the Slavic languages are very similar. I for one know my native language and I very easily learned Russian, like 70% on my own without anybodies help.

You should at least be able to reach Pegasus's level but I wouldn't limit yourself. Regardless, you appear to have to use feminizing amounts of estradiol, either orally, transdermally or topically.

Anyway, on the topic of estradiol, what about injections? Could that type of delivery also be a viable option? I have seen some people earlier in the thread using them with some good results, plus the price for a long lasting supply is very good for injection type E2.

 

[Solxama]

Not me, baby. NW0 or bust! Goddess permitting of course....

Well positive thinking is key, so maybe your attitude is correct . For me if I ever got to NW0 I would faint from happiness. Anyway I know this is a hair forum but I won't lie it's pretty interesting for somebody into spirituality like me that you always refer to this Goddess figure, so I got a question for you : Is this Goddess some kind of specific deity like for example Athena, or is it more like the feminine aspect of God, The Creator, Source etc?

Some might find that patches or injections work better for them. Again, HRT kicks in with respects all but immediately breast-wise and body-wise but above the neck might be more resistant to less than adult cis-female estradiol levels of 100 to 300pg/ml.

So from you said, it basically does not matter much what delivery method to go with first if I do plunge into HRT. Well for now it would probably be either Estrogel or injections judging by what I read in this thread, price, what stuff is for sale online etc.

It's a fine line but I hope all of you can feel this joy because in many ways loss of hair feels like loss of an appendage for many people. It's very difficult to process the face in the mirror even at 60 bald because our formative years all had hair. The effects of facial framing when worn moderately long can hide angles that might not favor us and can provide something akin to a tunnel in terms of feeling protected. My son essentially only has had like three hair cuts ever and he used to hide behind his hair like the girl in the Incredibles which I always found adorable and I can't wait to try that.

@JaneyElizabeth , are you reading my mind? Your feelings concerning hair loss are exactly like mine, every time I look in the mirror my receding hairline and balding crown make me feel so sad and sometimes even make me think things like "Is this really my face?". Plus it makes me feel so much regret for not doing anything about it earlier.

And OMG that's so cute the hiding behind hair thing. I for one would prefer a shorter haircut, still androgynous but not overtly feminine, but If I do regrow my hair, I would absolutely love to grow it out at least once and then hide behind it, like you said it's so adorable

 

[Solxama]

You have breathed a lot of life into this forum with your enthusiasm and forthrightness. I think you should leap in. I got to coach someone realtime who was an MtF recently and she took her first estradiol pill and I remember telling her, the Dow Chemical joke from the 60's:

Better Living Through Chemistry

Indeed,
Janey

And for me, this forum has helped me regain hope that I can fix another important thing in my life, that I can make up for my mistakes and for the way I used to mistreat myself, my body and soul. Not to even mention the gold tier information on here that I could not find anywhere else online. Like I said, it's a Goddamn crime that the medical industry is not researching more into this. It's absurd that in the year 2021 we still have no official cure for androgenic alopecia.

So thank you hairlosstalk for existing, you are all wonderful people doing God's work on here. I was literally crying when going through the pages of this thread, it's like a massive burden has been finally lifted off my shoulders

 

[Solxama]

Slavic mythology seems less developed than the other Aryan mythologies for some reason. Some form of Deus Pater (Zeus, Deus, Dio, Dios, Dieu, Jupiter) tends to be among the earliest of Aryan religion but even Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism are Aryan and those take up a huge swath of Asian religious beliefs. Germans have an entirely different root for G_D.

Russia seems to be based on the mixture of Viking culture and Slavic culture mixing to create a new identity with the Vikings adopting eventually the proto-Russian language. One downer for us in the West is that Cyrillic is hard to read but your case systems seem extraordinarily cluttered while except for German, the rest of the countries west of Poland have vastly simplified the case system and English is down to two cases and one indefinite and definite article. That's what makes English an extraordinarily good language as an international tongue. The spelling isn't the easiest but that also makes it easy to see cognates from Latin, Greek and French, primarily along with our base language which is mostly Germanic in terms of day to day words like shoe or foot or hand.

Big Dick fan here, especially Blade Runner and We can get it for you wholesale and above all The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, the libertarian novel of the last century.

The problem with Slavic mythology is that a lot of it has been lost, and some of it is only now being rediscovered by historians and archaeologists. The reason for this is that a lot of the historical sources have been destroyed by by the expansion of the Catholic Church, the Teutonic Order which used to occupy North-Eastern Europe and the Mongolian and then later Ottoman invasions into Slavic territory. As for the Father God thing being very similar in many religions, I think it stems from the fact that the founders of these religions knew the fundamental spiritual truth of the so called Source, Supreme Being, Creator etc. but the European ones failed to mention the feminine aspect of this being because of the male dominated culture at the time. But on the other hand, Asian traditions do mention this feminine aspect, for example as the concept of Ying-Yang energies in East Asian religions like Taoism for example.

As for Russia, yes it's culture is a mix of Slavic, Viking but also Mongolian elements. To this day it's a very diverse country with many ethnic groups living in it's vast land, Russia is a Federal country, so a lot of these ethnic groups also have their own Republics, like for example Yakutia, Chechnya, Tatarstan, Tuva etc. About Cyrillic, when you know it, it turns out to be simpler then the Latin alphabet, at least to me. It's pretty hard to make a spelling mistake as I find it very intuitive.

I'm more of a space opera fan, so Star Trek, Star Wars etc. also Soviet sci-fi is very good and thought provoking, I personally recommend the movie Solaris. But yes, although I never read the novel it's based on, I've seen both Blade Runner movies, the old and new one.

Estrogen and Wound Healing

Back to the topical estrogen issue.... If estrogen is good for wound healing and purported via topical use, what does this imply about using estrogen on the face and scalp in terms of healing scalp tissue with reference to future hair growth? It still "feels" to me as though estrogen works differently topically before it goes systemic but I raise this just to garner other opinions.

Things like this make me consider Estrogel as a starting point in my potential future regimen. Another interesting fact is what @Experimentality said, that even small amounts of E2 can activate the receptors in the scalp. But then again Estrogel seems to be more gyno inducing once it goes systematic, and from what I gathered larger injected doses of E2 seem to cause less breast growth for some reason.

Anyway, I won't be on here as much during the weekend as I got a few things to do, and I'll also try to make a preliminary decision as to my new regimen. I can no longer sit and do nothing, my hair is dying and with it my youth, a youth that I never really got to experience the way I wanted to. Also thanks to all the advice I got since I joined this forum, also adding the priceless information on here, I now think I am ready to start taking some kind of real action.

When I do decide (I aim for it to be Monday), I'll surely be back to being very active with a few more technical questions, and I'll keep everybody here updated as to how my future regimen is working.

 

[Experimentality]

Estrogen and Wound Healing

Back to the topical estrogen issue.... If estrogen is good for wound healing and purported via topical use, what does this imply about using estrogen on the face and scalp in terms of healing scalp tissue with reference to future hair growth? It still "feels" to me as though estrogen works differently topically before it goes systemic but I raise this just to garner other opinions.

That's the million dollar question. Of course, when E2 passes the stratum corneum into the dermis it will bind estrogen receptors. The saturation concentration is very low, as per my previous post. So, if E2 would exert its beneficial effects for hair through the estrogen receptor, we are good (this is called ligand-binding). However, there are many other mechanisms (non-ligand-binding) through which molecules can exert their effects. For example, the androgen receptor possesses a so-called N-terminal binding domain where interactions with coregulators are initiated. Coregulators are partly responsible for effects associated with AR activation. So, you can have the best antiandrogen in the world; if it only binds to the ligand-binding domain (as do all current AA's) there is plenty of androgenic activity that can still be present. More on that here and here. This is just one example of another signal transduction pathway; there are many more. The AR is actually even quite well studied, as opposed to the ER. The only thing that will reliably remove all androgenic activity in the scalp is removing the ligands for the AR (testosterone, DHT, other minor androgens). Which is currently only possible with, you guessed it: full blown HRT.

Of course, the ones not too keen to hop on HRT can still tweak a regime that will remove a good chunk of androgenic activity in the scalp while adding some estrogenic activity. There is no question if oral HRT is better than topical because it obviously is (with topical I mean truly topical (dermal) and not transdermal Estrogel, which falls under oral HRT because of its dosage). The question is if we can find a regime that gives some of the benefits of oral HRT without the side effects. For full NW6-like recoveries, this will obviously not suffice. A topical regimen will at best provide subtle, maintainable results without side effects. Anyone expecting full recovery by topical means will be disappointed (although pegasus did an insane job with his experimental regimen).

 

[Solxama]

That's the million dollar question. Of course, when E2 passes the stratum corneum into the dermis it will bind estrogen receptors. The saturation concentration is very low, as per my previous post. So, if E2 would exert its beneficial effects for hair through the estrogen receptor, we are good (this is called ligand-binding). However, there are many other mechanisms (non-ligand-binding) through which molecules can exert their effects. For example, the androgen receptor possesses a so-called N-terminal binding domain where interactions with coregulators are initiated. Coregulators are partly responsible for effects associated with AR activation. So, you can have the best antiandrogen in the world; if it only binds to the ligand-binding domain (as do all current AA's) there is plenty of androgenic activity that can still be present. More on that here and here. This is just one example of another signal transduction pathway; there are many more. The AR is actually even quite well studied, as opposed to the ER. The only thing that will reliably remove all androgenic activity in the scalp is removing the ligands for the AR (testosterone, DHT, other minor androgens). Which is currently only possible with, you guessed it: full blown HRT.

Of course, the ones not too keen to hop on HRT can still tweak a regime that will remove a good chunk of androgenic activity in the scalp while adding some estrogenic activity. There is no question if oral HRT is better than topical because it obviously is (with topical I mean truly topical (dermal) and not transdermal Estrogel, which falls under oral HRT because of its dosage). The question is if we can find a regime that gives some of the benefits of oral HRT without the side effects. For full NW6-like recoveries, this will obviously not suffice. A topical regimen will at best provide subtle, maintainable results without side effects. Anyone expecting full recovery by topical means will be disappointed (although pegasus did an insane job with his experimental regimen).

Very interesting stuff! Will take it in account when deciding about my regimen over the next days.

I will miss the interesting dialog. The two Blade Runners along with 2001, not so much 2010, are highlights of science fiction and while I keep pausing Solaris after ten minutes, along with that, often considered the only decent hard sci-fi movies and I pretty much only like hard sci-fi, the difference being that most of the rest has to do with alien invasions and why would aliens invading be seen as "evil". We do the same things to ants and other critters so that is boring to me. If you like hard sci-fi, the best stuff is often radio drama which was huge here in the States until the early 60's. Other places too but the difference is that the U.S. military maintained many/most episodes on aluminum disks so we have vast amounts still circulating unlike virtually any other country which is sad for them but good for us:

X Minus One - Single Episodes : Old Time Radio Researchers Group : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

X MINUS ONE X Minus One aired on NBC from 24 April 55 until 9 January 58 for a total of 124 episodes with one pilot or audition story. There was a revival...

archive.org

Dimension X - Single Episodes : Old Time Radio Researchers Group : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

DIMENSION X Dimension X was first heard on NBC April 8, 1950, and ran until September 29, 1951. Strange that so little good science fiction came out of...

archive.org

Don't miss me . I'll still be active but less, like typing 1-2 messages a day, and then after the weekend I'll be back to being as active as I am now, I hope with a potential regimen at that point.

I would too say I'm more of a hard sci-fi fan, but I do like Star Wars for it's spiritual angle with the force etc. And yes, "Evil Aliens" is a cliche I really dislike, I think it was born from the human fear of the unknown and then made popular during the 1950s due to Cold War paranoia. Why would a advanced race of extraterrestrials invade such a primitive planet like Earth? Not to even mention the more cliche version of Humanity fighting big intergalactic wars in the future, like if we ever were to reach a point of exploring the stars, first we must get rid of our warlike tendencies. That's why I like Star Trek, yes Humanity does fight others in it, but it's defensive wars and Humanity is part of a larger alliance that is peaceful, diplomatic and overall enlightened. And thank you for the radio drama recommendations, will look into them when I got some free time

We want pics baby and from day one. Snap them without looking with your phone. That's what I used to do after shedding to baldness, which was really my turning point since I rode it out. You and Bridge have/had the advantage over many of us because you don't have to sorry about shedding at all and that is a huge advantage in terms of process although being more so bald is not, probably but see it all evens out if this works.

I'm willing to ride out shedding too if it happens, but I hope your right in that it won't happen in my case. Yeah, I will be taking pictures of my progress, but I don't know If I'll be showing my face, will have to really think about that.

Still reading this but between you and Sol, you have really helped reinvigorate discussion here as it had gotten sort of doom and gloom increasingly since Bridge left. Most of the experimental guys left by about the end of last year but enough harassed me on the way out that I started my own thread which I love maintaining as well. So I really appreciate someone with an actual foundation in many of these concepts that most of us lack such as lipids and hormone transfer and so forth. In a way, we are reverse engineering baldness and what we discover here, largely isn't present or being attempted elsewhere. Rob Winter has an influential article about MtF HRT and hair regrowth but he could only locate about two pics and I think they were the same person. There's a one person "study" from 2016 that recommends increasing E2 levels for MtF's struggling with hair regrowth with one completely bald pic and one with amazing if not quite cosmetically significant regrowth pic, and then there's Bridge. The combination of shame and fear of photographing and the psychological fear of pictures making our hair loss seem more "real" makes all of this apparently extremely uncommon so we are doing yeomen's work here, even those who don't see quite as much results-wise.

@Experimentality is doing God's work on here, his posts are really informative. You too @JaneyElizabeth have a lot of knowledge about balding, hormones etc. so once again thank you for sharing all of this information. And your right, when going through this thread I did notice that the last let's say 100 pages are much lower in quality then the previous ones, but I feel it will get better now that a new person with a new story has joined.

I think the Slavs might have more Wolf archetypes for some reason but yes, like you said, Almas is a Russian speaker from one of the Muslim republics that I can pronounce but don't want to try to spell right now--Chechnya or something like that in terms of spelling. We used to hear a lot about these Republics after Gorbachev left power and the Muslim Republics rebelled, some of them. We often forget about the Siberians with their amazing hair, who are fairly closely related to indigenous Americans and practice Shamanic religions which I have great interest in as well. I am especially interested in the knowledge that might come from things like Yage, the vine of the soul used in the Amazon and mushrooms which can be mind-blowing and gave me my first vision of my female archetype/alter ego. Tibetans have a fair amount of Shamanic influence in their beliefs. Good thing we bought Alaska, lol or who knows what could have happened after WWII. We rarely heard about the Orthodox Church or its residual power all during communism. Americans were told that all Slavs were atheists. The Orthodox Church has many mystically beautiful beliefs that Protestant and Catholic churches often lack. But George Costanza almost became Orthodox for the "hats" on Seinfeld.

The other thing that is irrelevant to human meaning but very true is that contrary to Hitler, Eastern Europeans to me, seem to resemble Nordic types even more so, perhaps due to the Viking influence, with blue eyes, blond hair, pale features and currently, Eastern Europeans, men and women, are off the charts in terms of height, up there with the Dutch and Icelanders but even beyond this in some of the Balkan countries. Amazing how important but also trivial religious issues divide Slavs from the Gallic/Germanic/Italic folks to the west but probably a lot of it is due to Cyrillic and the large differences apparently in Slavic tongues from Gallic, Italic and Germanic ones, all of whom seem to be closer to each other if not much more so than they are to Slavic languages, especially Gallic and Italic but I lamentably know very little of Gallic. Poland's being Catholic is. a huge deal historically and it always ends up getting pummeled when Germany, France and Russia go head to head.

The Orthodox Church was suppressed after the Russian Revolution in the 1920s and 30s because it decided to support the Tsarist White Army in the Russian Civil War. But then during WWII Stalin rehabilitated it to raise the Soviet peoples morale against the Nazis, and most churches in the USSR reopened. During the Khrushchev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras it was treated better or worse depending on the political agenda of the USSR at the time, but it was never really suppressed again. Not to even mention the fact that other Warsaw Pact nations never had any suppression of organised religion at all. The godless commie Eastern Bloc thing is a American Cold War myth and propaganda slogan that was used to rally Americans and other western nations against the USSR and it's allies.

Although I'm not part of any Church, I personally prefer the Orthodox Church to the Catholic one, as the Orthodox Church never really went out of it's way to destroy Slavic history and customs, and the Catholic one did, and because of this Western Slavic mythology is even less known then the Eastern Slavic one. Plus mysticism and spirituality is much more present in the Orthodox Church then the Catholic one.

Also your historical knowledge is very much impressive @JaneyElizabeth , maybe even as impressive as your hair knowledge

BTW, what's going on with Almas? Is he banned? I seen the word banned under his profile when I was reading his posts earlier in the thread, what did he do? He said he wanted to leave the forum and he seemed pretty depressed, but why is he banned, anybody know?

 

[Norwoody]

Neither Orthodox or Catholics go by what Jesus taught.

 

[Solxama]

Oh my Goddess. I hope not. I felt like we were helping to keep him going. We have had people castrate themselves on here in the past so nobody wants that but I don't recall him ever saying anything out of bounds. Norwoody or anybody else? Plz would probably know.

I actually am pretty pro-Russian by American standards. All this fuss about Russia reclaiming a port that the U.S. would never have relinquished in the past and which was clearly, historically, part of its domain seemed silly to me, not to mention that even Ukraines seem to struggle to differentiate themselves from Russians and many seem to be like trans folks and claim to be both more or less. The languages are pretty darn close--how do you do with understanding people from Ukraine and say, Polish or Slovak? Also the U.S. probably understandably, kicked and screamed about missiles in Cuba but what about missiles in Turkey pointing at the Russians? That sounds like even less fun to endure. Somehow, with its vast land area or maybe because of that, Russia is not known for seeking non-contiguous lands unlike the U.S. and all of Western Europe and they even sold Alaska for two cents an acre which seems like an historic bargain in terms of maritime influence and now oil and other maritime products. Plus Alex Ovechkin is our Stanley Cup hero in DC and we have had several other excellent Russian players so we are more open to seeing the good in Russians. Except for tennis and hockey, those are the only Russian athletes we know really.

American free market libertarians tend to be non-expansionist and we tend to view Russian much more benignly than the "capitalist and war profiteers. Everybody in DC so to speak, got rich off both Gulf wars while our youth suffered as did our national prestige around the world. I am a citizen of the world and I take that very, very seriously.

Best,
Janey

You can check his posts out yourself, his avatar that he had like a week ago when I was still lurking is gone and now there is a green A and the word banned is displayed under his name.

As to Russia, yes I'm also pretty pro Russian from what you can gather. Crimea has been historical Russian land, like 95% of the population considers itself Russian. Ukraine is a bit of another story, Central and Eastern Ukrainians are basically Russians, as they have the same culture and speak Russian. Western Ukraine on the other hand is a mixed land of Poles, Cossacks, Hungarians etc. They have their own language that is a mix of Russian, Polish and some self created stuff that they called Ukrainian, it's like 70% similar to Russian. As for my reasons of being pro Russian, I have Russian ancestry, the Soviet Union bought a lot of progress, technology and industry to my country, and the fact I always disliked the aggressive foreign policy of the US and it's allies. Learning Russian and then going to Russia made me even more pro Russian, as the technological legacy of the USSR and the Slavic tradition and culture that was destroyed in my country is still very much alive there, plus the people are super friendly, like they treat you like family if you ask for help.

Neither Orthodox or Catholics go by what Jesus taught.

I'd go even further, I believe no organised Christian church these days goes by what Jesus taught. But then again some are still closer to the original message then others, and the Orthodox one is much closer then the Catholic Church. The Vatican has nor spirituality left in it, it's simply a organised mafia like structure that uses religion for it's own gain, they are like the Pharisees that Jesus constantly clashed with.

 

[Norwoody]

Who are the true Christians? The apostles clearly organized such a group, and there are numerous prophecies regarding Christ's congregation into the future.

I suppose we ought to make this an off-topic thread or something.

 

[Solxama]

Who are the true Christians? The apostles clearly organized such a group, and there are numerous prophecies regarding Christ's congregation into the future.

I suppose we ought to make this an off-topic thread or something.

I don't think there are many true Christians left in this world, it was even foretold in the Book of Revelations that during the events of Revelations there will be very little true believers left. Not that I believe we are living in the end times, as I think Revelations is more of a symbolic and cyclical thing. Like for example the image of the Beast aligns a lot with many historical tyrants, like Nero, some corrupt Popes, for example Alexander IVth, also known as Borgio, Adolf Hitler etc. The point I'm trying to make is that I believe that the Book of Revelations is a warning about what happens when people stray from spirit and go too far in embracing their carnal nature, their inner beast. This leads to suffering and the emergence of tyrants in positions of power.

Also I don't consider myself fully Christian, I have significant Christian leanings, but I'm more of a general esoteric practitioner who not only looks up to Christ, but also for example to Lord Krishna from Hinduism, or to concepts like the Tao from East Asian religions. In a nutshell, I believe all religions have different levels of spiritual truth in them. But yes, as I said before, I do consider Jesus to be a very inspiring and very divine figure, after all, he was the Son of God .

And yeah, we should start a new off-topic thread if we want to continue this discussion as this is a thread about HRT for hair regrowth, and some people may not like that we discuss these things on here.

I understand that completely. Americans feel this way predominantly towards the English and Irish, who among the Gallic, have always been travelers and many went to Argentina along with the U.S. during the latter 1800's. Lutherans feel this way about Scandinavia since most of our Lutheran culture comes from Scandinavians who as the joke goes, left home and went to the U.S and then trudged westward to Minnesota and the Dakotas to find the one place on earth, more inhospitable and cold, except for Scandinavia, except of course, again, Russia, the U.S. and Canada contain some of the coldest places on the face of the earth far in excess of even northern Scandinavia (and for the U.S., some of the hottest places on earth). The Dakotas can go from easily 100 degrees Fahrenheit in summer to 40 below in winter (the U.S. is the last place on earth along with Burma and Liberia off the metric system although it is official here and has been since 1876; we largely use metric for medications and soda and packaged foods). Russia's very existence is based upon its facility in dealing with cold that is largely unknown ever in Western Europe. France is north of New York some places and it rarely goes below zero Celsius and even in central Europe the cold really hits where the gulf stream lags and Napoleon and Hitler had little idea what they were getting themselves into. The idea should have been to grab and take and then retreat but ego always interferes.

The temperature in my country also goes from pretty hot in the summer to pretty cold in the winter, this is something common in Eastern Europe, although it's not as extreme as the temperatures in Eastern or Northern Russia.

As for Russians, the weather making them a stronger people is one thing, but they also have a concept that they call the "Russian Soul". It's basically a metaphysical concept that could be explained as a link with each other and their country in a bond that transcends politics, money, religion etc. It's hard to explain to somebody who never visited Russia, but speaking with Russians can give you the idea. I'm not Russian myself, but I do understand this concept due to researching my ancestry, history and my interactions with the Russian people. The reason I mentioned this is that the Russian Soul also makes them very hard to defeat and conquer. Fyodor Dostoyevsky's writing is considered to embody the Russian Soul, so if you want to know more, his books are the place to go.

Do you know anything about Almas? Plus Plz has disappeared. Were they the same person? Not likely since Plz spoke perfect English without Google Translate. I send a prayer out for you Almas. May your hair dreams all come true.

Janey

That's so nice of you Janey, I too hope Almas is doing ok. I never got to speak with him, but just by reading his posts I could see his struggle, and like you said, there are some similarities between him and me.

Anyway, sorry for jumping on and off today. I went to have a nice long bath, and after the bath I shaved my chest, belly and leg hair as it got too long for my taste. I've been shaving it for a few months now, thankfully nobody really cares as some men do it, like cyclists, swimmers, bodybuilders etc, and to my mum I use the reasoning that I simply prefer being smoother like an athlete. Unfortunately, that's the most feminine thing I can do in my country without being harshly judged, so I'm glad to be going to the UK soon. I'll probably start going for waxing sessions there, and when I get enough money, I'd love to have most of my body hair lasered off.

I'll be going to sleep now, the Aloe Vera gel I use after shaving has a really nice smell that makes me sleepy

Goodnight everybody. Although I won't be as active, I'll still try to come to hairlosstalk during the weekend to react and reply to anything interesting.

I hope my dreams will be full of healthy, cute and soft hair on my head