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The most optimal SHBG levels are between 300-900 pg / ml E. Now look at this graph.
Exploring The Hormonal Route. Hair=life.
- Thread starter bridgeburn
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Well the truth is if you are doing bica monotherapy in high enough doses for it to actually be effective at blocking all the ARs then yes, you will experience menopause symptoms. He's not wrong for saying that. But he's also not elucidating as well in that response as he did by responding in the thread I linked. The reason he recommends against bica monotherapy is more complicated than he has time to explain in a reddit post more often than not. Read the post that I put up. You have to consider how busy he is, he doesn't have time to explain in depth scientific reasoning for everything in every response he puts up there to people who either don't care about specific reasons or won't understand it.
This graph proves absolutely nothing about feminization results. Literally zero. Just because your levels are in the right range does not guarantee you the results you want. E2 levels are not the entire story when it comes to results from HRT and if you can't understand that then I don't think this conversation will be very fruitful for either of us. If you want to live in the 1990s as far as trans science goes, sure, only pay attention to your E2 levels.
I guess the fact my bust measurement has gone up by 1.5 inches despite losing 20 lbs in the last 2.5 months and the fact that that coincides with when I started adopting a version of the Powers method is just coincidence. So is that I've gotten more facial feminization and hair growth than ever before in that timeframe despite having been stalled out for years in the past. Lol. All that despite my levels being lower and more stable than yours for the majority of my cycle.
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If I recall correctly, Powers' method is to measure SHBG and calculate the optimal E level for each person, calculating the level of free E through SHBG. Unless, of course, this clever guy came up with another "Powers Method v13.37", which again differs from the previous one. By the way, how is his trade in "hair formula" based on Minoxidil doing?
I'm too lazy to do calculations of my free E, and I just have an average E level of about 400-500 pg / ml. I believe that the main thing is a decrease in T to the castration level and an increase in E to a female level. On this we all agree with each other.
Powers stated that Bicalutamide will leave you hormone-deficient and make you feel crap. In fact, you will not experience menopausal symptoms with any dosage of Bicalutamide. And it does not affect the bones, this is nonsense.
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I never said his hair formula is the best. Although, if you can point to some specific thing in his hair formula that is bad I'm all ears. As far as I can tell, it's a pretty solid formulation especially considering that first and foremost, hair is not his primary concern.
Yes that is the primary thing. However, it's like saying minoxidil (being the best thing for regrowth we have at the moment) 2% is just as good as minoxidil 5%. We know it isn't. If you're comfortable leaving potential results on the table by not caring about stuff like SHBG, I'm not stopping you. Just don't pretend like you're doing all you can be, because you aren't. All I'm trying to say is to go as far as you have, but chicken out by looking at things through a very narrow lens of "Low T, High E = hair" is kind of a deluded half measure that leaves a lot of potential benefits on the table for no good reason. The good thing about the Powers method is that even if it doesn't work, it doesn't hurt you either. Literally nothing to lose except the potential gains and a VERY miniscule amount of money that boron costs you and the slight inconvenience of dosing twice as frequently as you currently do.
How is it nonsense? If you are blocking all of your androgen receptors in your body, it shouldn't matter what your testosterone level is because it can't do anything in your body due to bica blocking all of its potential receptor sites. The only way you wouldn't experience menopause symptoms is if a significant amount of T aromatizes into E as a result of your bica usage (which at that point, again what is the point of bica monotherapy? Are you starting to see why he recommends against it yet? I don't know how much clearer it can be made for you). I don't really know how you're coming to the conclusion that blocking all the ARs in your body with bica is any different than nuking T entirely through something like CPA.
You know what menopause is, right? And that it causes decreased bone density? It shouldn't matter whether or not your T is nuked from something like CPA, or just rendered useless from something like Bica. Either way, if you are not supplementing with E you will run into the issue of not having any sex hormones, resulting in menopause symptoms. I feel like I'm going on like a broken record at this point but the only way Bica in a sufficient dose to block all ARs through monotherapy wouldn't cause this is through aromatase into E. If you're already aromatizing E, you're still going to feminize. Additionally, with the doses required for this (200-300mg) you are talking about a much higher incidence of liver problems. Why would anyone ever choose to use bica mono only to end up still feminizing (with worse results than if supplemental E was used) while also putting their general health at risk? There's very little benefit to it and a lot of risk. Hence Dr Powers recommending against it. This isn't rocket science.
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Okay I got it. You are in the cycling theory of pregnancy pre and post. i don't buy that at all but it's up to you to think this is the way. Your E with your current cycle is "fluctuating" in the 100% range from baseline. That's crazy. Unfortunately people will read your post and think that's the right way to go.No, I continued to go bald. Therefore, I had to switch to HRT.
I have not seen any research on this topic, only read about it from someone for a very long time. I'm not sure about that myself. However, since my T is suppressed and my E levels are always in the female range, I have no problem. But more importantly, the quality of hair in women improves during pregnancy, when the E level is very high. Therefore, I do not know which levels are the best for hair and decided to just not fool myself and do it as it is more convenient.
The main thing is to raise E enough for T to fall to the castration level. The rest, I think, does not play a significant role.
Therefore, I adhere to the rule T <35-50, E> 200-300
There is research that a T level of less than 20-30 is more likely to be cured of prostate cancer than a T between 20 and 50. Therefore, the key for me is reducing T
Prognostic significance of castrate testosterone levels for patients with intermediate and high risk prostate cancer - PMC
Testosterone level of < 50 ng/dL has been used to define castrate level after surgery or after androgen deprivation treatment (ADT) in metastatic prostate cancer (PC). To evaluate the effect of two different castrate testosterone levels, < 50 and < ...www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
I read this. Powers said that the optimal E level is between 300 and 900 pg / ml. This is exactly the range that I cover the peaks and troughs of levels.
I can't help but add that Dr.Powers is not an authority. For example, Powers claims that taking Bicalutamide without E will make you feel like sh*t because you won't have a dominant hormone. Just an idiot.
You read the old posts from that doctor. Hie version "6" as he called it has been updated to know take SHBG into consideration. He also recently understood a few things about hair loss, after stealing the ideas from other subs (stealing is taking the ideas, not giving credit to anyone and renaming them with funky names to accredit them to him.) The version you read from him shows that he has learned a lot from the community. Dr Powers is definitely not an authority, especially when it comes to hair loss. In version 7, he finally discovered DHT is bad for feminization. His latest lotion for hair has 100x less Latan in the mix that the studies have demonstrated works for hair. And he manages to still sell it and make profit. I guess wearing a white blouse, you can do these things I would be careful about what you read on reddit too even in his channel. Actually especially in his channel. I've seen people much more knowledgable than him posting there and he simply blocked them when their educated views differ with his own.
Are you under any doctor supervision with blood levels tracking or just a DYI and apply what you read randomly somewhere?
PS: we are getting closer to 1000 pages.
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Apparently sublingual minoxidil avoids the hypertensive issues and side effects from oral minoxidil, how would I take liquid minoxidil orally? Thanks.
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via your mouth?
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Progesterone will activate PRL receptors which is not good for hair based on the Bayer's study and the new drug they will come out to stop hairloss. The only reason you would use p4 is if you were not using any 5ar inhibitors which you already do with Duta anyway and that's much more effective. I was on p4 before because I read the reddit misleading posts and am not taking it since July. The fact that Dr Powers recommends it for breast development in later stage is another reason why I stopped listening to his advices and reading his posts.I still prefer long hair over big boobs (at least on me.)
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Well, maybe when I reach a plateau with my hair I will consider dropping it. For now I take it for breast growth, which it seems to be helping with greatly (remember I said I've lost 20 lbs in the last 2.5 months and gone up 1.5" on my bust measurement? That's probably at least partially thanks to progesterone). I actually do want full breasts hence my desire to take Domperidone as well once I get to that point of weight cycling, which will probably be about midway through next year. Aside from that I also take it because without it I am virtually asexual. I'd like to try Dr Powers' T-gel atrophy reversal cream and see if that will work as a substitute for that purpose at some point, but I'm waiting til I can afford to go see him in person so I can also get estrogen pellet implants in his office to actually become a patient of his and I don't want to use just any T-gel as he says the way his is formulated is specifically so that it doesn't go as systemic as other T-gels do.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just that right now the benefits of progesterone outweigh the potential negatives for me. I plan to get some labs done near the end of the year or sometime in January so I can see where all my levels are at and if I need to adjust anything (the one concern with progesterone I have is its potential impact on DHT, but between bicalutamide and dutasteride I think that should be close to 0 still... but I'll need those labs to be sure). If my labs show anything weird I will think about dropping prog.
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Just curious what is was you changed about your regimen in the last 2.5 months?
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200mg spironolactone/6mg sublingual E/100mg oral P4 was my regimen prior to the first week of September
Then I switched to:
200mg spironolactone/4mg EV on 3.5 day injection cycles/100mg P4 rectal/9mg boron
Midway through October I switched to 25mg bicalutamide/4mg EV on 3.5 day cycles/200mg P4 rectal/18mg boron (9mg bid)
I assume you are mostly curious about breast growth so the only other thing that I can think which may be contributing to my increase in size over that time is that I've been doing keto/intermittent fasting, which should raise IGF-1 levels which is beneficial for breast growth. But I am eating at a deficit, and a fairly significant one at that, so the amount of growth is surprising.
Only change in my regimen specifically targeted at hair has been needling (started this in like late July tho) and starting OM midway through October.
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Do you not have any concern that lowering shbg with boron might adversely affect hair results? I mean I know in theory if T is low enough it shouldn't matter, so maybe Im just overly paranoid from when I was focused on recovering my hairline
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Well technically boron doesn't lower SHBG, it just binds to it so that more of your dominant sex hormone can be free to act on tissues in the body. So for example if you were T dominant and took boron it would increase your free T % which would potentially be negative to hair growth. I don't see/I'm not aware of any mechanism in which SHBG being bound to boron, resulting in a higher free E2 % could be negative to hair growth. If anything I think it would follow that if Powers is correct in his understanding that free E2 % is the best indicator of feminization, it would also be correlated with better hair growth as well since hair growth and feminization are linked. More Free E2 means more of it making its way to the receptors in the scalp, in theory promoting more growth. Unless I am missing something, anyway. It's all speculative until Powers publishes a peer reviewed article/study on his experiences with his patients, but every Powers patient I know is incredibly happy with what his methods have done for them so I think there is some truth to it.
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Okay, sorry that I didn't word that correctly. I'm aware boron doesn't actually lower shbg, but binding to it, wherein it is unusable is still the same effect. But semantics aside, shbg has a much higher affinity for binding to free dht and T than E
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Plus you don't mind wearing a wig, so that seems the right choice for you.
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I'll need labs to confirm this but I suspect my T/DHT are already very low if not undetectable, in which case it shouldn't matter. I think I remember reading that taking boron causes something like a 20% increase in T/DHT levels, but if we're talking about my baseline of T being 20ng/dL (just as an example, I need labs) that's a 4ng/dL increase. Hardly cause for concern. Same logic for DHT levels. You wouldn't want to take boron if your T/DHT was not sufficiently suppressed, basically, but unless you are incredibly androgen sensitive it shouldn't be too much of a worry to go up a few units here or there.. Especially compared to the potential benefits of having more free E2 if you assume powers is correct in his assertion that that is the metric to follow in terms of feminization.
I'd like to get away from wigs one day, but I know ultimately I'll need a hair transplant/hairline advancement for that anyway, unless things really start popping off on my recovery sometime soon.
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The qualities of Boron are highly questionable. Again the quack Dr Powers is basing his recommendation on a study called there is nothing boring about Boron. After that study was published, 3 other studies were published debunking the first one. Since then, people take their pick between good or nothing for some reason. It did nada for me. I was on the 27mg daily. So I dropped it. The goal obviously was to raise my free E. because as you say it has more affinity to bind to T/DHT. What I am more looking at these days is lowering my prolactine for good measure which some other posters don't seem to mind raising with progesterone.
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I take 100mg prog nightly, which hasn't adversely affected hair
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I should have the money for a hairline advancement / Type III brow sometime around the midway point next year though which by itself may be enough to get me off of relying on wigs.
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that won't happen with higher prolactin, just saying. Just keep that in my when you have the desired mensurations.