This image is widely viewed as a symbol of medicine. Many, particularly in America, owing to a bad mistake by the American Medical Association, would identify it as the Rod of Aesclepius, a healer in Ancient Greece.
But its not a symbol of medicine – as it used to be at least – its the Caduceus of Hermes / Mercury – a symbol of commerce. The Rod of Aesclepius is down below.
In Snakes in a Love Drug, the possibility of a set of relationship modifying drugs brought the tricky boundary between medicine and commerce, or fashion, into view. These brave new world potions are apparently just upon us.
In the light of this we are opening up a new category of posts on RxISK with the tag hormones on them. These are hormones used as drugs – among the most commented on posts we have ever had for instance was one on Thyroid hormone causing weight gain. This was previously filed under weight but will now be refiled with a hormone tag as well.
Even more important than posts like this and the comments after them are reports to RxISK (filing a RxISK Report) from anyone reading this of the actual effects of different hormonal preparations on them. Views, opinions, positions like the ones expressed here are one thing but lived experience is more important and this is one area where lived experience is critically important.
Naturally You or Me
One of the trickiest things to manage is that many of these new love potions look like they will trade on the fact that they are “natural” – organic or artisanal in other words. The subliminal message is they have to be much better for you than Prozac or Pariet or Penicillin. Almost medical rather than commercial.
The trouble is that, when it comes to drugs and medicine, nothing is natural. The only natural thing is to stay as we are – see The Cabbage Problem. Occasionally, for medical reasons, intervening becomes a good idea, and sometimes for relationship reasons as with oral contraceptives.
When intervening in an old-style medical situation no-one doing the intervening thinks about whether what they are about to do is natural – artificial looks just as good if not better than natural when putting a plate in a broken bone as it does, horrific as this might sound to many, in most other medical situations.
But for the most part when dealing with the body, unless there is a lot of pain involved, beauty has always been more important than health, leading us to embrace things that are not natural – which we do more readily of course if told they are natural.
Beauty here is used in a very broad sense that comes close to what most people in the United States and increasingly elsewhere might call Wellness. It encompasses identity and things we might do to attain the right identity. It is not meant to have a cosmetic implication. If anyone can think of a better word that distinguishes this domain from old-style medicine please let us know.
Waiting to Explode
Many men reading the list of things testosterone can do or women reading the list of estrogen effects might well think – Holy Shit, am I walking around with this stuff inside me ? Is there something I can do to make sure nothing goes wrong? As outlined last week, when they are our hormones, something different to industrially produced hormones and related drugs, our body has ways to manage without us having to worry about things that can be tricky.
But if motivated by beauty, many of us see things differently and will swallow industrially produced testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and variations of all these, along with finasteride, leuprorelin and leuprolide and all sort of other hormones like steroids in gyms, and thyroid hormones in weight loss or wellness clinics.
The general sense is if it comes from the body it can’t be a bad thing and it must be possible to put it to some good use – nature can do with some help. Isn’t that what we do with gardens?
It is what we do with gardens and for millenia gardens were seen as beautiful compared to the wilderness. Two hundred years ago, this began to switch as regards landscapes but we haven’t made the same switch when it comes to ourselves. The Love is the Drug book (more reviews below) points to some risks we might run when it comes to human gardening – not just our individual selves but communities or populations.
Given so many of us, probably half of us, are taking these natural products, the idea of a hormone slot on RxISK seemed a way to go.
This is for people to report on the effects of any bodily extract from insulin to thyroid hormones and in particular any of the sex hormones, taken for contraceptive, post-menopausal (male), aphrodisiac, gender modification, cosmetic or other purposes.
Whether you are a man taking testosterone or a trans-man taking it, we are interested in any reports you may have of its behavioural effects primarily.
We are interested in medical accidents like blood clots or haemorrhages but more interested in changes in the fabric of yourself – either your physical fabric or your behavioural fabric.
Changes in characteristics like hair distribution or voice or attitudes or thinking style can all shed light on what makes any of us human.
All the evidence is that guys taking androgens in gyms can become impulsive, suicidal, dependent and strange. This becomes very obvious because partly because of the doses being taken.
We are not seeking out dramatically strange effects like those that happen in gyms, partly because if you go that far out, reporting is not likely to be your strongpoint. Its more the subtle things that may for instance be better noticed by trans-men.
We want to hear from women who find they become dependent on and have withdrawal symptoms when taking contraceptives or HRT and can’t believe this is possible. Its hard to explain but it happens. Do trans-women have the same experiences.
Peak Performance
There is a tendency to link hormones to youth and peak performance. One report to us suggested we take readings of our hormones and other bodily variables at the age of 25 so that we can bio-hack our way back to these levels later in life.
Ever since the first hormones were isolated a century ago, the temptation to illustrate their effects with images like the fountain of youth above – people go in old on the left and come out young on the right – seems to have been close to irresistible.
It rarely works out quite like this although we’d be interested to hear any reports from bio-hackers who have positive experiences.
Walking Backwards
There is at least one more fascinating possibility that might arise from hormones taken in combination with other meds.
Way back in the early 1960s, Hannah Steinberg, the first person ever to have psychopharmacology in her job title, showed that the combination of clenbuterol (a beta-agonist – used for asthma) and chlordiazepoxide (the first benzodiazepine tranquilizer) given to rats led to them walking backwards.
This was something that had never seen before. Rats do not do it naturally. It was something no expert could have predicted beforehand.
Its quite likely that someone out there is taking a combination of hormones and other drugs that produces effects, never seen, or rarely seen, on earth before. That sounds dramatic. Its not meant to be alarming. We just want to let you know you might be unique and if you think you are we’d be interested to hear about it.
Aesclepius
Love is the Drug
Here are 3 reviews of this book
Plus see
Transgender Meds A Call for Reports
Transgender Asexuality and SSRIs
Lupron A Nightmare Made in AbbVie
L says
I find interesting an argument about sexual effects of common oral contraceptives taken by many women. Among women who take them, some have a more or less significant drop in libido. I heard someone say that she was sexually “reborn” after suspension, that the contraceptive pill flattened every sexual sensation and removing it she “was able again to feel every little sensation that had come to forget, every touch of the skin..”. Years ago, on an Italian forum for women, there was a girl who denounced loudly that after the suspension of the contraceptive pill her sexuality had never returned as before, that before the pill she often masturbated as an anti-stress and was easily multi-orgasmic, while with the pill she became anorgasmic, and after removing it she regained the capacity of no more than one consecutive orgasm and not as easily as before. There is no trace of her account anymore and I can’t say if it was all true.
However, there is some hint regarding the possibility of persistent sexual alteration from female oral contraceptives, which for some reason have not been further investigated: https://www.jsm.jsexmed.org/article/S1743-6095(15)31288-1/abstract
In women with sexual dysfunction, SHBG changes in “Discontinued‐Users” did not decrease to values consistent with “Never‐Users.” Long‐term sexual, metabolic, and mental health consequences might result as a consequence of chronic SHBG elevation. Does prolonged exposure to the synthetic estrogens of OCs induce gene imprinting and increased gene expression of SHBG in the liver in some women? Prospective research is needed.
Panzer C, Wise S, Fantini G, Kang D, Munarriz R, Guay A, and Goldstein I. Impact of oral contraceptives on sex hormone‐binding globulin and androgen levels: a retrospective study in women with sexual dysfunction. J Sex Med 2006;3:104–113.
Heather R says
I’m very wary of hormones. I’m actually scared of taking Vitamin D which I understand is a hormone, unlike other vitamins. GPs are routinely dishing out Vitamin D as though it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’s suposed to make us younger and fitter, but the one time I took it for a few days I felt quite foggy brained and weary.
My major life-changing experience with artificial hormones came when I was 30. It was horrendous. A year before, I’d had to have an emergency Caesarean section to save my life and that of my first son. The surgery was not well done. It later appeared that the uterus and the bladder had been caught up together when I was sewn up afterwards. When the gynaecologist did the three month internal check in clinic to see that the womb had reverted back after childbirth to its correct position, he didn’t do it properly. He thought I was pregnant again, but the pregnancy didn’t follow through, it was what is termed ‘a missed abortion’ or ‘ a false alarm.’ So he gave me the mini Pill which he said would sort things out.
Well, within 3 days of taking those little pills, I could feel myself going crazy. I remember feeling impending doom, the sky looked darker, and I was engulfed in overwhelming inexplicable fear. Fear of what, I couldn’t work out. A person who loves to be alone, working, with good concentration, I began to be a terrified muzzy headed lost soul. I had a little toddler to care for.
I can remember standing in our Hall, beside our grandfather clock, with my son strapped in his pushchair, looking at the hands on the clock’s brass face and deciding that when they reached 1 pm I would walk down the road where we lived and thrown myself under a bus. I felt sure someone would take care of my son, seeing him on the pavement in the buggy. My mind was not my own, I felt as though I was in a nightmare of unreality that I couldn’t wake from. The garden outside didn’t look ‘right’, it looked somehow weird. As though I didn’t recognise it. Fortunately something prevented me going out of the house on that fateful day,
The sky stayed like a constant grey flannel over me as I awoke each day to battle on, and I was afraid to be alone in the house. I had, to my enormous humiliation and embarrassment, to ask neighbours if I could bring my little son and spend the day with them till my husband came home from work in the evenings. Otherwise the fear was impossible to manage. I did not dare to be alone.
In the end my GP gave me low dose Valium benzodiazepam, which I took for 4 weeks only, and three months into this living hell, thankfully the fear started to recede. But it was almost a full year until I felt that my mind was my own again. I learnt through all this about using creativity to distract myself from the fear. But my concentration was shot and I couldn’t read or watch a film on TV. Only football, which I normally loathe, held my attention, perhaps because it was mindless and it moved fast. Looking after my son was terribly difficult. We sat in his playpen together in case I fell asleep and he wandered off.
I finally found an excellent book by Dr Katerina Dalton, a gynaecologist, called ‘Once a Month’ in which she suggests that if you take artificially made hormones like progesterone and estrogen, the body assumes it can shut down from making its own but into the void they leave, it moves Adrenalin – hence the feeling of ramped up but inexplicable fear. But very gradually the body gets the message to restore its own natural hormone balance and tops up its own hormones.
A similar thing happened to me when given Prednisone steroid (which I think is a hormone?) for a breathing ‘allergy to grasses’ problem one summer when I was 42. I lost a great deal of weight because everything tasted dreadful. I had akathisia due to discs in my neck swelling up with fluid and pressurising my spinal cord. No doctor would ever concede that these two prescribed drugs could have made me feel so unwell. It took almost a year to feel right in my head again.
I therefore keep well away from these hormone ‘chemical messengers’. Even Vitamin D. The hormones about which I understand so little. If you get your personal balance wrong it seems it can change your personality for some months and get your branded by your family as temporarily crazy.
Johanna says
I haven’t heard much about “estrogen withdrawal,” but testosterone withdrawal seems very common. The FDA has issued this warning:
“Individuals abusing high doses of testosterone have also reported withdrawal symptoms, such as depression, fatigue, irritability, loss of appetite, decreased libido, and insomnia.”
This was aimed at men who were either taking medical treatments for “Low T,” or using black-market hormones for muscle-building. But a couple of former transmen who had decided to de-transition and quit T told me they had gone through something very similar, without any idea of the cause. They had blamed their distress on gender dysphoria, or their own assumed depressive tendencies. And they had wondered if it were a sign that de-transitioning was a bad idea, as their “true nature” really was male after all.
This withdrawal syndrome seems to mimic amphetamine withdrawal: a mix of severe depression, lack of confidence, fatigue and “brain fog.” The “pleasant” psychological effects of T are similarly amphetamine-like – both males and females often report extra energy, self-confidence and generalized “sex drive” (though not necessarily sexual satisfaction). Especially when you first start.
And adverse effects of T often resemble what you’d expect of a meth addict: aggression, hostility, paranoia, etc. These are legendary among athletes taking large doses of T and other steroids to “bulk up.” But a minority of men taking more modest doses find their personalities changing in similar ways – as do some (but not all) female-to-male transitioners.
Dr. David Healy says
A comment just left on the Lupron was made in AbbVie post
I am truly sorry that you had to go through that. I mean, the side effects of Lupron can be truly awful. But I don’t think it should be removed, people should just be made aware of them before getting a shot. This thing saves lives, it helps treat prostate cancer, and it’s an excellent blocker for transgender youth. I myself, am transgender and I’ve had two shots of Lupron, the stuff makes me feel so much more relieved in my own body. Knowing that my puberty has been stopped just makes me so much happier and lets me worry about one less thing. Before I got my shot, my endocrinologist ran through all the risks with me and made sure I was aware of what could happen. Again, I am so sorry that you had to go through that, but I don’t think removal is the answer