4 ms·

You might expect trans women to react differently to lower T levels than cis men for various reasons

_--__--__ 1y ago
Fin blocks the conversion of T to DHT, that rarely causes lower blood serum testosterone levels and can possibly even increase them depending on what else you've got going on hormonally.
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  Right, but it's not the serum levels that matter: it's the agonistic effect on various receptors. (Most) hormones don't have direct chemical effects on the body. According to Wikipedia: > Relative to testosterone, DHT is considerably more potent as an agonist of the androgen receptor (AR).
  - chimeracoder 1y ago
    > Right, but it's not the serum levels that matter: it's the agonistic effect on various receptors. (Most) hormones don't have direct chemical effects on the body. According to Wikipedia: >> Relative to testosterone, DHT is considerably more potent as an agonist of the androgen receptor (AR). Judging from this and your other comments in the thread, I'm assuming you're not an endocrinologist. You're pulling quotes from tertiary sources that at first glance seem to support the argument you're making, but you're missing the broader context, which is that pharmacokinetics and our endocrine systems are way more complicated than you're giving them credit for. It's not as simple as "drug A makes X go down, and X does Y, so A decreases Y". It would make a lot of people's jobs much easier if that were the case, but the clinical reality is actually much more complicated.
    - wizzwizz4 1y ago
      The endocrine system is indeed extremely complicated, but this is one of the simplest and best-understood parts of it. We know relatively little about the mechanism behind the psychological effects of sex hormones (for example, we have no idea why they seem to have different effects in different people, with some people being severely affected, and other people barely noticing), but we have a lot of data showing that there is an effect. "Drug A makes X go down, and X does Y, so A decreases Y" is a good description of the operation of finasteride and dutasteride (if we disregard the unexplained differences between the effects of the two drugs (we'd naïvely expect one to be strictly "better" than the other, but this is not the case)) on everything except the brain. Everything else responds as you'd expect a priori from modelling hysteresis with pencil and paper. But there's a lot we don't understand about the brain.
- groovy2shoes 1y ago
  indeed, finasteride raised my T levels slightly, from 18 ng/dL to 30 ng/dL. the same enzyme that converts T to DHT (5α reductase) can also to convert progesterone to DHT via the backdoor pathway, but i reckon that would have a very small effect for most cis men (where normal progesterone levels range from 0.0-0.5 ng/mL, compared to 2.0-24.0 ng/mL in cis women during the luteal phase, and much higher during pregnancy). a sudden hormonal change can absolutely cause changes to mood and libido, but with finasteride these seem to be rare and generally mild. i would expect them to lessen or even disappear after some time of continued treatment. i wonder how often finasteride is discontinued before the body even has a chance to adjust to the new hormone levels. the claims that the side effects persist after discontinuation are particularly dubious, and they remind me of castration anxiety.
chimeracoder 1y ago
> You might expect trans women to react differently to lower T levels than cis men for various reasons Sure but that's besides the point. I was responding to - and refuting - the claom: > Reports from trans people, way back in the 1940s, show clear links between sex hormones and depression: a priori, one would assume such a relationship would exist here. There's no reason to believe that the effects of hormones on depression in trans people are predictive of hormones taken by cis people in completely different doses for different reasons, but it's especially fallacious to assume that it's not only predictive, but predictive of the the exact opposite effect.
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  It's possible there's a separate mechanism responsible for gender dysphoria in trans men, and the remarkably similar symptoms in hypoandrogenic cis men, but Occam's razor.

Fin blocks the conversion of T to DHT, that rarely causes lower blood serum testosterone levels and can possibly even increase them depending on what else you've got going on hormonally.

wizzwizz4 1y ago
Right, but it's not the serum levels that matter: it's the agonistic effect on various receptors. (Most) hormones don't have direct chemical effects on the body. According to Wikipedia: > Relative to testosterone, DHT is considerably more potent as an agonist of the androgen receptor (AR).
- chimeracoder 1y ago
  > Right, but it's not the serum levels that matter: it's the agonistic effect on various receptors. (Most) hormones don't have direct chemical effects on the body. According to Wikipedia: >> Relative to testosterone, DHT is considerably more potent as an agonist of the androgen receptor (AR). Judging from this and your other comments in the thread, I'm assuming you're not an endocrinologist. You're pulling quotes from tertiary sources that at first glance seem to support the argument you're making, but you're missing the broader context, which is that pharmacokinetics and our endocrine systems are way more complicated than you're giving them credit for. It's not as simple as "drug A makes X go down, and X does Y, so A decreases Y". It would make a lot of people's jobs much easier if that were the case, but the clinical reality is actually much more complicated.
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    The endocrine system is indeed extremely complicated, but this is one of the simplest and best-understood parts of it. We know relatively little about the mechanism behind the psychological effects of sex hormones (for example, we have no idea why they seem to have different effects in different people, with some people being severely affected, and other people barely noticing), but we have a lot of data showing that there is an effect. "Drug A makes X go down, and X does Y, so A decreases Y" is a good description of the operation of finasteride and dutasteride (if we disregard the unexplained differences between the effects of the two drugs (we'd naïvely expect one to be strictly "better" than the other, but this is not the case)) on everything except the brain. Everything else responds as you'd expect a priori from modelling hysteresis with pencil and paper. But there's a lot we don't understand about the brain.
groovy2shoes 1y ago
indeed, finasteride raised my T levels slightly, from 18 ng/dL to 30 ng/dL. the same enzyme that converts T to DHT (5α reductase) can also to convert progesterone to DHT via the backdoor pathway, but i reckon that would have a very small effect for most cis men (where normal progesterone levels range from 0.0-0.5 ng/mL, compared to 2.0-24.0 ng/mL in cis women during the luteal phase, and much higher during pregnancy). a sudden hormonal change can absolutely cause changes to mood and libido, but with finasteride these seem to be rare and generally mild. i would expect them to lessen or even disappear after some time of continued treatment. i wonder how often finasteride is discontinued before the body even has a chance to adjust to the new hormone levels. the claims that the side effects persist after discontinuation are particularly dubious, and they remind me of castration anxiety.

chimeracoder 1y ago

> You might expect trans women to react differently to lower T levels than cis men for various reasons Sure but that's besides the point. I was responding to - and refuting - the claom: > Reports from trans people, way back in the 1940s, show clear links between sex hormones and depression: a priori, one would assume such a relationship would exist here. There's no reason to believe that the effects of hormones on depression in trans people are predictive of hormones taken by cis people in completely different doses for different reasons, but it's especially fallacious to assume that it's not only predictive, but predictive of the the exact opposite effect.

wizzwizz4 1y ago
It's possible there's a separate mechanism responsible for gender dysphoria in trans men, and the remarkably similar symptoms in hypoandrogenic cis men, but Occam's razor.