Author:
A difficult pill to swallow is learning everything I have studied and researched about hormones for over fifty years is all wrong. It's been a series of follow the leader in prescriptions and shallow research that wasn't really research. Trans request hormones on what they have read and heard. Doctors prescribe hormones on what they have read and skimmed over. And no one really knew exactly what they were doing because the hormone prescriptions worked to a limited extent. Until they hit that proverbial wall and no longer helped but went into station keeping or regressing.
The video is over two hours long. If you are sincere about being trans, if you want to learn more than you thought was the basics for hormones, trans studies, why we are who we are and what we aren't, why no one truly cared about going into full research why we exist. You owe it to yourself and all those you know who are and aren't trans, the answers to the questions no one asks.
Dr. Powers has over fifteen hundred trans patients. If I can put it into perspective, he dug into virtually every dark corner of transsexualism like no one has ever before. There is no black and white for trans. There are degrees and each person handles and accept or doesn't accept it differently. Some who have every marker for being trans accept their lives as is and don't want hormones. Some who are only slightly leaning in that direction want the full works, hormones, surgery.
He starts his presentation with the qualifier it is for medical personnel. The layman is welcome to watch but some of the terminology gets a little deep. Maybe a notebook and pen would be a plus while one watches the program. I didn't the first time. I'll spend a dozen or more hours watching it again and again and taking notes besides downloading it to a jump drive in case it gets banned. I'll be making another appointment with my doctors when I get intelligent enough to ask the right questions. And I'll probably be dumping all the hormones I have now. I know someone personally who is on his prescribed treatment and she has blossomed in six months. It's how I came to find the video. I asked her what all she was taking to be looking so damn good so quickly.
Ladies, gentlemen, you are on your own. I'm just now digging into this so I can't give a personal opinion on it.
Hugs People
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0
Barb
There are several videos listed one may download, and or research by Dr. Powers
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Dr.+Pow...
Comments
This looks very interesting
Thanks for posting this! I'll watch it through when I get the chance and already forwarded it to a friend who doesn't read BC all that often.
A very interesting watch, to be sure.
I wasn't entirely a fan of the doctor's attitude at times -- he was a bit too self-assured and convinced he knew better than everyone else -- but at worst his methodology seems no LESS effective than typical treatment plans and provided he starts getting the data compiled with specific case studies and references (and a few less typos in his presentation) I'll admit, it sounds safer to me than the risks associated with other methodologies.
A WARNING TO OTHER LADIES HERE:
Please do not watch this and consider it a guide to self-medication. I know it's something INCREDIBLY tempting (I struggle with it myself,) but doctors exist for a reason, as do second opinions in the medical community. If anything, take what he says as inspiration to do as I have, and seriously look into what options are available in your area for proper -- PROPER -- help transitioning, and if that fails, online places, including reddit, to seek out actual medical professionals who can give you more information on what to do safely. Heck, invite them here: we could really use a few med professionals about occasionally.
Melanie E.
100 % agree with Melanie
The Doctors, those lab tests they want, their questions about how one is mentally adjusting is for the patient's own well being. That's mental as well as physical. If one purchases drugs from overseas the likely hood of being scammed is pretty close to one hundred percent now. I live in the middle of nowhere. Back in the Dark Ages when I asked my Dr. about taking estrogen he laughed at me and said that was only for post menopause women. Thus I ended up ordering first from Mexico, and later Taiwan, and then Turkey, and then India. All except India no longer ship to the U.S. I stopped ordering from them too. It seems con artists have taken over. With Doctors who understand trans, and Costco's deep prescription discounts, pharmaceuticals are cheaper than from overseas and are the real deal.
Please take advice from someone who has been there, done that, and prays you follow Melanie's and my advice. Don't self medicate.
Thanks for reminder Melanie
Hugs
Barb
Life is a gift, don't waste it
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
What did we "know", anyway?
I haven't watched the video because my brain doesn't process videos very well (and they're painful -- I'd rather have a root canal.)
But I'm not sure what it was that we "knew" that is actually wrong?
FWIW, all I know is that on HRT (prescribed by local MDs):
Was there something else I was supposed to have "known"?
There is no one size fits all
Ever since trans was diagnosed as a mental disease trans have been catagorized as a definitive subject. Doctors and society think one picture, one concept, one definition describes virtually every transsexual. We are not individuals like the rest of society.
Asche, if you are satisfied with what you have, that is your choice. Don't let anyone else define your life for you. They aren't inside that skin you are wearing. I hope you are taking the tests to make sure "all" your hormones and body chemistry is staying in balance.
Elsbeth wrote in her story The Lost Queen, "knowledge is its own reward". Whether one ventures outside their comfort zone or the status quo is up to each individual. Dr. Powers suggests Spironolactone is counter productive and hinders MtF changes. He also thinks the estradiol popularly prescribed is a leaking lifeboat and only works for so long and not very well at that. He gives a full blown medical explanation of what transsexual is and just as important, what it isn't. A MtF has a female brain and thinks like a female. A FtM has a male brain and thinks like a male. It doesn't mean either will want hormones and or surgery. Each person handles it differently. There is a lot more going on inside the body than just the brain wired for the wrong body. Is Dr. Powers research going to be the definitive answer for medicine in the future? As he said, trans have a higher percentage of suicides than all other class of people combined. Take all the suicides in the world besides transgender and we have a higher body count than all of them added up together. Society, the medical profession, the political is a total failure in giving support to the transgendered class of people. We need support, we need help, and we need it at an early age. What we receive is bigotry brought on by ignorance, lack of medical support caused by lack of knowledge, and laws being passed against help and treatment by politicians who totally lack any knowledge about trans other than we are mental.
At less than one percent of the total population we are easily used as the whipping boy for everyone for any and every reason. And what are we going to do about the injustice of the world. By ourselves nothing, we don't have the numbers. Educating the public, the medical field, and politicians would be a start.
We still have a long road ahead of us and so damn few have an incentive to do more than just survive the best they can. And if passable to go incognito, blend in, and live a normal life like everyone else. And I don't blame them one bit.
Hugs Asche
Barb
"IF" i make one person's life better because I was, then I've accomplished what I returned to do.
Oklahoma born and raised cowgirl
There are no "experts"
IM-not-so-HO, the fact that this doctor thinks he knows what a transsexual is already proves that he is speaking from ignorance. I don't think it is possible for us, in this society, to conceive of anything about transsexualism that isn't heavily biased by our society's built-in prejudices about gender. And the medical profession is notorious for seeing what society's norms have led them to expect to see, and for being convinced that having "Dr." before their name means everything they say must be true. There is no fool like an educated fool. I am deeply skeptical of the notion of "male brain" and "female brain," especially since "male" and "female" are already pretty fuzzy concepts, even on a biological level. People see what they expect to see or want to see, rather like the canals on Mars.
At this point, IMHO, the only realistic approach is to accept that we don't really know the underlying mechanisms (we don't even know what questions to ask) and just figure out what seems to work for the people who don't fit into society's gender norms. And what clearly works far better than anything else anyone has tried is to let them live more or less as they feel most comfortable living and provide the medical procedures they ask for. Keeping in mind that everyone is different, and what works for some won't work for others. BTW, the same is true for HRT: just see what works and what doesn't, letting the subject define what "works" means.
At this point, any conclusions beyond this are nothing more than institutionalization of ignorance.
I have not noticed any differences in my mood as a result. (Soci
Since my GF is TG i know from her the "mood swings" see most the others. Not the Person Him / her self.
i am like the others not a medic ask some who knows you well and they can tell you if you had.
And it#s often in medicine each medic thinks he is the only one who is right.
So i recomend all who read that or look that video don't medical your self.
DES
The most interesting thing about this for me is the reference to DES having such an impact.
Although I do not have direct evidence that she was prescribed this, this was a time when this drug seemed like a miracle, and I know that my mother was deeply affected by the miscarriage (a girl) between my older brother and me - still talked about it, as she had only boys. Dr. Powers said that it was 600 times stronger than estrogen and coincides with a high incidence of transgenderism.
So I cannot say for certain that this is the cause for being the way I am, but there is some comfort in finding a possibility.
Maryanne
DES yes?
An Internet survey reported a high rate of transgender and intersex identity in people assigned male at birth participating in an online support forum for DES sons. Of 500 respondents, about 32% identified as transgender, transsexual, gender dysphoric, or intersex (90, 48, 17, and 3, respectively). << Prescribed from late 30s all the way to 1971. I was born in 1951
Love, Andrea Lena