Long story short, I am a woman who was on 200 mg of injectable testosterone cypionate once every two weeks for about 7 years. I won’t go too much into why I was taking such a high dosage, though I did quit about 6-ish months ago because of balding at the crown. Since then, though, I’ve generally felt like crap as far as my concentration and memory goes, and I actually lost even more hair, though I do not know if that has anything to do with shock to my system or that the better blood flow with the testosterone was giving me more or thicker hair even while it was gradually taking the sensitive spots away. My gains at the gym, libido, and skin have also significantly suffered.
I am very tempted to get back on the testosterone on a much lower dose, but I am wondering as such whether anyone would know about if a very low dose would make me continue to bald. I saw a thread on here from last year with someone mentioning their wife taking almost 20mg of test c weekly with purportedly no ill effects on the hair, though that might not be the case anymore for all I know. I was thinking about taking about that amount (25 mg), only bi-weekly, for a total of 50 mg monthly, as I’ve seen that dosage somewhat tossed around in the medical literature for certain treatments.
I have also been talking myself up into it from reading about how ample exercise should help prevent the testosterone from converting to DHT (the usual suspect in hair loss) or otherwise eliminate it faster from your system. It just so happened during the last couple years when I started noticing the balding, I had really fallen off my cardio and started eating a lot more crap due to bad work-life balance, so I am hoping that on such a low dose, I wouldn’t have to worry about further balding so long as I keep up on cardio and keep the diet largely clean.
That’s a mens equivalent dose. Something like this in a woman would cause virilization thats not reversible. This would be akin to someone gender transitioning.
Not sure on this.
I don’t think so. This is a non factor.
Without knowing why you are on it, its hard to advise. Women generally take very small doses by comparison for adequate T replacement. What its done to you thus far is a crap shoot for me. I have no experience with woman taking that much T. Any masculine characteristics you have gained are likely permanent but the hair loss should stop when you cease Testosterone use unless you have alopecia or other predisposition. The hair thats gone will not come back.
Thanks for the reply. I have congenital adrenal hyperplasia and in short, for me it was a choice between androgenising hormones or a high dose of corticosteroids for treatment, so I eventually went with the testosterone and essentially the gender transition dosage. I don’t know if I could have gotten away with much much less but I didn’t care about being seen as a man anyway — except for the balding part when that started. I don’t think I have female pattern baldness in my family, but I do have male pattern baldness on both sides — so at this point I don’t know if the male pattern baldness would continue if I started back up on even a low dose, or whether low dose wouldn’t have much of an effect.
I’ve seen some anecdotal cases of female-to-male transgender individuals stopping testosterone and eventually growing back at least some of the hair they lost to male pattern baldness, but I would suppose it depends on how soon you catch it, whether the follicles were completely lost, and who knows what else. I was planning on waiting a full year at least to see if there were any improvements to my hair before figuring the hair is gone for good, but I suppose if I restarted the testosterone before then, even on a low dose, that might interfere with it.
The exercise thing was mentioned with a lot of ifs, ands, and maybes for the rationale behind why minoxidil and scalp massage helps/works (basically enhance blood flow to the scalp and reduce inflammation, but much less targetted than massage or minoxidil), though I don’t think there was too much science behind it so much as guesswork.
Can you consult with an endo about using DHT derivatives, like oxandrolone, at a much lower dose?
I would be curious to know if nandrolone would be more suitable for you (mainly due to the impact on aldosterone).
Provided you noticed the hairloss <6 months, it should be reversible, mostly at least.
The mechanism is not necessarily binary from my understanding.
Lowering the dose should be a logical next step.
Physiologically female dose would be hard to judge but a hell of a lot less than 200mg.
You would need to worry about male pattern baldness as you have those genetics to. You just wouldn’t normally have to deal with it in the absence of male level hormones. Ftm patients experience male pattern baldness, not female pattern baldness.
I think using a dht synthetic like anavar would be better on hair.
I’m between endocrinologists at the moment (last one retired just this past year), so I’ll have to see, but it sure won’t hurt to ask once I find a new one. I do not know very much about other anabolics; besides the testosterone, I only ever tried dianabol and trenbalone very briefly, and those didn’t have anything to do with my condition so much as experimenting with cycles I read about. So it would be ideal to find something that has the effects I need or want (hormonal balance, plus better energy, strength, etc.) without going bald, lol. I’ve been thinking about pine pollen, since as I understood it is very low dose testosterone — but I couldn’t find anything on how low exactly, just generic dosing guidelines.
I would imagine oxandrolone or stanozolol could be potentially useful.
Are any female hormones useful for your condition? Progesterone or even DHEA?
Dianabol and trenbolone especially, have no real place in medicine.
Considering you were on 200mg of actual testosterone a week… I do not see the pollen helping.
I was figuring so, that the male pattern wouldn’t continue if I didn’t have so much androgens, but I guess I don’t know where the cut-off for that would be. I’ve never gotten a DHT lab, only test levels done, as I had read a long time ago there wasn’t really a useful reference range (?). It is sounding like anavar would be the way to go if I can get a hold of it, at least as far as getting the energy/strength level I want without losing the rest of my hair.
Anavar isn’t as masculizing as Test is. It is harder on the kidneys and liver though.
I would think you would want to minimize the amount of DHT you are making if you are concerned with hair loss (if DHT is high, and I would assume so since you were on a high test dose for a woman). If you continue down that road, perhaps consider a 5AR inhibitor? 5AR inhibitors do have some research backing that they work with women. Maybe a lowering of your dose of T and a 5AR inhibitor might be better than anavar long term? I would think you would still want much lower T. Looking at your protocol, I would think doing more frequent, lower dose shots would be better for you as well.
Take what I am saying with a grain of salt. AAS and female use requires extra caution if the goal is to stay feminine. I am throwing out some ideas on what I would look into.