Gender Affirming Care and Migraines

“After 2002 when the Women's Health Initiative study announced some of the harmful effects of hormone treatment, resulting in a disastrous decrease in estrogen sales, the industry has intensified and diversified its public relations efforts, and has succeeded in recovering some of their lost market. Historically, whenever some of the claimed benefits of estrogen have been disproved, the industry shifts its emphasis to new, previously unmentioned "virtues" of the product. Hundreds of different benefits claimed for estrogen in prestigious medical journals have been proven false, but until 2002, the industry's profits grew steadily. Now, compensating for the annual loss of billions of dollars, they are highly motivated.” (link)

There is a great misconception that hormones are gender. This is in fact, not true, as no hormone itself has gender, but it is the levels and ratios of hormones to each other which causes gender characteristics in a human being. As I discuss in my book, Fuck Portion Control, it is an observational illusion that a human body is a static organism which retains its characteristics in perpetuity, and instead the body is constantly being sustained by a constant output of specific hormones to keep cells and tissues in the state as designed by our biology. If those hormones are removed or altered in any way, changes to the body composition occur rapidly.

I have experienced this phenomenon myself even now at the age of forty-five, when most people are descending in the physical composition of their body I have, for the first time in my entire life, begun to see more masculine physical traits such as more sinewy muscles and a redistribution of body hair patterns toward the sagittal line due to restoration of sex hormones at levels that were missing from my earlier life. Specifically, I have cystic fibrosis, which reduces the amount of dehydroepiandrosterone in males, while cholesterol deficiency persists in all people with cystic fibrosis, where most hormones are made from cholesterol, but cholesterol also has many other functions than simply supporting hormones, such as in the transport of electrolytes as mediated by the CFTR pathway. Most males with CF are also infertile, missing at least one if not both vas deferens which carry sperm to the prostate, which also likely affects testicular function.

Because of gender stereotypes and early, ineffective research in the medical industry the hormone estrogen has been prejudicially regarded as “the female hormone.” But, as also argued in my book (you guys could be reading that instead of this and save some time since it is not possible to understand all of this just from my website alone), estrogen is in fact simply a hormone of growth, and is required for general growth patterns from childhood to adulthood, the gestation of a fetus into a baby, and even for regeneration of injured tissue such as from cuts, bruises, tears, strains, or even recovery from a physical workout. All plants, for instance, never stop growing, and the primary hormone in plants is also, guess what? Estrogen.

Many people so severely misunderstand estrogen that they don’t even know all estrogens (in the human body) first originate as androgens, and estrogen is later synthesized from androgens like testosterone and epiandrosterone, and that women do in fact have plenty of testosterone, which specifically also mediates arousal in women just as it does in men. The study referenced in the quote by Ray Peat above was done because of the high rates of heart failure which were occurring in postmenopausal women, and it was discovered that administering estrogen alone to postmenopausal women increased the likelihood of heart attack and stroke, but that also administering progesterone prevented those harmful side effects. In the intervening years, however, the pharmaceutical industry and government have schemed to hide and obfuscate these studies in order to maintain the industry, which is about 23 BILLION dollars annually (for all HRT). In fact, I cannot actually find the famous initial Women’s Health Initiative Study referenced by Dr. Peat, even in the official website for the NIH or even the other studies which discuss it, which also obfuscate its findings, mostly discussing only HRT or estrogen in general and not the findings about progesterone, as it has been buried under a metaphorical mountain of propaganda and other studies. Even in that primary article discussing the study, progesterone is only mentioned TWICE, where estrogen specifically is mentioned 67 times, and knowing that progesterone is the other prominent hormone in women should on its own be alarming to anyone trying to use this information to make informed health decisions. One of the reasons progesterone is not a priority for institutions like the NIH and pharmaceutical companies is that it is extremely cheap to manufacture from diosgenin in plants like yam, and natural progesterone derived from these compounds can be made by anyone and is offered extremely cheap by supplement makers. Natural progesterone is so effective I used it in the treatment of my cancer at just $35 a bottle which lasted me 4-5 months each.

The reason that use of estrogen alone causes health problems is because estrogen is a hormone of growth, which is fundamentally the process of mitosis where cells swell with water (inflammation) in order to facilitate cellular division (fission), so if estrogen is administered alone this then results in the inappropriate, systemic promotion of cellular inflammation and uncontrolled growth, which is also why estrogen is a major hormone also involved in cancer but also why those only on estrogen therapy experience thickening skin and increasing body density, and the article discussing the WHI study above still retains the results which showed an increase in breast and ovarian cancers from HRT. One of the primary roles of progesterone is to protect cells from inappropriate growth effects of estrogen, which is why both progesterone and estrogen rise during the cycle, and not only estrogen, because progesterone is required to protect a woman’s body from the growth-stimulating effects of the rising estrogen, and without progesterone the rise in estrogen then causes undesired physical effects. As I also discuss in my book, PCOS and endometriosis are directly caused by disruptions in the normal balance of these hormones, caused in turn by colonization with opportunistic microbes, typically Trichomonas parasites that specialize in colonization of mucosal tissue, which then disrupt hormone pathways, and PCOS and aging presents with increased masculine traits such as facial hair growth due to increased androgens, which you will remember are the precursors to estrogen, as well as reduction in progesterone which would normally reduce the appearance of body hair and facial hair.

Because of this general misunderstanding of hormone biology, women and transgender women are then treated incorrectly which then results in undesired outcomes such as an increase in body thickness (remember, unopposed estrogen promotes growth), cancer, and aging. It used to be common for transgender women to simply receive the same HRT that aging women received, but now transgender women take hormone blockers which are also diuretics, which causes their body to dump massive quantities of necessary electrolytes but also prevents the normal development of breasts which would otherwise occur under the influence of progesterone, since all humans regardless of gender have fully intact mammary organs (why do you think you have nipples?). As discussed in my article on curing migraines, all migraines and the majority of headaches are caused by inflammation of the deep, sphenoid sinus cavities by Trichomonas parasites, which function by inhibiting the local immune response which is also mediated by electrolyte transport such as in the CFTR channels. Women are far more likely to suffer from migraines because of naturally high levels of estrogen, which functions fundamentally by promoting healthy, normal inflammation required of growth, when progesterone levels are not sufficient to block those inflammatory effects. But what’s worse is that birth control and HRT exacerbate those problems because they are not entirely based on solid science, so migraines become even more severe and more frequent because of the ignorance to these factors.

Progesterone is actually also antiparasitic, because most parasites colonize their host in part to benefit from the hosts’ sex hormones, to complete their reproductive cycle, but since progesterone blocks those effects it also actively blocks much parasite reproduction. Many people reading this article in fact will be horrified to learn they are parasitized, as stupid, fearful people often use avoidance and dissociation as an instinctual coping mechanism for handling stressful life experiences. But Trichomonas parasites are the most widespread non-viral sexually transmitted disease globally, which remains under-prioritized and under-treated in part because it is firmly blamed on women only even though Trichomonas also colonizes the urethra and prostate of penises, where men remain largely untreated and therefore even more responsible for its transmission.

But Trichomonas are not only transmitted by sex, and simply requires exposure to mucosal tissues and fluids, and even spit and nasal discharge can also transmit other Trichomonas species than the ones which specialize in the reproductive organs. Nipples are mucosal organs, even in those who do not lactate or breast feed, and breast cancer is mostly caused by Trichomonas which are transferred to the nipple duct through oral transfer during sex, which is why most cases of breast cancer relapse because partners of those with breast cancer are not treated and remain a carrier to reinfect the patient after receiving chemo or radiation, as even doctors and researchers are ignorant to the biology of Trichomonas parasites due to willful avoidance of biological realities that many people do not want to acknowledge, because parasites ‘are gross,’ or that even industrialized societies with massive sanitation and medical industries are still plagued by massive rates of parasitism (why do you think they have such high rates of diabetes, obesity, and cancer???).

If HRT treatment is effective and inerrant, people on HRT would not have deviances from healthy subjects, but outcomes are significantly different than what is desired and expected because the science is not yet right, and how can a person expect to be healthy when purposefully causing the body to dump massive quantities of necessary electrolytes which are required not only for the normal function of human tissue but also resistance to problems like inflammation of the sinus cavities which then results in migraine? The upside of learning correct biology and using correct information is not only the cessation of migraines, but also breasts and healthy fat deposition and other features that are supposed to be the very point of HRT therapy.

Remembering that estrogen is made naturally in the body from androgens, the proper course of treatment for women would be to use aromatase or aromatase-promoting medications (which don’t yet exist) which would increase the conversion of androgens to estrogens, while also protecting women’s health with the concomitant use of supplemental, natural progesterone. This will also lower the quantity of androgens to reduce masculine characteristics but not inhibit the entire cascade of necessary hormones in the way that diuretics do. The lesson of this biology is particularly ironic in the case of bodybuilders whom inject testosterone in high quantities because muscle growth is in fact a function of conversion to estrogen after testosterone reaches muscular tissues, but the high doses also thus cause unwanted growth effects such as the enlargement of the navel, nipples, and even the entire head, as well as increasing the risk of parasitism. One of the effects of steroid abuse such as occurs in the fitness industry is the shrinkage of testicles, which is why bodybuilders have such tiny balls, is because the male body responds to excess of estrogen by shrinking the source of the androgens from which estrogen is made. Using aromatase or aromatase agonists for aging women, transgender women, PCOS, etc., along with high doses of progesterone is thus what will achieve desired outcomes, rather than only supplementing estrogen. My book also discusses the use of natural phytoestrogens which can also be used by women to enhance estrogen function, which are not quite as powerful as pharmaceutical intervention but can still be useful, especially for those who cannot afford medical support in countries like the United States which do not offer healthcare to their citizens, when accompanied by protective progesterone can have significant effects.

Remembering that hormones are made from cholesterol, promoting cholesterol production as discussed in my book is also key to naturally reversing hormone dysregulation. Hormones are extremely consequential to the very foundation of our physiology, and using them exogenously can be extremely dangerous if they are not fully understood. It behooves any person undertaking the use of hormones to fully understand what they are doing, because you can seriously fuck up your health, even if a doctor tells you it’s fine, because even doctors do not fully understand the human body and all the factors which complicate the use of hormones or the origins of health problems which necessitate them. There is no reality in which a person may remain ignorant to biological information and remain healthy, let alone actually achieving specific desired health outcomes, and if you are unwilling to do the work required to understand biology yourself then you can’t expect to achieve the outcomes you want, since we inherently do not control biology even when we are fully informed.