Cross sex hormones increase risk of stroke and heart attack by as much as 7 times

[Clymene]

Shocking study from the US

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7de59308-b3b8-11ed-bc64-f71663a88018?shareToken=87b09de880a9c7d1b51942a8bff45e322_

Patients who took hormones had a nearly seven times higher risk of strokes caused by a blockage in blood vessels to the brain compared with those who had never used hormone replacements.

Honestly it's unfathomable to me how people are taking long term medication when there's been no analysis of the risks at all.

Taking our own hormones can be problematic enough. It of course stands to reason that if you interfer with what is most likely a healthy balance of hormones that its not going to be a good idea or particularly safe. This to me is the real transphobia. That trans people are not made fully aware and fully informed about the medical path they are taking. They are as deserving of fully researched, reviewed quality healthcare as everyone else.

Of course though some responsibility has to be taken. You can't threaten, emotionally back mail and scream " bigot " at everyone who's trying to help you but who dares report something that's even remotely negative, then be surprised/complain that your healthcare is lacking.

From that report it in fact sounds as if it simply could be the taking of hormones per se that increases the risk - no real indication that taking cross sex hormones makes a difference compared to taking hormones expected for your sex, ad if so, what it is.

This is the difficulty with reports that don't use sex words and repeat the misuse of 'hormone replacement therapy' for cross sex hormone treatment. Maybe they do mean that HRT for menopause or low testosterone treatment for men have exactly the same raised risk as cross sex hormones for cosmetic use, but it may be just sloppy language. Need to read the study I guess.

I always fear that results of studies/information like this, instead of being something that makes people question the safety of what they are doing and urging them to seriously consider their health before going down this road, instead will lead to even more people deciding they will do it just to prove a point that itsbsafe ans any suggestion otherwise is transphobic and stick two fingers up at " transphobes"

Yes there are stupid people who are beyond reason but ultimately the aim is to get the medical profession to stop offering these treatments entirely or at least where minors are concerned.

Unfortunately the stupid people are the ones with YouTube accounts and tik tok accounts telling their thousands of young followers that the negatives in the reports aren't true and are simply evidence of the hatred towards trans people.

I do often wonder what has to happen before we stop enabling the sheer paranoia that everyone's out to get them and wants to withhold care. Nothing seems to be enough. Look.at the cases of the teenagers with osteoporosis, crumbling spines and the skeletons of 80 year olds.

The more negative the information reported the more the efforts ramp up to dismiss it all as transphobia.

But it starts off by saying it’s a study of people with gender dysphoria.

I hate the misleading term HRT for cross sex hormones but I think it’s clear in this case.

It should be, but the quote from the researcher to me was attempting to smoosh the two together.

I agree that using the term HRT in the article muddies the waters but the opening of the article makes it clear study only analysed records of people taking cross sex hormones:

People taking hormones for gender dysphoria may be at greater risk of problems such as heart attacks or strokes, a study suggests.

Researchers used US hospital records covering more than 21,000 people with the condition, of whom 1,675 had used hormone replacement therapy.

It's mad that in an actual medical study cross sex hormones are referred to as a replacement.

This is just one person who has been given the wrong sex hormone, and he had a DSD...the effects are devastating and he doesn't expect to live for much longer.

Harrowing, absolutely harrowing.

Like the old switcheroo scale which was used by the people that brought this therapy to the table?

They do clarify it later though.

“The hormones involved were typically oestrogen for transgender women and testosterone for transgender men. Both are known to increase clotting activity in the blood”

I find this constant dismissal of the effects to be disturbing.

”Ibrahim Ahmed, a third-year resident at Mercy Catholic Medical Centre near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the study’s lead author, said: “It’s all about risks and benefits. Starting transitioning is a big part of a person’s life and helping them feel more themselves, but hormone replacement therapy also has a lot of side effects — it’s not a risk-free endeavour.””

This dismissal of life limiting or life shortening side effects is what we see all too often. The ‘well you wouldn’t understand, it is necessary because they are trans’ narrative used when people point out how brutal transition is and how much pressure there is on people to ‘transition’, and how little the negative side effects are discussed when everything else is glamourised.

I welcome more and more of this research and I hope people start taking notice.

I think ideologically it’s all based in some sort of weird ‘transhuman’ belief that we can somehow transcend our bodies.

Bodies are just customisable accessories to our (innately gendered) souls - so we should be able to modify and tinker them as we see fit.

Funnily enough, pesky biology is both more complex than that and more important to our lives as corporeal creatures than ideologues want to believe.

The medical-pharmaceutical industry is not a place where ethics seem to matter as you think it should either. Encouraging the belief that all of this stuff (a) actually works to achieve the ends people desire and (b) is otherwise innocuous seems to be pretty standard practice in that sector (especially in North America).

I read Empire of Pain and Dopesick last year, and some of the same problems clearly drive this desire to present hormones and surgery as lovely, benevolent, and utterly positive in any way. Different drugs/treatments, different populations but similar levels of dishonesty. Made worse because the media (mainstream and social) are so much more keen to position access to ‘all the surgery’ etc as a basic human right for the most vulnerable people on earth.

Ironically without considering that one of the principle things they are vulnerable to is unscrupulous practices in the medical-pharmaceutical industry.

Well given may seem to be convinced they will be dead without the treatment or won't live past 35 , I dont even think a case like this will be enough to make anyone stop and think.

When everyone's been told they are going to be suicidal or beaten to death or hurt themselves, I guess you have a free pass to do whatever you like to them and still appear to be the " good guys"

It really is a perfect storm.

This dismissal of life limiting or life shortening side effects is what we see all too often. The ‘well you wouldn’t understand, it is necessary because they are trans’ narrative used when people point out how brutal transition is and how much pressure there is on people to ‘transition’, and how little the negative side effects are discussed when everything else is glamourised.

It's just incredible. Imagine if any other medication - HRT, anti-depressants, statins, painkillers, anything really - increased your risk of stroke or heart attack seven-fold, then it would immediately be taken off the market. There wouldn't be any argument about it. Even when HRT was thought to create a small increased risk of breast cancer, there was massive debate about it and many women stopped taking it. Stroke and heart attack are common diseases - a seven-fold increase is enormous. Seriously, wtf is wrong with these people?

The Times should be using the correct language, saying HRT leaves a lot of space for misunderstandings.

They are Cross Sex Hormones!

To paraphrase hryllilegur's excellent post, we are not "meat lego" and pumping your endocrine system full of something it's not expecting, like cross sex hormones, will have unintended effects.

They’re threatening to pull Sudafed off shelves because 2 people had adverse reactions…. Compare that reaction to this. If a medicine is shown to have such awful side effects, surely it should not be prescribed. I really do think this will be the thalidomide of this generation

Shame it talks of HRT but then the lead researcher himself does too.

There's more work to be done, obviously, which is a perfectly predictable research finding. I hope the woke church permits that and doesn't regard it as heresy.

Researchers used US hospital records covering more than 21,000 people with the condition, of whom 1,675 had used hormone replacement therapy.

So only 8% of people attending hospital for gender dysphoria had used hormones? It would be interesting to look at the demographics of those on hormones vs those not. And why are hormones being pushed at the young so much?

Once again proof that men who are accessing women’s spaces, and demanding to be treated as women, have made no physical changes and possibly no sartorial changes either. But we are constantly told ‘why would a predator go to that much trouble’.

So only 8% of people attending hospital for gender dysphoria had used hormones? It would be interesting to look at the demographics of those on hormones vs those not. And why are hormones being pushed at the young so much?

I don't know if the researcher looked at equal numbers of men and women, but the big concern has to be that teenage girls are taking testosterone, and that the damage they do to themselves, including the raised risk of stroke and heart attack, remains even if they stop it after a few years. I seriously doubt that there are very many middle-aged men taking oestrogen, but in any case I'm not going to worry about them as much as I am about an impressionable 16 year old girl who thinks that taking T is the answer to her problems.

As absolutely awful as these examples are, I do hope that over the next year the evidence base for the harmful effects of this snake oil opinion based medicine becomes more widely acknowledged so that more have true informed consent.

I saw that Ritchie has had a message from someone who was about to transition but has chosen not to since watching his interviews.

It needs to be the drs giving the evidence based information too.

I saw that Ritchie has had a message from someone who was about to transition but has chosen not to since watching his interviews.

what does ‘transitioned’ mean? It seems to be ‘start invading/destroying single sex spaces’

Well given may seem to be convinced they will be dead without the treatment or won't live past 35 , I dont even think a case like this will be enough to make anyone stop and think.

The big question is: what is the evidence that they would be dead without the treatment? Milli Hill makes the point on Twitter today that if you're going to describe medical intervention as "life-saving" then you need to show precisely how many lives would have been lost without the treatment.