do you happen to know any specifics about monotherapy? i didn't wanna pay extra for antiandrogens (haha I'm broke) and i noticed monotherapy being an option on diyhrt.info but from what i could tell there wasn't much information on it (I'd be taking injections if thats important)
yep, that's what I do :)
the reason you don't need an AA on monotherapy is because it works via what's called "gonadal suppression". roughly speaking, your hypothalamus monitors levels of sex hormone and, if the levels are low, it signals the pituitary gland, which signals the gonads (in our case, testicles) to make more sex hormone. this is called the HPG axis
crucially, the hypothalamus does not differentiate between testosterone and estrogen. if you raise your estrogen levels high enough, it's like "yep all good" and does not signal for more production. this is why, in the context of monotherapy, we say that your T is suppressed and not blocked: since production is being suppressed, there's no T to block.
on average, a blood level of 250 pg/ml estradiol is enough to suppress 90% of T production, which is enough to prevent masculinization.
injectable monotherapy is, in most cases, the most affordable method of HRT. a single $80 vial containing 400mg of estradiol enanthate works out to, at a typical 4/mg/wk dosage, 100 weeks (4 weeks shy of 2 years) of complete monotherapy. less than a dollar a week :)
I'm always happy to explain things to you, please do let me know if you have more questions, but I promise you the information is out there :) is it easy to understand and digestible? well. no. but it's out there!
