Dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, & legal protection of individuals in the process of correcting the misalignment of their anatomical sex, & supporting their transition into society.
is a birth condition that misaligns innate neurobiological makeup and external genitalia.
An increasing number of patients and commentators view HBS as a more precise term than transsexual, more loosely applied to include those who present with limited hormone usage and/or alternative social presentation.
TS-Si.org articles may use the traditional terminology. If so, we annotate the context and usage as warranted to resolve any ambiguities that could affect interpretation.
This group, The International Hormones List at Yahoogroups, is one of the oldest and most respected of the online resources for information on hormone replacement. The following text is a verbatim description of the group, quoted from the C R O N E Portal.
Please note the concluding comments from our editors.
This is the place for those wishing to join the 700+ member CRONE hormones list to apply for an invitation.
CRONE is an international list about proper uses of female hormones and related products. Originally at Onelist, it has been at Yahoogroups since 1998. A searchable archive of over 15,700 postings is available to members. The title infers accumulated wisdom rather than age.
CRONE is a list where moderators keep discussion on-topic. Those needing support in other aspects of their lives should have access to that elsewhere. But discussion on anything related to hormone therapy can take place in a safe, helpful, well-informed and "low noise" environment.
The list is for, and membership is limited to, those who are currently (or, exceptionally, will in the very near future be) benefitting from female hormone therapy, and selected prescribers and researchers seeking to keep abreast of developments in the field.
The list is only for those committed to the use of hormone therapy.
To apply for membership click on the button above and then use the appropriate box to clearly say how you fit the membership criteria stated above. If you need more space then additionally email to the gmail address below. IF you do not already have a YahooID then, EITHER Sign Up using the link at the very top of the page, and then click the button above, OR send an email, saying how you fit the membership criteria stated above, and the email address you wish to use, to croneowner AT gmail.com (substitute @ at AT).
Editor's Note: The C R O N E group is an independent organization. Certain participants in TS-Si and TS-Si.org are members, some of long standing.
The facts and opinions presented at C R O N E do not necessarily convey an official position of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates.
Springfield, VA, USA. Every HBS man or woman begins their transition journey as a novice. Less than one one thousandth percent of the entire Human Species, from Lucy to the child born as you read this, has had the means and the opportunity to do what post-op HBS have done. There is no broadly documented roadmap for post-transition, no overarching scientific and medical schema for post-op life, only a growing handful of observances from HBS men and women who have been there, done that.
We are boldly going where no one has gone before.
As children we are raised to respect the medical profession, the wise doctors who have studied long years in the mysteries of the human mind and body.
Post-op we realize, as HBS-born women, that even our best intentioned doctors may know less about the post-op body than we do, the ones who live within them, including practicing medical doctors and research scientists. We are our own best subjects.
We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us. — Albert Einstein
On our journeys to date, this is what we, the successful post-op women, have discovered to be true in our own lives (what follows is the collective experience and opinion of post-op HBS women and should not be construed as medical advice) [cf. Note and Sidebar]:
Specialist physicians and clinics are often wrong. Male to Female (MTF) Hormone Replacement Therapy is taught nowhere. There are no long term studies of post-op HBS women — the population is too small, as of yet, for such research to be cost-effective. Even the best of doctors cannot read the professional papers that do not exist yet.
We are not post-menopausal women. Our goals and circumstances are completely different from a non-HBS women’s. We have no uterine endometrium that strictly limits admissible estrogen cycles. We do not have a history of hundreds of menstrual cycles nor do we plan to do so. Doctors and clinics habitually provide hormones at levels suited for post-menopausal women that have only limited application and efficacy when applied to post-op HBS women.
Estradiol produced by human ovaries is identical to synthetic estradiol 17ß. It is the same isomer of exactly the same substance with exactly the same effects as estradiol produced in the human ovary.
Doctors and researchers greatly overestimate the risk and harm of oral estradiol because they confuse it with the much more dangerous ethynylestradiol and conjugated estrogens (e.g., Premarin). Whenever possible, we chose estradiol 17ß and avoid all others.
We believe blood tests for transsexuals' hormone levels are unnecessary and done only keep doctors busy, patients impressed, and bureaucrats pleased with thick medical histories. The only exception is prolactin but only if the patient is on ethinylestradiol or Androcur, both of which are poor choices, if not the worst, for treatment.
Unless there are other underlying medical conditions or the patient is on a very large, ill-advised dosage of ethinylestradiol, liver function tests appeared to be unneeded.
There is a persistent belief that menstruations are "natural" and should be maintained. This menstrual assumption persists in the hormone regimens prescribed for many HBS women where the cycling of various hormones is prescribed as being “more natural” than a constant dosage.
We respectfully disagree. For the vast majority of human existence, post-puberty women have spent most of their lives pregnant or breastfeeding (which usually suppresses menstruations) and then impregnated again until death or menopause. From an evolutionary perspective, women have had few menstruations during their entire life.
In the last century, through the use of pre-conception birth control, many women of reproductive age in many cultures began to spend decades without pregnancy. They began to experience hundreds of menstrual cycles (with wildly varying hormone levels) causing cycles of proliferation-apoptosis of the glandular tissue in breasts. Proliferation is tissue growth by cell division; apoptosis is tissue atrophy by cell death. Each cell division carries risk of mutation. Mutations increase the risk of cancer.
Additionally, cyclical hormone replacement therapy monthly bleedings are not really menstruations, merely menstrual imitations or "withdrawal bleedings" caused by the withdrawal of a progestogen.
What is now considered natural (cyclical hormones and monthly menstruation) has been unnatural for most of human evolution. We believe that hormone replacement therapy should be maintained at a constant level unless otherwise indicated.
In addition to the vitamins, "natural" vitamin supplements made from plants include phytoestrogens from those same plants (e.g., alfalfa, popular among “natural” vitamin manufacturers). Plants containing phytoestrogens survive better because they disrupt the endocrine systems of plant-eating animals. Animals who don't eat such plants survive better.
When an HBS woman ingests "natural" vitamin supplements, phytoestrogens contained therein attach to the estrogen receptors in the woman’s body but trigger those receptors much more weakly than estrogens. Occupied receptors cannot be triggered by strong estrogens you take (each receptor has only one slot for one molecule of hormone). Bottom line: phytoestrogens decrease the effectiveness of hormone replacement therapy.
The talk about "natural" vitamins is quackery by the sellers. Slightly decreased (if decreased at all) absorption of synthetic vitamins is easily overcome with the usual prophylactic dosages contained in vitamin supplements.
Adrenals produce negligible quantity of testosterone directly. In order to prevent DHEA (produced by adrenals in large quantities) to be converted to DHT (with testosterone as local intermediate product) inside DHT-sensitive cells, we believe that HBS women, if they wish, should take finasteride not less than 0.05 mg/day (more is harmless but a waste of money) for the rest of their life.
The only sex hormone your body can make from cholesterol and release into your bloodstream is testosterone.
Finally, post-op HBS women recommend that all of you, pre-op, pre-transition, in-transition, post-op, and post-transition learn about your own bodies and how hormones actually work. Study the actual research papers, not the press releases or the sometimes distorted media reports on subjects they know little. Discuss your personal situation with the doctor who provides your hormones and solicit his views on hormone replacement therapy.
Express yours.
And, finally, take what your doctor says with a grain of salt. He is trained in various medical conditions, but what he thinks he knows about HBS has probably been learned on the job. HBS women are not post-menopausal — remind your doctor of that frequently. Post-op women are their own best subjects.
A portion of my column focuses on "the collective experience and opinion of post-op HBS women". The text has been adapted from private sources and the C R O N EInternational Hormones List at Yahoogroups (refer to the accompanying sidebar for details).
Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson is the Co-Founder & President of TS-Si, Inc. She also serves as a Contributing Editor and columnist for the TS-Si website. Ms. Thompson's signed articles contain her own opinions and do not necessarily convey an official position of TS-Si, its partners, or affiliates.
Lisa welcomes your comments. You can use the public form below or send private correspondence via her TS-Si Contact Page. We will not divulge any personal details or place you on a mailing list without your permission.
The Human Genome Project (HGP). The HGP identified all of the genes in the human genome and mapped their individual sequencing. Basic work began in 1990 and reached completion in 2005, sparking continuous refinements and new projects. Though the HGP is finished, data analyses will continue for many years.
A genome is all the DNA in an organism, including its genes and other materials. Genes carry information for making all the proteins required by all organisms. These proteins determine, among other things, how the organism looks, how well its body metabolizes food or fights infection, and to an extent even how it behaves.
DNA is made up of four similar chemicals (called bases and abbreviated A, T, C, and G) that are repeated millions or billions of times throughout a genome. The human genome, for example, has 3 billion pairs of bases. The particular order of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs is extremely important.
The order underlies all of life's diversity, even dictating whether an organism is human or another species such as yeast, rice, or fruit fly, all of which have their own genomes and are themselves the focus of genome projects. Because all organisms are related through similarities in DNA sequences, insights gained from nonhuman genomes often lead to new knowledge about human biology.
Video:An introduction to the ongoing Human Genome Project, courtesy of the US National Institutes of Health NIH) (18 May 2007). Time: 00:03:33. Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.
Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson
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