Hormone Replacement Therapy or “HRT”, is a treatment that many trans people can choose to pursue once they have been through the relevant screening process.
There’s a wide range of specific drugs and treatment pathways available for a person’s individual needs, wants and health related recommendations, but where HRT is concerned they all aim to serve a similar purpose. That is, to replace or supplement the hormones that a person’s body naturally produces with a hormone profile closer to that of their true gender. HRT triggers a slow process whereby a person will develop more defined traits of their affirmed, true gender as time passes. Ref. IWDBSJDJUA
Hormone Replacement Therapy is not to be confused with #Puberty Blockers.
You may also hear of Hormone Replacement Therapy used to describe a treatment offered to post menopausal women. Please note that here, we are specifically referring to HRT as it is offered to transgender people. There are some similarities, but the intended focus of each treatment pathway is different.
Concerns About Fertility
Hormone replacement therapy can cause a gradual decline in fertility for the duration of it’s use. It is important to properly evaluate the situation and pursue any options to preserve fertility based on an individual’s wants and needs, however; although this may be alarming, the use of hormonal treatments does not completely remove a person’s chances of producing offspring.
Talk to your doctor for concerns regarding fertility.
Treatment Pathways
This section will not provide details about any specific treatment plan. This means to say it will not give any information about any one of the numerous drugs, dosages or administration methods that are available - there are existing resources which can provide this much better. It simply outlines a generalised set of expected outcomes that come with either masculinising or feminising Hormone Replacement Therapy.
You may find that most healthcare providers to an excellent job at outlining the effects of their treatment plans from a very factual and analytical viewpoint, but also omit some of the more nuanced effects which are more easily recognised through the lived experience of someone on being on the treatment. This section aims to provide a mixture, but if you would like to know more about what being trans feels like, our section: #The Transgender Experience covers this much better.
The Options Available
At the time of writing, there are no known hormonal treatments offered for nullifying a person’s secondary sex characteristics. While this may sound attractive to many non-binary trans people, the prolonged absence of a primary sex hormone will cause gradual degradation to a person’s health.