I had never tried taking it orally, but had to switch due to life circumstances and I swear it’s made a big difference
Has anyone had the opposite experience?
Could you describe the difference it made in more detail? Did you just experience the expected prog effect more intensely?
I was also curious about this, what differences were noticed? Based on interactions with trans girls IRL, I just assume most people are taking prog for breast growth, so when people talk about it working or not, I assume they mean it made their breasts larger or not. Of course it is pseudo-diagnostic reasoning, because breasts will continue to grow from estrogen alone and lots of trans women report major growth at 2 - 3 year mark and later on just estrogen, so it’s unclear what breast growth would have happened without the addition of prog.
Lots of trans women don’t think to include route of administration or dose when talking about HRT either, so that makes it even harder to tell from anecdotes that prog helped with breast growth what might be effective.
Okay hi time for a dumb question. How else do you take it? I wasn’t aware there were options ;-;
People tend to take it rectally because of higher bioavailability. See: https://transfemscience.org/articles/oral-p4-low-levels/
Okay, my prescription is a 5mg oral tablet every day. This article is talking about 200+ mg orally to be effective, or 100mg rectally. Why in the world would my prescription be so low??
Also:Administration of oral micronized progesterone capsules rectally instead of orally likewise may be effective and may achieve much higher progesterone levels than oral administration. However, rectal administration of oral progesterone capsules has not been formally studied.
Am I wasting money having 5mg per day orally? Would have been nice to know 6 months ago when I started.
are you taking bioidentical, micronized progesterone? It sounds like you might be taking a synthetic progestin, which is different…
I have a link to a resource on the differences if I remember to come back, I’m AFK right now so I don’t have it, sorry
Oh wow I’m not sure. This is what I’m taking.
yep, that’s Medroxyprogesterone (MP), a synthetic progestin, which is not progesterone.
I recommend switching to micronized, bioidentical progesterone, which is safer (has fewer side effects and long term risks).
Taking MP is not the end of the world like some in the community think (there is a lot of fear about it because it increases risks of cancers, etc.), but it’s definitely not ideal and does carry risks. Plenty of people do experience side effects like mood problems and depression from taking it.
Also, while it’s not the same as having progesterone (the hormone you would have if you were a cis woman), it does have some anti-androgen effects which might be helpful for feminizing.
Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to explain this. I have my checkup later this month and will make sure to let them know I want to switch my meds.
I thought I was reasonably well read on HRT, but this is a whole new area I know very little about. Thankful for people like you <3have you read transfem science’s An Introduction to Hormone Therapy for Transfeminine People? Particularly the section on progestogens might be helpful here, but the whole article is pretty amazing, tbh.
Oral prog is metabolized into non-prog hormones and you get less prog overall that way. Rectal and especially transdermal (through the skin) is way more effective.
If there are effects you miss or that you felt made a big diff it was likely the other hormones the prog turns into when you metabolize it. I’ve heard a lot about those effects, it’s very intriguing. It’s very pleasant for some, but can be bad for others.
citation backing up your claim about oral prog not sufficiently raising blood progesterone levels: https://transfemscience.org/articles/oral-p4-low-levels/
However, newer studies using more accurate blood tests (immunoassays with adequate purification and mass spectrometry-based assays) have shown that 100 mg/day progesterone—with or without food—achieves very low peak progesterone levels of only about 2 to 3 ng/mL and average progesterone levels over 24 hours of only about 0.1 to 0.6 ng/mL
In accordance, oral progesterone has often shown only weak progestogenic effects in clinical studies.
While the progesterone levels with oral progesterone are apparently sufficient for endometrial protection in cisgender women, they are unlikely to be adequate for desired effects in transfeminine people. For these reasons, transfeminine people and their clinicians may wish to avoid oral progesterone if the aim is therapeutic progestogenic effects. Instead, non-oral forms of progesterone with greater bioavailability like rectal or injectable progesterone can be used.
Personally, I only take prog to help me sleep, and anecdotally I have better sleep with rectal administration than oral. I also notice stronger libido with rectal administration than oral.
My dose is 100 mg - 200 mg per night, averaging 100 mg / night, and I don’t take it when my estrogen is low, so on a weekly basis I cycle my prog taking it only half of the week in accordance with my injected estradiol valerate metabolic cycle (half life of roughly 3.5 days, I take prog as my estrogen blood levels increase and peak, then stop once E blood levels start to drop).
Why do you not take it when your E levels are dropping?
because when my E is higher, I don’t sleep as easily and prog helps counter that effect; when E is low I don’t need it for sleep, allowing me to stockpile the extra.
To a lesser extent, I like the idea of cycling because cis bodies tend to have fluctuating levels as well, and that may or may not help keep my body sensitive to prog, by keeping from homeostasis happening in whatever ways that may or may not happen, such as number of receptors adjusting to a regular level of the hormones if you don’t cycle.
It’s just speculation that this helps, and the stockpiling so I have a reserve in case of supply chain problems is a more straightforward reason for me.
Take it orally and have had phenomenal results, I take 200mg every night
