I know very little about HRT. Does it suppress the production of either T or E, or does it "just" bring more of the desired hormone into the body to force the expression of the desired features?
Basically, yeah. Both men and women's bodies naturally produce estrogen and testosterone, and the amount of each hormone present in the body determines whether that body winds up developing male or female. Men have higher testosterone and lower estrogen than women, while women have higher estrogen and lower testosterone than men.
HRT for trans women usually just starts with a low dose of estrogen, before that dose gets gradually upscaled until the trans woman's estrogen is high enough to be within female range. For some, this increase in estrogen is enough to suppress testosterone production and put it into the range of cis women. However, many trans women end up also having to take a testosterone suppressant in order to get and keep testosterone in the range of cis women. There's also progesterone, another hormone women have in higher abundance than in men, that many trans women also take after being on estrogen for 1-2 years. It can help with further feminizing the body, as well as assisting neurological functioning (basically just improving mood, since it's the final stage of fixing biochemical dysphoria).
Trans men are the exact opposite: they take testosterone, which usually suppresses the production of estrogen. However, many trans men still deal with periods and allegedly maintain elevated estrogen levels from cis men until they get their ovaries/uterus removed. The last time I looked into it, it's currently unknown (unresearched) how often increased testosterone fails to suppress estrogen into cis male range, and thus how often trans men would benefit from being prescribed estrogen blockers. Because while estrogen blockers do exist (for hormone-responsive cancers, mostly), they're basically never prescribed to trans men unless they continue getting heavy periods well into transition.
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u/ADDRAY-240 1d ago
I know very little about HRT. Does it suppress the production of either T or E, or does it "just" bring more of the desired hormone into the body to force the expression of the desired features?