Hi!
tl;dr after injecting the same amount of estradiol valerate (subq) for a month or so, I started to experience more dysphoria and signs of testosterone (esp. mental) started to come back. Any reason this might be?
Longer version / details:
I injected 5 mg (0.25 mL) of estradiol valerate subq into my thighs every four days for a while, and for a couple weeks I started injecting into my abdomen instead to avoid blood supplies.
This dose seemed like more than enough. In the past 3.4 mg every 3 days gave me blood estradiol levels of ~350 pg/mL at trough. Recent labs showed 5 mg every 4 days had ~300 pg/mL at trough for me, which was lower than I expected.
It's a good level, but I was having weird dysphoric experiences that commonly happen when my hormones are out of wack (usually when I'm taking too little estrogen). Things like really doubting my gender identity, depression (lack of motivation, lethargic), anhedonia (little pleasure, flat affect, often leads to craving short-term reward behaviors). Physiological signs of T were not as evident in this case, and the dysphoria was not as severe as in the past when my estrogen was too low. Still, it seemed a lot like my estrogen was too low.
I increased my dose to 5.4 mg and the dysphoria went away within a day and I felt amazing and continued to feel amazing. I intended to switch to 5.4 mg / 4 days instead, but on day 3 I could feel my hormones coming down and trusting my experience I injected 5 mg a day early with the intention of trying 5 mg / 3 days (which is a lot more than I have taken before in terms of what this should do to my overall levels). Still not sure what I will do next. Part of me wants to stick with a 4 day cycle to keep lower peaks and to minimize overall levels (out of principle, I know injecting is not as risky as oral routes).
I'm trying to figure out why a stable dose that seems so high and was for the most part effective would suddenly not be "enough" (assuming that's indeed what's happening).
For context I'm close to 4 months on HRT, I took bicalutamide for a bit but stopped because I don't think it helped my mental symptoms and that's the most important therapeutic goal for me with taking HRT. I switched to monotherapy after 2 months which is when I started the 5 mg / 4 days.
I've heard sometimes the body can go through phases as it adjusts to estrogen early in HRT, so maybe this is just one of those lurches or adjustments?
Anyway here are some guesses I came up with:
- I gained some weight (like 15 lbs), some maybe I need a little more EV than before?
- injecting into abdomen depots the oil differently than the thigh, so maybe I am seeing a slower or lower circulation of EV (or alternatively a much faster circulation that is causing a crash earlier?)
- maybe the estrogen receptors are downregulating due to taking too high of a dose too regularly? (I see lots of debate about whether this is a thing, mostly people on Reddit rejecting the idea that this has any clinical relevance.)
Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this or has suggestions.
Thanks so much!
The reason cats can't be vegan is that they cannot produce an amino acid called taurine, which is something dogs and humans can produce (but which we also get sometimes from dietary sources).
Most dietary sources of taurine are meat. This is why dogs and humans "can be vegan" but cats "can't". However, vegan taurine is made and can be bought as a supplement, both for humans (if you want to ensure you get some taurine in your diet), but also in properly made vegan cat food.
It seems to me then that cats can be vegan, just not without intentional effort to ensure proper supplementation of taurine. That is, they couldn't be vegan in the wild (where the only source of taurine is meat) and you can't just start to feed them a vegan diet without taurine and expect the cat to be healthy and survive.
In fact, cats fed a proper vegan diet tend to have better health:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10499249/
I think the question is really what you are feeding your "vegan" cat: if you have managed to find (or make) a properly fortified vegan cat food it is theoretically possible to feed your cat a vegan diet.
This all feels a bit like the "controversy" around feeding young children and babies a vegan diet: done poorly it can be catastrophic (pun not intended), but it's entirely possible to have a healthy vegan diet when enough effort is put into ensuring nutritional needs are actually satisfied.
That said, I also know of two other vegan responses: