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6 days agoI did estrogen monotherapy for about 2 months earlier this year. Quite frankly, the only changes I noticed was an immediate and significant increase in nipple sensitivity+size, and a reduction of nighttime erections. Other than that I didn’t notice any of the early changes which I had been lead to expect within the first few weeks: no emotional differences, no reduction in skin oiliness, no changes in body temperature, etc.
For what it’s worth, I was taking 1.4ml/week of 40% estradiol enanthate without any antiandrogens, am in my early 20s and have a very low body mass.
Re-reading your original question, it should have been pretty obvious in retrospect that I am not really in the target audience. welp, my bad :P
I didn’t get any blood work done unfortunately, since my doctor’s office refuses to do it without a specific request from my GP (and the whole reason I wanted to do a trial run DIY was because I can’t realistically do this kind of stuff the legit way at the moment), so I just went with a dose a bit higher than the dosages I’d seen recommended online for “most” people and figured it was unlikely that that wouldn’t be enough. Since I saw nipple changes almost immediately I assumed that it was doing the trick, but the expected other effects just never came and I stopped when my nipples had become large enough that I was about to start needing a bra to stop them visibly poking through my shirt.
I didn’t really consider that the longer half-life was super relevant to the “startup delay”, most resources I found online seemed to show it nearly reaching the steady state level after only one or two doses. If that was actually the problem that’s a pretty big derp on my part, but I’m already planning to give it another shot once I’m not living at home.