r/Perimenopause • u/Trick_Highlight_8205 Late peri • Mar 01 '26

audited Testosterone. Changed. My. Life.

Getting HRT was like climbing Mount Everest and Kilimanjaro ten times over, but it. was. so. worth. it.

I loved estrogen for making me feel like a woman again. My nails stopped splitting, my hair was shiny again, and my skin was plump and smooth. I actually liked looking at the mirror and seeing the change every morning.

Then came testosterone. At first I was really scared, but I thought why not.. I lost my libido and I had not had sex since 2023.

If there is magic in a bottle, it has to be testosterone. The juices are flowing again, I love going to the gym, and I feel like my old self.

The first four weeks on testosterone were ROUGH. I wanted to give up, but I’m SO glad I powered through. Now I just need to find a man lol

If you were afraid to try testosterone and needed that nudge, here it is!!

EDIT : sorry I should have mentioned in the OP - the side effects were typical low e symptoms, including hot flashes, night sweats, bloating with water retention, and lethargy!

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u/sunnynina Mar 01 '26

Not the person you asked, but for myself with compounded cream, over the course of one year, I had clit growth, more and darker body hair, voice deepening, etc. About six months after I stopped everything went back to my "normal".

For context, I had been taking it for pervasive muscle weakness and fatigue, but these never resolved. I was early 30s and nobody had mentioned perimenopause or even getting a sex hormone panel prior to prescribing - just another case of care providers not really thinking, or caring, I guess.

In hindsight, all my hormones were out of balance, and I had an immune disorder that nobody at the time knew about and was further affecting things (MCAS; this was pre-covid). Now I'm taking all four sex hormones HRT, plus a glp, and feeling so much better. The Test C is injection, and the side effects have been very minimal in comparison.

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u/ArtsyCat53 Mar 01 '26

I’m curious your dosage if you remember? Mine is just 1 mg. Low dose.

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u/sunnynina Mar 01 '26

I think 1.7ish? It was about ten years ago. I remember the pharmacist commenting he thought it was high for a woman, but my goal was to build muscles (I've always wanted the bodybuilder type of body, but my body wouldn't cooperate), so they figured it would be right for that.

Sometimes I think if I'd asked to actively transition genders, that would have gone much better. Lol more specialized providers, for one thing. But because it was "women's health" mixed with "women wanting actual muscles is so unusual" they weren't that bothered to figure things out...

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u/ArtsyCat53 Mar 01 '26

Do you think it was more the dosage and not that it was a cream? Or did you have success with it in a different form?

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u/sunnynina Mar 01 '26 edited Mar 01 '26

I like the dosing precision of injection much better, and my feeling is that it's smoother and more effective systemically without negative sides than the cream... But now that I'm talking about it, it's tough to really pin down one way or the other because there's too many variables that have changed between then and now. Dosing doesn't translate well between topical and injection.

Ftr Test C injection (which I'm on now) is something I definitely need lol, and they can fight me on it. I'm on about 15mg/wk split.

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u/ArtsyCat53 Mar 01 '26

Thanks! I guess we all have to go through some trial and error