There is a misconception in the community pertaining to the taking of HRT where people believe that taking HRT will reduce lifespan. So a lot of transgender people try to not take any HRT or go for surgery and live their entire lives stressed and depressed because of this. From a medical standpoint, it is known that stressed and depressed people are also known to have a shorter lifespan as they develop a lot more comorbidities like heart issues, cancer, and dementia at a higher rate. So is it true that HRT reduces someone’s lifespan? Dr Debamalya Sanyal answers this.
Will I die early because of HRT?
Dr Sanyal says, ” I have mentioned before that I have recently reviewed a really good paper that has been published and it is the European meta-analysis. This paper has data from up to ten years that suggests that it is completely safe in terms of your cardiovascular health and your overall health risk, there is no additional health risk involved here. It is completely safe in the short-term and middle-term up to ten years which takes into account cardiovascular as well as cancer susceptibility. They have now elongated the study to look at results on patients beyond ten years. So that is what the data says, that there are no immediate safety concerns. Obviously, you will have to have regular monitoring of treatment as is required for most other people. So that is something that we need to understand, provided it is monitored. The question of health issues comes in because of inappropriate use and overdosing, where the risk increases. So one should be under medical supervision, the dosage should be appropriate, overdosing should not be done and the monitoring and follow-up should be regular.
So these are very important things when a person is on HRT. So if you are following safe practices then it is reasonably safe.
Research
The research that Dr Sanyal refers to is from Belgium, a metanalysis in Europe and it can be found here if you are interested in studying the results for yourself.
