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• Presentation Skills
• Best Communication Skills Courses

Things to Know before You Start: Most individuals undertaking hormonal modulation or gender reassignment (hormone therapy) can use a hormonal regimen with a high degree of safety. Regular monitoring or your health and blood work will assure that your good health is maintained. As you explore transgender medical therapies through the Internet and other avenues, you should be prepared to discover a wide range of conflicting information and misinformation on the subject. Below is a list of general information and dos and donts. Do not use any phytoestrogens (herbal hormones) as an appropriate feminizing therapy. Herbs do not achieve any measurable feminization and use of these non-pharmaceutical grade phytoestrogen products, especially in large doses, raises health safety concerns amongst many medical professionals. When herbal products are used, along with pharmaceutical or glandular hormone treatments, your overall feminization may be reduced as these preparations compete with TransFemme.

• If purchasing medication through mail order and Internet businesses, deal with a known and reputable supplier. Do not buy products from foreign countries or products not made with the transgender customer in mind.
• Do not overlook the necessary blood monitoring and medical oversight. Proper medical management not only avoids unnecessary health risks, but assures that you are sufficiently feminizing. It is common for individuals who self-medicate to be on a less than adequate feminizing regime.
• Follow instructions: Take your dosing regimen seriously; arbitrarily increasing doses may put you at risk, and as well, forgetting to take prescribed dosing may slow your progress.
• Dont settle for less with regard to your health. You may come into contact with self proclaimed authority figures on the Internet who casually and wrongly suggest to you that medical monitoring is unnecessary, this is untrue and bad advice.
• If you decide to manage your own feminizing therapies, at the very least, seek periodic check-ups at a local walk-in clinic.
• If you decide to undergo hormone treatment, think through any desires you may have for having children as prolonged hormone therapy will likely render you irreversibly sterile.
• Hormonal feminization is the subject of endocrinology, a specialized branch of internal medicine which is concerned with the study of the glands and hormones of the body and their related disorders.

The goal of male to female feminizing hormone modulation therapy is the mental, emotional, physical and hormonal gender reassignment of the individual. Given the proper regimen and sufficient time, the likely expectation is a profound and comprehensive change in gender appearance and feeling. This feminizing process concentrates on manipulation of sex hormones, also called sex steroids; and as the process of hormonal gender reassignment involves profound biological changes as well as changes in ones appearance, having a doctor you work with and a general understanding of the biochemistry of sex hormones makes sense. Height, voice, and bone size cannot be changed with the use of hormonal modulation treatments. When you want your voice feminized you may need vocal surgery and voice coaching.Orchiectomy/Castration We do not recommend orchiectomy (castration) because it interferes with the results of TransFemme, your testicles provide testosterone which is converted by your body into estrogen. If you are thinking about having SRS in the future you will need your scrotum intact for creating a vagina.

• Orchiectomy cannot produce additional feminization or speed the process of feminization any better than the use of drug therapies alone. You would still need to take estrogen and anti-androgens after orchiectomy.
• Unless the orchiectomy is performed by a skilled surgeon the scrotum (which is often used to give depth to the new vagina) may be too small and scarred for use.
• Most TransFemme customers given enough time see their testicles become smaller and less obtrusive so they can be hidden in bathing suits and clothing easily. Think of your testicles as your external ovaries, you need them.

If you decide to have castration surgery with or without future SRS, realize this procedure is major surgery! There are physicians who are willing to perform castration for less money and under less than optimum conditions in an office environment, but this may not be your best or safest option.