Hormone replacement therapy
Common physical and psychological outcome of hormones include changes in food habits and sleep behaviors as well as a decrease in sexual desire and activities.
Menopause is when a womans levels of estrogen decreases. The average age for this is between forty-two and fifty-eight. In addition, a hysterectomy can cause menopause if this process has not yet occurred. This is when the uterus is removed by surgery.
Andropause is the equivalent of menopause for males. However, males do not undergo a decrease in reproductive ability. They do experience a decrease in sexual desire and erections.
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is when an individual takes hormones in order to balance the ones lost because of age. This may have negative consequences because, according to the U.S. Womens Health Initiative, taking estrogen for more than ten years increases the probability of an individual developing breast cancer and heart diseases (U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, 2002). Nevertheless, there are good consequences too such as better thinking skills, and the replacement of hormones can also prevent dementia (Erickson & Korol, 2009; Greenwood & Parasuraman, 2012).
I feel like this post could be more inclusive of trans folks, since they're a huge part of the population of people undergoing hormone replacement therapy. It's also interesting since there aren't very many studies about the impacts of long term HRT, additionally trans folks often experience intersections of different kinds of hormonal changes - for example, being a female-to-male transgender person, once starting HRT you're experiencing male puberty at the same time as you're experiencing menopause. What a trip.
