Can you develop Estrogen resistance??
Comment I wrote on another post that I’m thinking maybe I should post and ask for input on.
When I first started HRT (MtF) close to 12 years ago I had some quite rapid changes. I was still identifying as genderfluid at the time, and trialing HRT to see how it affected me/see if I got the kind of changes I wanted at the time.
One 2mg tablet/day was pushing my T down to ‘between male and female ranges’ and putting my E in the low end of female range, and I developed breast buds almost immediately.
Unfortunately this kind of freaked me out and I stopped taking it for a while, I just wasn’t ready for everything. I even trialed a low dose again a while later, just to try and keep things a bit elevated.
I finally started proper transition a few years later, once I just couldn’t put up with fear-induced half measures any more.
And now, seven years later…. My breasts haven’t grown any further, I’ve got nothing on my hips or butt, and zero curves.
Facially it’s done pretty well for me, but I’ve got nothing else.
Early on my E levels were pretty good, up around 700 pmol/L (tablets monotherapy), once spiking to 900 when I lost weight, but I needed to slowly increase the dosages of HRT, and then add a T-blocker, but my levels declined anyway, dwindling down to the 350-400 pmol/L range.
I tried gel but August/September 2024 but that dropped my levels to barely over 100, so I went back to tablets.
I hovered in the 350-370 range from there, then had bottom surgery in August 2025. It made basically no difference to my levels.
I had two 100mg implants inserted in December 2025, hoping a different delivery method would help. Six weeks later my levels were at 340 pmol/L.
I wanted higher, obviously, but we waited another month because my GP wanted to see if my results remained steady, or fluctuated.
March 2026 and I was at 250pmol/L
April I had another pair of implants inserted, and I’m not quite two weeks away from my next levels check-in appointment, and I have no idea what I’ll do if my levels don’t massively improve (injections aren’t really a thing over here unless you DIY) :(
For background, I’d had my T levels tested a couple of times (just incidentally, for things like sleep/energy issues) and they were normal.
Puberty didn’t hit me overly hard. I never developed an Adams Apple, though I did get a sizeable rib cage. I was a bit of a late bloomer, and quite short compared to my peers until late high school. I eventually topped out at 5’8, but didn’t stop growing until I was 20.
I’ve always taken really strongly after my mum, facial features wise, and often got read as female when I was 19/20/21 kind of age (hell, there’s a photo of me at.. 19/20, and when I randomly found it a while ago, I went ‘I know the girl on the left, who is the other one?’, then ten minutes went ‘wait, the one on the right is me!’).
So… yeah… is randomly developing resistance to HRT in your.. late 30s… like, a thing?? Has anyone heard something like this before??