- Joined
- Oct 8, 2020
This just in: Hormones are magic apparently. (Archive)
Some really cool new research that’s been coming out lately has been finding thousands of different CpG sites that either get methylated or unmethylated when you go on HRT—nearly 10,000 different sites in total so far, and we’re still looking for more! What that means in practice is that, while the core sequence of your DNA stays the same—like, the order that AGTC comes in doesn’t change—whether your body notices and does anything about those thousands of genes does.
The really cool part of all this is that these changes are reversible and, to a degree, appear negotiable based on hormone balance. Take estrogen for a while, but that makes you too physically feminine? Some testosterone will swap some CpG sites back and course correct. Need a mix of both? According to this research, seems very doable. Estrogen and testosterone tell your body where to methylate or unmethylate your DNA, so more masculine, feminine, or androgynous body features show up.