Consequently, ladies’s choices are restricted. You should utilize a gel that’s formulated for males, giving your self a tenth of the male day by day dose through the use of your greatest judgment to ration a single tube over 10 days. You will get a dose formulated for girls from a compounding pharmacy — however the focus of compounded merchandise is usually less consistent. Or you’ll be able to attempt to import a ladies’s testosterone gel from Australia, the one nation that has approved the drug for girls.
None of those choices, which value $10 or extra per thirty days, are coated by insurance coverage.
What are the dangers?
When taken at doses that increase your testosterone ranges no increased than what’s sometimes seen in premenopausal ladies, unwanted side effects are uncommon, mentioned Dr. James Simon, a menopause and sexual medication specialist in Washington D.C. and medical professor at The George Washington College Faculty of Drugs. Your well being care supplier will seemingly wish to take a look at your ranges a couple of weeks after beginning the drug to ensure they’re not getting too excessive.
In case your testosterone ranges are too excessive for too lengthy, nevertheless, chances are you’ll expertise side effects — some reversible, some not. These can embrace thinning of hair in your head, progress of hair in your face and chest, a deepening of your voice, zits, an enlarged clitoris, irritability and aggression.
Excessive testosterone ranges can even result in a thickening of the uterine lining and vaginal bleeding, and improve your danger for endometrial most cancers, for the reason that physique converts extra testosterone into estrogen.
Keep away from pellets
For all of those causes, specialists discourage sufferers from receiving testosterone by way of “pellets,” or compounded hormone capsules inserted beneath the pores and skin at medical spas, anti-aging clinics and medical workplaces. They sometimes comprise a lot increased doses than gels.
Whereas the therapy could make ladies really feel nice within the quick time period, it will probably additionally trigger testosterone ranges to skyrocket — and as soon as pellets are inserted, they will’t be eliminated. Sufferers have to attend out their unwanted side effects, or in some circumstances, stay with them completely.
