My craziest idea yet: female hormone supplements

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If autism is supposedly a hyper male brain (according to one theory that hasn't convinced me), I was wondering if taking the same things that M-F trans take for conversion therapy would help to develop a slightly less male brain, thus improving autistic symptoms and communication skills? Or maybe even girls with autism could do this too.

I don't mean the full blown dose of hormones for conversion therapy. But maybe a few of them in small doses. Is this just crazy, or could it work?

I'm not even sure that autism is a hyper male brain, but I am the type of person who would try this if I thought it would work. lol

According to this study, most of the improvement in the communication skills of women with HFA happen long after birth, implying that changes might be possible after birth with the right chemicals.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Ad ... ne.0020835

if the hyper male brain theory is correct then i think it could work.

Taking hormones wouldn't make a fully developed adult's brain any 'less autistic'.
Though hormones could make a difference to how children's, babies, toddlers, and fetuses brains develop (though not much change would occur if these hormones were given after birth, but there could still be a difference. The earlier these hormones are given, the better).
There is a direct correlation between how much testosterone a baby makes themselves in some of the earlier weeks of pregnancy, and how stereotypically autistic the baby is once born.

You might be on to something here.... let's see, females are much less likely to be diagnosed with ASD --> Females have tits --> Males take female hormones and grow tits --> therefore the male DX rate should drop down to the female level --> Yes...Yes,according to my calculations I think it could work!

Actually, though it sounds kind of silly, there is something to this idea which I feel is a HUGE research opportunity not being taken advantage of in studies of autism. I have asked other trans people about the effect of their HRT on their autistic traits and all of them have told me they experienced changes in the manifestation of their autism - some positively, some negatively, some neutral (such as some traits changing or disappearing or being replaced by others). Because of my own experience in this regard (I transitioned from female to male some years ago) I made a thread about it in the LGBT forum a while back - I'll go and find the link in a moment.

On the other hand, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be as simple as "less male hormones = less autism" or "more female hormones = less autism". As you may have noticed, there are many female autistic people here who aren't growing beards, who seem to have perfectly normal female hormone levels! Therefore hormone levels are clearly only one of a number of factors which affect autism. I'd also suggest that a SMALL amount of estrogen probably wouldn't be able to change very much about your brain. Changing your body's hormonal system from primarily testosterone to primarily estrogen or vice versa does indeed have mental and emotional effects, but that's a different order of magnitude entirely.

There are quite a lot of autistic people who are transgender (numerous studies have now demonstrated that there are more trans people among autistics than neurotypical people) so I'm impatiently waiting for someone in the position to do something about it to notice what a source of interesting information about autism this could be and start keeping track of what happens to the autistic traits when the dominant body hormone changes.

I don't think it would work the way you'd expect at all. High testosterone in the womb may influence brain development towards Autism but if you've already developed Autism I don't think changing your hormones could reverse it.

I have noticed changes in the way my Autism presents itself in the past year but that could be because I'm in a critical development phase just as easily as it could be the result of my gender transition.


Even if Autism could be altered by providing female hormones would you really want to do that? If I were a cisgender male I would probably be freaked out by the way I look now. It doesn't bother me because I'm really female and I like the way I look now but I don't think any of my brothers would like it.

It doesn't make sense to me why any male person with Autism would think it's worth it to go on full HRT just for the sake of reducing Autistic symptoms. It doesn't seem like it would be worth it if you didn't already want the other effects.

i read someplace that smoking pot causes elevated estrogen levels in men.

Although have people studied autistics after a stroke and seen what happens to symptoms?

Women's perspective? No. I hold the male brain theory to be extremely flawed and naive. If it was true would we not see alleviation of symptoms in spectrum women on birth control (if we're talking minimal) or hormone replacement therapy (extreme)?

I must do more research. Just found some interesting articles. Ohhhhhhhh.