Hip
Well-Known Member
I happened to read your reply on irritability. I have this - a lot. So estriol worked?
Estriol worked for me, although if you are male, you probably would not want to take estriol continuously, as it does have some feminizing effects on the body (but only if you took high doses for say 6 months or more; I just take around 0.3 mg daily, for short periods of a few weeks).
Taking estriol transdermally is safer than orally (no increased cancer risk). I just rub the estriol cream on the skin of my arms (although the Ovestin® estriol cream is originally intended for intravaginal use).
Transdermal dosing is more efficient too: 1 mg of transdermal estriol is equivalent to around 5 mg of oral estriol (this because orally, the liver removes much of the estriol from the body quickly, via the first pass metabolism).
In this study using estriol to treat the autoimmunity in multiple sclerosis, they used an oral dose of 8 mg a day (equivalent of a transdermal dose of around 1.6 mg daily). It was effective at reducing MS lesions in the brain. I wanted to see if estriol might also help the assumed autoimmunity in ME/CFS, but being male, I am a bit worried about taking higher doses of estriol.
(Although if estriol were able to totally cure my ME/CFS, perhaps I'd be better of living as a healthy transvestite, rather than as an ill regular guy!)
Some ME/CFS patients report major remissions from ME/CFS during pregnancy; the interesting thing about pregnancy is that estriol levels are increased by about 1,000 times. This is what first made me think that estriol might be helpful in ME/CFS.
I found very low dose amisulpride was better, though, at reducing ME/CFS irritability. A study showed that low doses of this drug has benefits for ME/CFS. I found it provides several ME/CFS benefits (see this thread).