Puberty blockers have proven positive effects, despite well-funded misinformation campaigns attempting to persuade the public otherwise. Some campaigns misleadingly claim that stopping puberty may lead to irreversible side effects. In this article, we break down the benefits of puberty blockers and their reversibility. Finally, we explain why the claim that “puberty blockers are not reversible” is a myth.
Read More About Hormones:
What Do Puberty Blockers Do?
Medically speaking, puberty blockers are medication in the group GnRHa (Gonadotrophin Releasing Hormone Agonists).
- They stop the hormone signals that go from the brain to the gonads (ovaries and testicles) that tell them to produce the hormones of puberty.
- When you give the blocker (by injection or nasal spray), the medication stops the signals. When the infusion or spray wears off, the signals will restart.
- Finally, they’ll start producing their natal hormones again. No medication lasts forever. When you stop taking, it wears off and stops working.
Are Puberty Blockers Reversible?
Puberty blockers have been used for a long time to treat a wide variety of conditions. For example, hormone blockers help fight prostate cancer. Prostate cancer is an aggressive cancer that feeds off testosterone. People with endometriosis are also given puberty blockers. They get blockers to stop the hormone cycles that cause endometriosis to flare up.
Children with precocious puberty are prescribed blockers to stop them from going through puberty too early. A considerable number of these children have reached final height.
With puberty blockers, transgender kids can go through the correct gender-aligned puberty alongside their peers. The secondary sex characteristics that develop can be of the transgender adolescent’s preferred gender identity.
People are asking “are puberty blockers reversible?”, without ever seeing the irreversibility of a transgender kid going through natal puberty. What isn’t reversible is the lifelong effects that going through the wrong puberty can cause.
If any of these patient groups stop the puberty blocker, then it wears off and is no longer effective. This is obviously important for children with precocious puberty as they need to, and must, go through puberty when the time is right.
People with prostate cancer should stay on this medication for life. People with endometriosis can stop them to see how and if their symptoms re-develop, and start them again if they do. Transgender adolescents can stop them and allow their natural puberty to resume if that is what they want. So yes, puberty blockers are reversible.
What If You Are Trans Or Your Kid Is Trans?
Except if you are trans, that is the last thing you want. You do not want puberty that makes cisgender girls have beards, or boys have breasts.
Transgender kids want the same puberty, experiences, and livelihoods that the other girls and guys have in their class. With assistance, trans kids can have the adolescence that matches their gender identity.
Transgender kids can have teenage years that allows their body to match their heart and brain. The one that makes them fit in rather than stick out.
They can have puberty that is associated with far better mental health outcomes and life satisfaction scores. If they wanted to stop the puberty blocker and let it wear off, then it would because the medication is reversible.
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Transgender Identity Is Not Reversible
So, puberty blockers are reversible. Interestingly, while we ask “are puberty blockers reversible?” we forget what is not reversible.
What is not reversible is their transgender identity. Whether that is masculine, feminine, somewhere in between, or neither.
And yet, the vas majority of trans adolescents do not stop puberty blockers because they are the right treatment for the right diagnosis for the right outcome. They probably wish that their own body produced the right hormones from the start. However, they just didn’t get dealt that card when they were developing.
Puberty blockers are life savers. They give a trans adolescent the chance to have an identity that is not dominated by being trans. They allow teenagers to concentrate on school, education, music, fun and romance rather than unwanted and irreversible developments to their bodies and lives.
Conclusion
Putting a trans teenager through natural puberty is irreversible without invasive corrective surgery. Giving a trans teenager a puberty blocker can be life saving and are completely physically reversible. It’s just that if they are trans, they don’t want the effects of that medication to reverse.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this blog post and would like to speak to a member of the team, visit our Help Centre.
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