[Lotus]

I feel your pain Steffy-Anne, please let me try to put your mind at ease, sincere apologies for the late response. I'm sure you remember in Bobbi's DHT thread we laid out how the steroidogenesis of Testosterone (all androgens to be exact) is cleaved through a side chain of the enzyme 17,20 lyase (meaning the biosynthesis of androgens). That's where GTE comes in, it inhibits this 17,20 lyase pathway, so how do we know this?. 

From the attached study: A complete inhibition of this enzyme would provide an alternative means of androgen suppression for the treatment of prostatic cancers. 

At issue is how long it takes to reduce T down to nothingness I think it was estimated to be 6 month, though that's subjective as everyone is different. Though say when someone comes off of long term anti-androgen therapy it takes up to a year for T to rebound...another slow process. 

The L-theanine in green tea elevates neurotransmitters in the brain..like dopamine, gaba and serotonin. And 2 pills of theanine in GTE knocks me out, lol.

 Have you had any blood work done?, I'd start there just to gauge how well your current program is doing. And absolutely get the best GTE or Matcha. 

And alternatively one could see a trans friendly doctor...preferably one who specializes in transgender care and go from there. Btw, you look very fem in your avatar...cool.

1. Where does the androgen pathway begin?, from cholesterol. We start with the cholesterol to testosterone pathways where DHT can do its damage. 

See the diagram in which 17α-hydroxylase and 17,20-lyase are located. Inhibiting this enzyme so early in the biosynthesis of androgens is real game change. 

Theres another option though, and that's by elevating SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin). And SHBG's job is to transport hormones to target tissues. So, if Estradiol is elevated in SHBG (around 120 ng/dL) time is stuck in SHBG unable to transport. SHBG originates in the liver. 

High levels of T and DHT are effective in displacing E2 (estradiol) from target tissues. When this inverse relationship of high T/DHT to Estradiol is present you can kiss feminizing...and breast growth because DHT has a 4x affinity over Estradiol in SHBG. 

Green Tea raises estradiol in SHBG...now that's something to get overly excited about?.

Higher body temp (like over 99⁰) raises SHBG and thus inhibits DHT.

Yes, green tea raises SHBG. Let's put it this way, raising SHBG raises E2 (estradiol)...other things raise SHBG too.

High insulin lowers SHBG, that'll raise testosterone and go in the wrong direction.

cAMP (cyclic adenosine monophosphate) which are second messengers will increase SHBG, I know, it's technical.

Things like metformin will increase SHBG. We've known about SHBG since 2015 here at BN. Check out this thread in the Ladies forum, it's full of good stuff. We even had a scientist (Clelia) join in with the research. Something I found out was that the receptors cells are made up of palmitic acid, and how cool is that?. This means receptor cells are fat lovin.

NBE Research
https://www.breastnexus.com/showthread.php?tid=23246

I'm still working on a list of what raises SHBG. But think about this, if we knew how to raise SHBG...it may mean taking less NBE/HRT.