Change of life expectancy after gender change? ?

Question

Is there any data showing a change of life expectancy after gender change? I suspect that it cuts down on suicide rates but I'm talking about natural causes. It's commonly known that people born female live longer than people born male. Does the introduction of hormone replacement or gender reassignment surgery change that statistic for the individual who has done it?

Answer 1

No I don't think it will. Actually I think a change like that may actually shorten your life.

Answer 2

An acquaintance got changed from a male to a female and, as part of his/her pre-operation, was informed that a s*x change operation will shorten a person's life by 5-10 years.  The reason was that the operation is not the end of the change.  The person getting the change must continually take hormones so as to develop secondary s*x characteristics.  

What that means is that my friend, who was a "he" got something cut off, but after the operation, in order to become more feminine looking, he had to grow b*****s.  In order to do that, he had to go on hormone therapy which mimics what women have going on in their bodies all of the time.  However, having high doses of female hormones when your body is 'naturally' male is very tough on every part of your body (or vice versa for a woman changing to a man).  The result is a shortened life span.

Now, I went to google to give you a reference and only looked at the first page of references ... I didn't find anything.  However, certainly YOU could google the topic, too.  

Answer 3

I can't provide you with any solid data on this, but it seems to me that life expectancy would indeed be altered according to the direction of the transition.  MTF transpersons could probably expect an increased life expectancy, while FTM transpersons could probably expect a decreased life expectancy, on average.

Excluding factors such as lifestyle, surgery complications, and so on, testosterone is really a major determiner of life expectancy.  In "Mean Genes" by Terry Burnham and Jay Phelan, the authors say:

"Young males are said to suffer from 'testosterone poisoning.'  The label is appropriate: testosterone is a proven carcinogen, and, as we saw earlier, males without testicles live much longer than intact males."

This would be a very interesting study to conduct.  Looking at the data we have about non-trans individuals, though, we can probably infer that the source of the testosterone (testicles or injections) does not particularly matter.  Ultimately, maleness and shorter life expectancies go together.

Answer 4

I've never heard of this kind of change.  I think the person's genetic susceptibility to diseases would still be the most important.  

For people who make the wrong decision to change, it can cause more suicides.

Also, some tissues in our bodies are sensitive to the s*x hormones.  Men have breast tissue and when given estrogen they become more susceptible to developing breast cancer.  Men can even get this without changing their hormones, it's just not as common.

So, there are some things which can change a person's lifespan from what it might have been.  But anyone can get hit by a truck crossing the street, no matter who they are.