this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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HRT is short for Hormone Replacement Therapy, a treatment many transgender people use to feel more aligned with their gender identity. It's been proven to increase mental health, and has a low regret rate. However, it is correlated with higher mortality because trans people overall have a higher mortality rate and HRT is primarily used by trans people.
A more extreme example of the same thing would be "People on chemotherapy have a higher chance of dying from cancer than people not on chemotherapy." It's true, but only because people without cancer don't tend to enter chemotherapy.
Trans people on HRT may have a slightly higher mortality rate (the suicide rate declines significantly with HRT), but OPs statement is true because most people on HRT are cisgender and old - estrogen is a common treatment for menopause symptoms and products like androgel are specifically marketed to cis men with age related decline in testosterone.
My bad, I didnโt know HRT was a term used outside of transgender healthcare. Thank you for the info!
HRT was originally used to treat menopausal women at risk for osteoporosis, who are at higher risk due to being old.
I'm aware that transgenders also have a higher than otherwise expected mortality (whether taking hormones or not), but they may not be numerous enough to move the needle against millions of old women.