Chapter 11: The Biochemical Rebellion

If you only read one chapter of my autobiography, read this. It's absolutely astonishing. My body automatically started transitioning

Quick note before we start:

This chapter gets a bit technical in places; hormones, enzymes, pathology. But stick with me. It matters. Because what happened to me wasn’t just trauma or memory or yearning. It was chemistry. My body, literally, rising up.

And then one day, it all came back.

Not as a flicker, but as a flood.

Slow at first, a whisper, a familiar twinge… and then, like a dam breaking after twenty-plus years of pressure, it exploded. Every buried thing. Every soft want. Every hidden girl. All of it.

And the strangest part? I could already feel the culprit running in my veins. My hormones.

That’s what I tell myself, and there’s some science to back it up.

Let me rewind.

After my orca-sized Fat Elvis period, I turned a corner. Started losing weight. Slowly at first, then fast. I was working in central London at the time, taking the bus to work, five kilometres, an hour each way. For me, that was an unacceptable waste of time.

So, I bought a bike.

Cycling had often been part of my life; from my little red bike, to my first road bike at nine, my endless BMX crashes, and then the infamous smart turbo I built at university, so deep down, I knew there was no way we were sticking with a £300 Halfords special. But we had to start somewhere.

Before long, it was a Pinarello Dogma F8: full carbon, an absolute weapon. I got lean. I got fit. Then came triathlons. Then Ironman. I trained like a maniac: over twenty hours a week, a hundred-mile bike on Sunday, a two-thousand-metre swim on Monday, and an “easy” half-marathon home from work on Tuesday.

And I’ll admit it, I quite liked shaving my legs.

More than liked. I loved it.

Eventually, I had the hair lasered off. All of it. You know… for “aero.”

In 2016, I did my first full Ironman. Felt like a god… until I saw the photos.

All that training, and I still didn’t look like a proper male triathlete. No razor-cut musculature. No solid, sculpted upper body. My frame just didn’t match the men I was racing alongside.

Something was off. So, I booked bloodwork.

Turned out my testosterone levels were at rock bottom, the levels of a seventy-five-year-old. Way outside the normal range.

So, I looked to get a private prescription for testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) to try and boost my levels. It felt justified. I wasn’t chasing some bodybuilder’s physique; I just wanted to look normal.

But after a while, during routine follow-up blood tests, my doctor was surprised. My body was producing large amounts of aromatase enzyme, the stuff that converts testosterone into estrogen. I was way outside the normal range, and this was despite no longer being overweight.

So began this absurd chemical loop: me injecting testosterone into my stomach while swallowing a pile of pills to try and stop it turning straight into estrogen.

It was a nightmare. I couldn’t get the dosing right. I’d swing wildly, one moment depressed and flatlined from too little estrogen, the next feeling swamped and emotional. I hated it. Eventually, I decided to stop taking the aromatase inhibitors altogether.

I carried on with testosterone alone for a couple of years but reduced the dosage a lot, you can’t just stop these things cold. It wasn’t just that it made me aggressive, irritable, and unbalanced. It made me emotionally cold, a little arrogant, uncaring. And although I was desperate to get rid of it, I was also a little scared. Part of me wondered if this was what gave me the edge to succeed. Was this what allowed me to make money, that without it, I wouldn’t be able to perform at work the way I had before?

Sarah never really connected the dots, but that chemical shift had changed me. I wasn’t the person she’d married. I ’d become this angry, overconfident version of myself, the sort of bloke who’d loudly declare that hard work fixes everything, quote Marcus Aurelius in the pub, and bang on endlessly about Bitcoin.

I wanted to find my way back to who I was before.

The man she’d actually fallen in love with.

So I stopped the testosterone too. And that’s when the truth started to emerge. Without the testosterone, my levels plummeted again. But my estrogen? My estrogen was starting to climb.

During this time, I was trading big accounts in both equities and crypto. The numbers were huge. On good days, the profits were intoxicating, surreal even. But on the bad days, the kind that turned red before your eyes, it felt like your insides were twisting. The stress wasn’t just mental; it was physical. You could feel it in your gut, in your chest, in the tremor of your hands. Eventually, my body gave out. I developed an autoimmune disorder, Graves’ disease and went into a full thyroid crisis.

Now, Graves’ disease isn’t just a thyroid condition. It’s like a hand grenade for your endocrine system. In men, it can send shockwaves through every hormonal pathway—raising sex-hormone-binding globulin, lowering free testosterone, and ramping up aromatase activity, which converts testosterone into estrogen. The result can be a whole series of feminising changes: breast growth, fat redistribution, softer skin, finer body hair, loss of muscle tone. You’ll find case reports of it in endocrinology journals if you look hard enough—but I’ll spare you the citations here. They’re in the appendix.

In my case, Graves’ landed on a system already tilted toward low testosterone and high aromatisation. That’s not common and the combination was enough to tip me completely out of the male range and well into the female hormonal profile.

That’s when everything went completely off the charts. My estrogen levels surged past two hundred, that’s picomoles per litre, well into the female range, while my testosterone was rock-bottom, almost non-existent. When I saw the blood-test results, I was astonished. I’d suspected something was happening, but to see it in black and white was another thing entirely. Out of curiosity, I pasted the results into ChatGPT and asked, “Who is this person?” The reply came back instantly: “I suspect this is a trans woman.”

My body was in biochemical rebellion, and the changes weren’t subtle.

I started to feminise, really feminise. My skin became soft and almost glowing. Hair thinned out across my body. My chest began to swell with unmistakable budding breast tissue. My hips widened slightly. Even my face changed: rounder, softer, gentler.

And emotionally? It was like someone switched the lights back on after decades of darkness. I cried at music, at films, even at the sight of my own reflection. For the first time since I’d buried Stevie, I felt something like… her.

And the best part?

I felt amazing. I felt peaceful. I felt soft. I felt right.

For the first time in my whole life, I felt a level of inner peace, a sense of being anchored. Not floating, not fractured, not pretending, just… at one with myself. It was astonishing.

And I didn’t want it to stop.

I couldn’t go back.

Slowly, steadily, the truth emerged from the mist. I didn’t have to imagine it anymore. I could feel it. See it. Stevie wasn’t dead. She had just been biding her time in the bloodstream.

This strange chemical storm wasn’t an illness.

It was a gift.

Some might call it freakish. Others would call it fate.

According to my endocrinologist, the combination of low testosterone, high aromatisation, and Graves’ is exceptionally unusual. There isn’t a solid population estimate, but it’s far outside what clinicians see day to day.

If this happened to almost every other man, they’d feel devastated, alien in their own bodies, stripped of their masculinity, desperately out of sorts. But me?

I felt liberated.

For all I know, I might be one of the only people on earth to start a transition this way, without medication, without planning, just transformed by my own body.

And once it started, I knew:

There was no going back.

It was the beginning of one of the fastest, most radical transformations I’ve seen. even on Reddit subgroups like TransTimelines.

I went from zero to a thousand percent overnight, twenty-plus years of catching up crammed into months.

Appendix A — References

A. Mechanistic papers (estrogen↑ / aromatisation↑ in hyperthyroidism)

Southren AL et al. Conversion of Androgens to Estrogens in Hyperthyroidism. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1974;38(2):207-214. Classic study showing increased peripheral conversion of androgens to estrogens in spontaneous hyperthyroidism. OUP Academic+2PubMed+2

Chopra IJ et al. Status of Estrogen–Androgen Balance in Hyperthyroid Men with Graves’ Disease. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1974;38(2):269-277. Demonstrates a shift toward estrogen dominance (altered unbound E2/androgen balance) in hyperthyroid men with Graves’. OUP Academic+1

Gordon GG. Thyroid—hormone effects on steroid-hormone metabolism. Annu Rev Med. 1977. Review summarising thyroid-driven changes in steroid metabolism and citing the Southren/Chopra findings on increased aromatisation and estrogen/androgen balance. PMC

B. SHBG pathway (how thyroxine shifts free testosterone/estrogen bioavailability)

Selva DM, Hammond GL. Thyroid hormones act indirectly to increase sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) production by liver via HNF-4α. J Mol Endocrinol. 2009;43:19-27. Mechanistic data (cells + transgenic mice) linking thyroid hormone → HNF-4α → SHBG↑, reducing free androgens and altering the E2/T balance. PubMed+1

Contemporary summaries citing Selva/Hammond on the same pathway: Kjærgaard AD et al. (2021) and Tang EI et al. (2013) review how thyroid hormone raises SHBG, shifting free sex steroids. PMC+1

C. Case reports with estradiol elevation / estrogen-skewed balance in thyrotoxicosis

Rojas PL et al. An Unusual Case of Gynecomastia Associated with Hyperthyroidism. (Open-access case report). Details elevated E2 with hyperthyroid state; discusses increased aromatase activity and SHBG as mechanisms. PMC

Choong K, Safer JD. Graves Disease and Gynecomastia in 2 Roommates. Endocrine Practice. 2011. Notes elevated estradiol and testosterone in hyperthyroidism and the role of SHBG/aromatisation; two male Graves’ cases. endocrinepractice.org+2endocrinepractice.org+2

Sakulterdkiat T et al. Unilateral gynecomastia as an initial presentation of hyperthyroid Graves’ disease. Endocrinol Diabetes Metab Case Rep. 2021. Case + discussion on free androgen vs. estrogen balance in hyperthyroidism; resolution after euthyroid state. edm.bioscientifica.com+2PMC+2

Calcaterra V et al. Gynecomastia after euthyroidism restoration in a patient with type 1 diabetes and Graves’ disease. Clin Case Rep. 2018. Illustrates persistent/late gynecomastia around treatment, with discussion of hormonal balance. PMC+1

Sravya SL et al. An Intriguing Case of Gynecomastia in an Elderly Male as the Initial Presentation of Graves’ Disease. Cureus. 2023. Elderly male; overview of mechanisms including estrogen overproduction via aromatisation and SHBG-mediated shifts. PubMed

Mohammadnia N et al. Gynecomastia as a presenting symptom of Graves’ disease in a 49-year-old man. Endocrinol Diabetes Metab Case Rep. 2021. Case with discussion of sex-hormone imbalance in thyrotoxicosis. edm.bioscientifica.com+1

D. Broader reviews / context that touch the estrogen link

Ismail AAA, Barth JH. Endocrinology of Gynaecomastia. Ann Clin Biochem. 2001. Review of estrogen sources and androgen-estrogen dynamics in men, including thyrotoxicosis as a cause. SAGE Journals+1

FitzPatrick AM et al. Is Estrogen a Missing Culprit in Thyroid Eye Disease? Front Immunol. 2022. Immunology-focused review that also cites Southren 1974 on androgen→estrogen conversion in hyperthyroidism. Frontiers+1