22-year-old man with female appearance and voice changed thanks to "miraculous" treatment

A man who was ridiculed for being small and having a woman's voice has grown 12 cm and a beard thanks to testosterone injections.

This was reported by SSPDaily.

Ashley Hemming, 22, from Worcester, UK, claims that he felt he was falling behind his classmates at school when they began to go through puberty and overtook him in height.

When his friends began to have voice mutations in their early teens, he was left "sounding like a girl" with a high-pitched voice and was mercilessly mocked for it.

When Ashley was working in a café at the age of 19, customers often mistook him for a girl and called him "miss," "she," or "honey."

Ashley said that he first noticed his "differences" at the age of 13 and always felt that something was wrong with him, but he was too embarrassed to go to the doctor.

It was only when he went to his doctor in August 2020 with the support of his family that he was diagnosed with male hypogonadism and began receiving treatment.

Four years later, thanks to hormone injections, he is now 192 cm tall, has a low voice, and is growing facial hair.

He said: "It was a great relief to know that something was wrong and that I hadn't just made it all up in my head. I would say to other people: if you feel that something is wrong, you need to see a doctor because I wish I had done it four years earlier. My self-confidence has gotten a little bit better, but I'm still not at the point where I feel ready to go on a date. I am never mistaken for a woman anymore. It's nice to be addressed as "sir" or "mister".

Hypogonadism is a condition in which the body does not produce enough testosterone, which plays a vital role in growth and development during puberty. A man can be born with this disorder, or it can develop later in life, often as a result of an injury or infection. If the disease develops during puberty, it can interfere with muscle development, voice deepening, body and facial hair growth, and penile and testicular growth. It can also cause the arms and legs to become too long relative to the rest of the body, and breast tissue to start growing as well.

Ashley said he first noticed symptoms when he was a teenager and didn't notice the effects of puberty as quickly as his peers.

He said: "I was about 13 years old when my school friends' voices started getting deeper, they got taller than me and they started growing facial hair and I didn't. I was still a little kid with a high voice. At first, I just thought I was late with puberty and decided I would give myself some time, but as I got older, I became ashamed to talk about it. It depressed me, and no one could do anything about it. I thought it would be like that for the rest of my life. There were a few people who liked to laugh at my voice. It was very high-pitched and I sounded like a girl. I was ashamed to go to the doctors and I didn't feel like I could talk about it. During Covid, I lost my job, so I spent a lot of time in bed thinking about my life and how it would change if I talked about how I felt. I never had the confidence to ask a girl out because I struggled with how I looked and with my voice. I grew my hair out during the pandemic and got a new job at a cafe, and when I served people, they would say "thank you, miss" or "thank you, darling" to me. It was very depressing because I am a man and people looked at me as a woman. I didn't feel happy. I went to a therapist and he made an appointment for a blood test, which showed that I had low levels of the hormone testosterone. I also had an MRI scan, which showed that the signal in my brain that normally releases these hormones was not working."

After his first doctor's visit, Ashley met with a hormone specialist who prescribed two-weekly hormone injections to boost his testosterone levels.

Ashley says that after two months of taking the hormone medication, 2021 his voice started to drop, and after nine months, he started to grow facial hair.

He has become more confident as he continues to take hormone injections.

Ashley now encourages other men to seek professional help if they experience hormone imbalances and says he regrets not seeing a doctor years before he finally did.