I’m thinking of switching from gel to injections. If anyone here has experience with that, how is your experience?
I just switched. It’s so nice cutting out the application and drying time twice a day. I was expecting the oily depot injection to be painful, but it wasn’t at all. Not sure what fluctuating hormone levels is going to be like, but at least I have gel as a backup.
My doctor doesn’t offer self injections, but I’d like to start at some point, especially once we’ve got the dose figured out.
If possible, I would definitely recommend transdermal patches! I’ll be super honest, injections aren’t for everyone. My previous self had done IM injections when I was into bodybuilding, and it slowly became a huge stressor for me. I dreaded it every time I had to do it- beyond just the physical prepping, there was the mental aspect which got so much worse after a bad pin- nothing crazy, just nicked a nerve and my quad muscles spasmed like crazy. All that said, I do believe that sub-q injections would be way less stressful and a bit more convenient. I think it just comes down to how you feel about needles (which you can mentally train yourself to get more accustomed to) and how prone you are to trauma/PTSD (bad pin or injection site issues). As with most things, it all gets easier over time.
At first I kept imagining I’d have some sort of stroke. So I visited my gp to get properly informed and since then I haven’t been afraid anymore. Now I’m still learning how to properly breathe while doing it. Also, sometimes it itches, and so sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t quite get why yet. But it isn’t so bad.
I recently started DIY and while the first time doing it was stressful but I got the hang of it very quickly (like on the 3rd time) also I do subq and sometimes I don’t even feel any pain
Nice! Good to hear
I’ve been doing injections for a few years now. I started with intramuscular but moved to subcutaneous a while back. It’s a lot more convenient only needing to do them like once per week, and it only takes about 10 minutes these days now that I’m practiced at it. My E levels have been consistently good, and I’m happy with my results. Definitely recommend!
it’s not bad, once you get over the brain fear of stabbing yourself its nice to only have to do it once a week or so
now if you have trypanophobia (needle phobia) it might be harder, still know creatures who have done it though
Injections is the best way to get estrogen, AFAIK, and I have had great results with injections.
It is, however, a challenge for some people to get used to stabbing yourself. I have needle phobia as well, which made it quite difficult to manage at first, but where at the beginning I had to spend 30+ minutes mentally preparing and injecting under special conditions, now I can seemingly do it anywhere and with no preparation. It is usually painless and easy for me.
I have so many suggestions if you want them, but if injections sound scary, at the very least look into subcutaneous (subq) injections with a small gauge needle like 27G. They’re like the needles for injecting insulin. I am not sure whether I would be able to handle intramuscular injections, and being able to inject subq has made injections possible for me.
Probably worth reading through this: https://old.reddit.com/r/TransWiki/wiki/hrt/injections
Thanks!
Also recommending subq! And yeah I started injectioms about 3 months into HRT and don’t regret it at all! It’s so convenient to only have to do once a week, and I almost never have issues with the needle because of how small it is.
there isnt any difference between subq and im levels wise* so it doesnt really matter, unless you get irritation from subq
* unless using estradiol undecylate
E. undecylate is discontinued and was only used in Europe until the late 2000s. That said, it looks like it’s an oil based depot injection into muscle, which is pretty typical for the other esters - I don’t see why subq injection of e. undecylate would be that different than IM (at least compared to other esters). In fact, it looks like it was injected subq in some animal testing. It also looks like the data we have on the topic are too low quality to draw conclusions from. Anyway, just curious what info you might have and why you call this out particularly.
While I have heard subq can be a little less effective than IM, it looks like that isn’t accurate.
the DIY community exists and uses EUn regularly, subq and im have had a proven difference with it
cool, TIL, I’ve previously been familiar with enanthate being used - I wonder where the raw material comes from for EUn, maybe Chinese manufacturers like for EEn.
Are the differences in subq and IM with EUn from reports in the DIY community? I would imagine it’s quite hard to track that considering it takes what, 90 days before EUn reaches steady state?
reports from those who use EUn, through blood testing mostly
dont really recommend using it because its complicated and we dont know much about it
as for 90 days thing, yknow theres a lot of trans creatures who have been on hrt for years right? x3
My point about 90 days is that it’s difficult to easily compare differences in IM and subq directly - even if were planning to compare them with blood testing. Even with e. valerate injections I find my blood levels can be quite variable with no other changes - part of that is due to the way syringes are manufactured and the resulting variation in the actual dose being delivered. I also swear sometimes the oil doesn’t depot the same when there is more tissue trauma or if I nick a blood supply. These speculations would be really hard to isolate with a relatively fast-metabolizing ester like valerate, so an accurate comparison between subq and IM would be difficult to do for an ester like EUn which requires much, much longer time periods between changes before being able to test.
Anyway, I’m suspicious about claims that EUn is uniquely different as an ester between subq and IM, but as usual I think the only way to clarify things is to get empirical evidence, which won’t be forthcoming anytime soon, esp. for an ester that isn’t manufactured or used outside of a minority within DIY communities.
Either way, thank you so much for calling it out and bringing my attention to this - I’m interested in learning more if you have links to anything about this.
I’ve do intramuscular. It’s not too bad, though I don’t like needless also, I need to look into getting smaller ones for the injection part…
Im going to ask for injections, but also looking into getting an auto injector to do the stabbing part for me.
Let me know how the auto-injector goes, my experience with the oil is that because it’s so thick and going through such small needles, it injects slowly and requires more force on the plunger than typical injections, so I would imagine an auto-injector would be tricky to get to work. (I once had a pharmacist go on a full-blown rant about how my endocrinologist must not know anything because the oil could not possibly go through the needles he ordered, which of course was false, it just takes patience.)
I will say, you do get used to pushing the needle in and there are lots of coping mechanisms, so don’t despair if the auto-injection doesn’t work out.
I used gel for half a year and it was somewhat stressful and so I made the move to injections.
The first injection was very scary for me, but I’ve been doing them for a while now and it’s starting to get pretty routine. It’s so much easier in the long run :) I just need to remember what day to take the injection, as opposed to having to apply gel at a specific time several times a day.
I do sub-q een. Initially I had some reaction to one of the ingredients, but since figuring out what I was reacting to by trying different esters it has been smooth sailing.