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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
Thanks!