u/Slight_Technician_86

I am putting this up in case someone else is in my boat or thinking about subq daily.

I will start with this, I am switching to daily subq, it has nothing to do with needle size, back in a different life (25 years ago), I and a mate would go to a fodder store and buy test enanthate in a bladder of 500ml for 80 bucks, we would do 4 x 1ml shots giving us 1000mg, this would be a 23 guage needle, each glute and quad... add to that 400mg of Deca added to the test shot.

So if I can handle 1 to 1.5ml shots from 23g x 1 1/2" needles I can handle these tiny amounts they are giving me on TRT.

My purpose for the change from IM is this, the clinic put me on 125mg, they said do 2 shots a week monday and thursday, seems to me that is a stanard approach, that means the dose is 0.5 ml split into two making it 0.25 x 2 shots, I wonder if they do this for simple maths for people lol.

So I bought a bunch of needles etc, I have 23g x 1 1/2", and 25g 1" with the view of the 25g will go in the delt. I have injected a 23g into a delt before which wasnt too bad.

I have a few issues, right shoulder is stuffed can barely get my hand across to inject the left delt, so my first shot was right quad 23g x 1 1/2", quads are ok but you can hit a nerve on the way in and that kind of sucks. My second shot was right delt with the 25g that was fine, did my other quad next as I have a little issue doing glute shots on my left with my complete lack of mobility and coordination... getting old sucks!

Then I watched a heap of videos from Mad Medicine, this guy is probably one of the most knowledgeable guys on earth for TRT, specially as he does this for a living being a Doctor.

He, along with Dave Lee talk up daily injections, Dave Lee states non stop to inject as often as you can tolerate and will adhere to, now my wife is a type 1 diabetic, she injects 2 to 3 times a day so if a girl can do it... lol

Recent scientific studies show that the best way to keep your hormones in balance is daily shots, even more recent studies now show subq as the best option as the release is slower, there appears to be no difference in peak T or low T from IM and Subq once you have stabilised the dose, sides are less and as Dave Lee will tell you, if you are someone who can do subq then do it.

The recent study Mad Medince shows on one video was from a controlled experiment of 75 guys on TRT they split them into subq daily and IM 2 x a week, 3 months down the track they all had similar T levels but the daily guys had lower HCT and lower E2 overall.

The only argument for IM then became, you get to your peak a little quicker, but if you are a true low T guy and you are doing this for the rest of your life, getting to your peak a couple of weeks earlier seems pointless.

I do have an issue that impacts me, my Hematocrit is high, I am 52 before TRT commenced so thats going to go up a little and I am going to sit in that range that clinics look at me and start to think about pulling the plug, I have read numerous papers on reducing HCT and the donate blood thing seems to be a bad option, if your HCT creeps a little sure donating once or twice a year no biggie, but if you have issues with regular high HCT donating 4 plus times seems to just give you a massive crash in VitD and other concerns that you are left feeling like death, kind of defeats the point of being on TRT.

Dave Lee and Mad Medicine have in recent times come out saying donating to drop HCT is a bad option and to try and fix the cause of the HCT or better to just lower your TRT dose.

Mad Medicine stated that studies are proving daily subq can help HCT spike, it might go up a little but your chances of keeping it under 55 are best if you are doing cardio to increase plasma which waters down the red blood cell count and if you are doing daily subq the spike in Test is non existant as daily injections equals a stable steady supply of T.

So with that I thought ok screw it ill switch from IM to subq, now I know subq can sting a little after the injection, some guys have issues with the oil build up etc, but if you are doing subq every day then the amount you inject is next to nothing.

My 125mg split over 7 injections is 17.8mg a day which is 0.07 ml, its such a small amount that the oil is cleared and gone in a couple of days, the amount is so small there is much less chance of the skin irritation issue or oil build up issue....well hopefully, ill find out I guess. I have seen guys online complain about the oil build up and irritation issue but they were mostly injecting 0.375ml or more, no wonder there is an issue there. That 0.35 and up should go in a muscle.

Needless to say a little paranoid about the chance as I was pretty happy to just stick the cannon into the quad and be done with it, plus sticking a cannon in 2 to 3 times a week aint that bad, daily does give a little more anxiety, today I did my second shot in a row and i did have a little more anxiety which was odd given I was ok putting 23g into a quad, putting a 25g into my stomach bugged me more...

With that, I have just ordered insulin pins, my wife uses a pen so I cannot use her gear, I ordered a box of 29g 1/2" that should be fine into the fat areas, I am assuming ill likely need to back fill them as standing there waiting to fill drives me nuts, plus I have in the past worked out the smaller the needle the more little bubbles you get then you have to clear them, so much easier to jsut draw out 0.07ml using a 23g then putting that into the insulin syringe I think. I also ordered 27g 1/2" needles as I might even get lazy and just use that instead of stuffing around filling an insulin syringe.

I know many here have already switched from Subq to IM but I wonder, is that more to do with the amount you inject that causes the irritation?

Does anyone else have a HCT issue like me?

I have attached an image below of my daily subq rotation for anyone interested, ill report back in a few weeks to update see how different this is to IM. I am looking forward to my insulin needles getting here so I can stop sticking 25g into my stomach lol.