Delivery method

Pills vs injections

So let me say upfront I'm NOT trans and have ZERO FIRSTHAND experience with HRT. I'm NOT trying to be judgy.

This a sandbox for me to talk to myself in my little corner of the Internet and try to develop ideas. 

The history of attempts to develop a means to determine Longitude while en route at sea includes efforts to use lunar eclipses to calculate it:

Christopher Columbus made two attempts to use lunar eclipses to discover his longitude, the first in Saona Island, on 14 September 1494 (second voyage), and the second in Jamaica on 29 February 1504 (fourth voyage). It is assumed that he used astronomical tables for reference. His determinations of longitude showed large errors of 13° and 38° W respectively.

They ultimately developed a chronometer -- aka pocket watch -- to solve this after trying multiple other things and failing. Telegraphs were also tried AND can't be used by ships at sea. Chronometers became obsolete when radio navigation replaced them post WW2.

I don't claim to have the BEST solution much less the ONLY solution. I'm someone with a serious medical condition and I have gotten healthier and gotten off a lot of drugs by pursuing dietary and lifestyle changes. 

My idea of a good support group is that if you get ten replies to your question, you should have at least nine different unique pieces of information. If you have one popular person speak and five jump up to agree and five jump up to shout that person down, you need to try to put a stop to that.

My history as a participant of Internet discussion on medical support email lists is that I ACTIVELY sought to stop people from dividing up between enthusiastically AGREEING with me or enthusiastically shooting me down. Share what YOU know and let the person who is ASKING consider the various options presented and let THEM decide.

So keep that in mind before you get all het up and eager to piss on me and argue that I'm morally wrong and my parents weren't married when I was born and blah blah blah blah blah. Me trying to outline my ideas is not me trying to make other options unavailable.

I'm NOT crazy about injections. I'm aware that is the current standard in part because of cost and in part because of effectiveness.

My understanding is that even if you get HRT via prescription through a physician and filled via pharmacy, you will be administering it yourself. And I somewhat regularly read posts where someone is kind of freaking out about "OMG! I did a thing and I'm scared I have messed up big time!" with regards to the injection process.

One of those concerns is contamination and if you contaminate your HRT supplies -- vial of drugs, needles, syringes -- and don't realize it before injecting yourself, this can potentially make you very sick. And that's before accounting for my hypothesis that being trans is a sex hormone syndrome that fundamentally impairs immune function.

I have an extremely serious medical condition and I used to routinely sterilize medical equipment at home, usually via boiling. I was not injecting myself but I was using various types of syringes -- bulb syringes, needleless children's oral medication syringes -- to irrigate compromised sinuses that lacked adequate mucus so were immunocompromised in function AND I had a nebulizer for a time.

A nebulizer is even more dangerous because it's a mechanical device for putting aerosolized medication into your lungs directly and it has mechanical parts etc, so it's possible to have stuff growing inside the device and then delivering mold or medication resistant germs directly into immunocompromised lungs along with medication. You can potentially die from doing that if you screw it up and if you own a nebulizer, you're probably seriously ill such that stupid mistakes are highly likely to happen.

I once found mold growing in a glass jar of homemade nebulizer solution made using a recipe given to me by my physician. As far as I know, I never made myself sick using such devices but I did on at least two occasions melt a pot and the medical devices in it when I forgot I was sterilizing it.

So, long story short, my goals include supporting HRT in a nonmedical fashion that avoids use of medical equipment at home, including needles. 

Because trying to replicate MEDICAL care outside the hospital is rife with challenges that can be very dangerous to your health.

I'm hoping to develop HRT based on food and supplements. That's my goal and that's part of my reasoning as to why.

And it's entirely about opening up NEW options and has nothing to do with denying people access to whatever they are currently doing if they are happy with it.