The waste is accounted for on the lines of the syringe. If the line reads 0.4ml, for example, you don’t need to injection the 0.05ml of dead space to get 0.4ml.
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Hi. I understand what you are saying with regards to the 1ml syringes. For my experiment, I injected the contents of the deadspace syringe into a non-deadspace (no waste) syringe, as if it was my quad. Then I took the no-waste syringe reading. The problem may not be so much the measurements across 1ml syringes but the difficulty of measuring in a 3ml syringe. I am shocked at how much waste there is in all these ones with the detachable needles.
I haven’t been putting the air pocket in, so it’s partly my fault. The nurse didn’t teach me to put an air pocket in - and the doctor prescribed me a 3ml syringe… so how lost are people that don’t read for themselves on forums like this?
Hey bud. My indication that my dose is wrong is that my heart rate has been stupid for like five or six weeks but I was just putting it down to nerves. My memory has been pretty fucked up for the same time period. It has only gotten really noticeable this last couple weeks. I should have logged it but I think I was trying to ignore it, thinking it was all temporary. In the end I was feeling pretty good otherwise.
You may be right about my dose. I’m not thinking clearly because I was so shocked at the difference between the various syringes I have used. I don’t know yet what dose I’m going to settle on but I don’t want to make any drastic changes.
I use each syringe and needle once.
Sure, but the waste in the syringe doesn’t affect the dose you are getting in any way. If you pull back the plunger with no air to the 0.5mL line, then there will be 0.55mL in the syringe, 0.5mL gets injected and 0.05mL goes in the trash.
So effectively, this is only a problem if you are running out of medication before you get your next refill or if you’re trying to bank up medication for a future blast.
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Not my experience with the 3ml syringe for sure. I draw the plunger back and measure the liquid from the plunger to the lines. At that point,the waste area has filled because the syringe is upside down. Then I push forward. Maybe when I’m pushing the air out I’m pushing everything that much closer to the end, but it didn’t seem like it and that is certainly not reflected in what was being “used” from the bottle.
If I had been filling it by drawing it back like you describe I would only have half a dose left by the fourth one, with no room for any waste. So like a quarter of a dose left. I’m pissed there is no guidance on this shit and we have to fend for ourselves.
When I drew back .25 in the 3ml syringe and pushed it forward like usual, what came out into my measuring syringe was roughly .15. Measuring and injecting this way gave me almost exactly four doses per bottle. Sometimes at the end there was a slight amount still in the bottle. Like I said I am a baker, I am used to dealing in grams and being pretty fucking exact.
You are doing something wrong, your syringes aren’t medical grade, or your test supplier isn’t giving you the amount stated.
The way to draw a syringe is insert the needle into the vial, turn vial upside down, draw back at least 50% more than your dose, let the air ride up to the tip of the needle, then push the air out and the extra amount you drew back into the vial
The end result should be that the black part of the plunger is exactly at the dosage you are prescribed, and the syringe is filled with medication and no air.
You need to keep in mind that a 1mL syringe has increments every 0.01mL, and a 3mL syringe has increments only every 0.1mL, so there will be less accuracy drawing a 3mL syringe if your dose is not in a 0.1mL increment.
Also, if you are using a separate drawing and injection needle, then you need to draw as I said above, cap the drawing needle, hold the syringe so needle is pointing up, and pull back the plunger to let air into the syringe before switching the needle to the injection needle. Once switched you need to push the air back out and make sure the syringe again reads at your exact dose with no air in the syringe.
What would be the proper way to draw and inject with fixed needle? Turning the vial upside down and draw?
Yes. Same as any other. First Pull syringe back to however much you’re going to inject. Call it 20 units or 0.2ml. Put the needle into the T bottle. Inject the air. Turn it upside down, draw half of the dose or so. Let the air bubbles come to the top of the syringe and squirt those back into the T bottle. Draw the rest of your dose.
You’re ready to inject.
Syringes are measuring displacement. As long as the “wasted” area of the syringe and needle are full of whatever liquid you’re injecting then you’ll get the amount listed on the syringe when injecting. There’s no “taking into account” the wasted space. You don’t need to. It’s wasted when you draw and equally wasted when you inject so they cancel out.
You unknowingly draw more than you want but it wastes the same amount when you go to inject and some is left in the syringe so it works out correct in the end. Otherwise every injection ever given would be wrong and nurses would be trying to account for dead space all the time, etc. None of that ever happens
This is all assuming your syringes are accurate.
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Oh damn I haven’t done this till now. I get it now.
Thanks for the explanation
Thanks. I am not changing needles. The bottom line is with my 3ml syringes I was drawing the same amount of oil out of the vial as my 1ml syringes but in the process getting a lot less T. Both have detachable needles.
What you guys are saying about the measurements is correct. But I know because I aspirate, sometimes I get more T out of an injection and sometimes I get less.
My advice to anyone and everyone is to only use fixed needle syringes that have no waste.
Went through all the same awful anxiety again as I ran through the peak today. Awful. Not panic. Anxiety. Wanted to crawl out of my shoulders and up through my head. Thankfully that is over now, but a new ride begins.
Following up on the syringe thing, I did my same experiment again but with water. When done with water the 3ml syringes are astonishingly accurate when dispensed into a 1ml syringe. The readings and measures are exactly as galgenstrick described. The problem is we are dealing with oil and it just does not behave the same way. Tons of waste gets stuck in the syringe, or at least was with the ones I was using.
So while all this time I thought I was on “100mg per week” with my empty 2ml T bottle at the end of every 2 weeks, according to my latest accurate measurements, here is what my REAL dosing schedule has been like over the past 18 months:
June '18 to June '19: 80mg total per week, in one dose (3ml syringe)
June '19 to Sept '19: 50mg total per week, split in two doses (3ml syringe)
Sept '19 to Nov '19: 76mg total per week, split in two doses (1ml syringe)
I am sensitive to T and I felt like an absolute fucking king on 50mg per week split into two shots, except with a fairly absent libido but everything else was great. Back in September when I switched to 1ml syringes and thought I “accidentally lowered my dose” it turns out I had actually “accidentally raised my dose”. When I raised it further to compensate, it turns out I just raised it some more.
I did finally settle in on this dose after eight weeks and felt pretty darn good, but I noticed lots of racing heart while at rest, and weak muscles that constantly cried to be worked out. Also there was a lack of the T “calmness” that I had on 50mg per week.
If it wasn’t for the racing heart and that lack of calmness, I might just stay on 75 per week. As it stands, seeing as I am kind of fucked up right now, I am going to split the baby and move down to 60mg per week, split into two shots, and check how that goes. I can modulate up or down from there.
A new eight week wait begins, and the T joyride continues…
Only 30mg twice a week? Wow. How.
For context, I don’t have labs but when I was on 80mg a week once a week, my Total T was around 1200 close to the peak. Up from 170. When I put the stupid patch on (before injections), within minutes I became a different person. I went from unfocused malaised and blurred to sharp and alive. My IQ went up 20 points (back to normal). I had done an IQ test while I was Low T because I was concerned about my brain and didn’t know what the hell was going on. Imagine my surprise when it came out about 20 points low.
I am not a huge guy and I am super sensitive to T. I’ve been doing 38mg shots for a couple months and a single 46mg shot nearly wrecked my shit.
Same thing happened when I was on once a week back in March. I accidentally loaded too much - I was on 80mg shots and probably did a 90mg shot and the same exact thing happened. I got insanely anxious at the peak and had crazy paranoia like never before. I was lucky this time around that it didn’t include the paranoia. Because of the divided dose, I guess.
I was hoping this log would be extremely boring by now. Well depending on your perspective, it’s possible it’s been boring all along! Sorry about that. In any event I am now in the midst of yet another protocol change. Fun!
I have dropped my dose from 80mg a week divided into 2 shots, to 56mg a week divided into 2 shots. Apparently back in August when I was feeling AMAZING all the time, I was only on between 40 and 50mg per week. Hyperresponder, or what? When I was Low T, my Total T was 170.
I have now done 3 shots on my new protocol of 56mg per week. Expecting it to be uneven for a while, but at the moment I am back to a buzzing feeling some of the time, my heart rate has come way back down to normal and I can feel my confidence kicking back in. Somehow this last 10 weeks on 80mg a week I had retreated somewhat into myself. I hadn’t realized it. My mental sharpness had dissipated somewhat and my memory was pissing about. My mood was okay but no longer “high”. Everything else from energy to libido honestly seemed fine. I thought I was alright and just waiting to “settle”. I didn’t miss the confidence though I should have. I was still self-assured but I was definitely lacking that confident edge (an edge I can feel right now as I type this).
There was no way for me to know I had changed doses so drastically by switching syringes. I was using the same amount out of every bottle. If anything I thought I might have reduced my dose a little. Holy fuck.
The long and the short of it is I can feel my confidence coming back, my sharpness coming back, my memory coming back and really everything feeling more correct. Anxiety seems a little up and down but I feel that nice T “calmness” coming over me, too. If anything I still feel like this is too much T but I don’t want to drastically reduce my dose, plus it is early days. Libido has gone fucking goodbye but that’s really no surprise.
Next shot is Monday. I feel great right this minute but I think I want off this train.
I was shocked also. When I went to twice a week injections (200mg/week) my 1ml/200mg vials wouldn’t be enough to give two full .5ml/100mg shots per week due to the waste of the removable needles. Now that I’m using insulin (no waste) syringes I realized the 1ml vials actually have about 1.15 ml in them. The luer lock needles/syringes were wasting on average .1-.15ml per shot.
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Hi everyone! Still on 56mg a week. Did my last shot Monday with another due on Friday. Good morning wood this morning. Not a whole lotta libido to speak of but things are working.
So… it turns out I was having TERRIBLE memory issues on my previous dose. I knew it had gotten bad but I hadn’t realized how bad. It was almost pre-T levels of bad. The only thing missing was my “confusion” but my long term memory had really taken a severe hit. I worked on projects which I forgot doing. Conversations. Lots of things I was forgetting. Not day-to-day stuff, and not short term stuff like putting stuff down and forgetting about it (which was also happening pre-T). I am on NO OTHER DRUGS.
I had a practically photographic memory up until I became Low T. I couldn’t watch movie trailers because I would remember everything in them and it bothered me.
The good news is my sharpness and memory seem to be returning. Only time will tell I guess. But too high a T dose was definitely too high. And too high a T dose turned out to be my once a week dose of 80mg split into two doses. Common knowledge on here seems to be that you need to reduce your dose if you go to twice a week (and had been relatively okay on your dose). I can confirm this.
I am definitely tired today, and perturbed (annoyed for no reason) as I adjust to the new lower dose. The adventure continues.
This fucking week has got better and better. End of Week 2 on yet another protocol. Started out annoyed and perturbed and tired. Ended with paranoia, anxiety and general dysfunction. And although I did my 28mg shot this morning, nothing has gotten better. In fact I only have felt worse throughout the day.
On the bright side I feel my sharpness and memory are returning after a hiatus from being on too high a dose. On the down side, this is now almost Week 3 and although I expected it to be kind of a shit time, I didn’t expect to feel like this. This sucks. I hate it.
It’s not quite as bad as Low T yet, but it’s getting there. Fuck this change of protocol shit.
From June 5th, Day 10 of my initial protocol change…
“Woke up this morning in the middle of a panic attack. This is something I have suffered from on occasion … but I have never just woken up in one. My heart was pounding at a million miles an hour. I didn’t FEEL incredibly anxious, which just made it scarier. I did deep breathing for about 20 minutes and calmed it down.”
Same exact shit this morning. A million miles an hour is the only way to describe it. It wasn’t even a panic attack. Just a crazy racing heart. I am on Day 17 of this latest change.
Day went about the same as back then too. I sweat overnight. I was anxious during the day for no reason and then incredibly tired in the evening. So it’s useful to keep these logs and look back.
My initial dose change (beginning of this log) went from 80mg once a week to probably 40mg split into twice a week. So I halved my dose without knowing it. Then ten weeks later I nearly doubled my dose to 76mg a week when I switched to 1ml syringes. It’s all logged here but my amounts are listed wrong multiple times. I did say very early in the thread I was concerned about how much T I was actually getting out of these stupid 3ml syringes with the giant rubber nub, but it’s turned out to be a blessing because I wouldn’t have ever believed I could even function on 40mg a week, let alone try it for 10 weeks.
Incidentally, it’s weird how some Low T symptoms return if you take too much T. I have read a few different explanations for it.
Anyway, so here I am on Week 3 (again). I’m gonna try to stop repeating myself in future posts wrt dosing, but I also realize it helps people who read so they don’t have to keep searching back.
Mental sharpness and memory are definitely returning. I have had flashes of a good mood and good energy here and there. Libido is dead. But I’m expecting another roller coaster as I settle into my new dose of 56mg a week. If 56mg isn’t right, I will only titrate down from here. I’m trying to be methodical but it’s very hard going 8 weeks at a time.
I’m sorry if this has been covered already, but I don’t have time to read through 100 posts. Have you chosen a protocol and stuck with it for at least 8 weeks to see how you feel? How are you coming up with your protocols? Dose size and frequency? You should buy insulin syringes to eliminate the inconsistencies in dosing too.
And I don’t mean this in a negative way, but have you ever considered the possibility you have other ailments that need attention and testosterone isn’t the main problem?