I'm looking into starting DIY, I really just can't wait any longer. However, I am absolutely terrified of needles. I won't be able to shoot myself up with it. I'm looking into the forms of estrogen, and it appears that I can buy the form used for estradiol pills. But I'm finding very little information on DIY that isn't focused on injections. I'm thinking about making a water solution and just taking it out of a dropper, but I know I'd need a preservative to keep it safe for a long time.
You can also buy the pills themselves.
hrtcafe.net(hrt.coffee is the one I was thinking of, hrtcafe.net might also be ok but idk) is the resource that gets recommended for sourcing suppliers, and if you live in canada or the states at least then it’s legal to buy estrogen online (although it might still get seized by customs). As far as making your own pills, I remember that being surprisingly difficult, but you can make estrogen gel, as others have mentionedGoing back to pills, taking them sublingually (dissolving them under your tongue) is very effective and you can actually achieve pretty high levels this way, although it does get processed quickly so you get a big spike of estrogen that goes down quickly, so if you’re taking multiple pills per day it’s better to spread them out over the day instead of taking them all at once. On the other hand, taking the pills orally (just swallowing them) has a smoother curve, but is less effective and has a higher risk of blood clots.
Just make sure you get estradiol/estradiol hemihydrate or estradiol valerate (which is a little less effective than estradiol as a pill but still works fine) and avoid ethinylestradiol, which is a synthetic estrogen and has a higher risk of blood clots
Edit: diyhrt.wiki is a good resource for learning about this
Edit 2: unless you’re doing monotherapy,you also need a T blocker. If you’re doing diy anyway, I would recommend cyproterone acetate over spironolactone; it’s more effective and has less side effects. Just don’t take the whole 50mg pill, a quarter of that, 12.5mg or ~10mg, is enough and you might be able to go even lower. That said, estradiol monotherapy is apparently possible with sublingual, even though most people use injections for monotherapy, so that’s also an option
Thank you, this had a lot of info I needed. The reason I'm not going for pills is just because they're expensive. My current plan is to buy pure Estrogen Valerate, put it in a solution with alcohol to preserve it, and take the liquid either orally or at this point probably sublingually. There's a lot I need to figure out, how to keep everything sanitary, how concentrated I should have it while still maintaining accuracy in dosage, how to preserve it, ect. I'm not really seeing a lot of resources on this specific method, so I'll probably end up writing about what I do.
Yeah that’s a pretty interesting way of doing it. I haven’t heard of anyone trying that before but looking at it now apparently it’s a thing. I remember the issue with making diy pills was something about pressing them into actual pills so it makes sense that a dropper would work. One thing I forgot to mention in my post is that there’s no difference between pills for oral and pills for sublingual estradiol; most estradiol pills are marketed for oral (swallowing them) but they can all be taken sublingually, so a solution for oral estradiol should also work for sublingual. Just remember to be careful since something that’s safe for topical administration or injections might not be safe for sublingual/oral