Injecting questions and Scar Tissue Q's- Side effects / Tissue Damage from Injecting IM long term?

Curious if any of the longer term TRT users have experienced any noticeable damage or side effects from regular IM injections?

I currently inject twice /week and rotate between each glute, but vary the exact injection site within the glute. I occasionally do thigh injections, but prefer glutes. I use 27 or 25 gauge needles, and get very little pain.

- What actually happens to the muscle after an IM injection?
- Does the muscle/tissue need to repair itself each time?
- Does it change/damage the muscle at all?
- Does injecting into the same spot 1-2 weeks later go through a scar? Is this bad?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

I was wondering what length of needle are you using. I do shallow IM with easy touch 27g 1/2" syringe.

I have been using 1 inch 25 gauge for glutes or 1/2 inch 27 gauge for thighs

Scarring has been discussed ad naseum...a little search and independent googling will satisfy your curiosity.

I have been injecting (thighs) for nearly 15 years. The last 10 or so have been with 27g 1 1/4 needles. I have not noticed any scarring (skin level, anyway, who knows what's going on underneath). There has never been any pain or indication of muscular scarring in all that time.

Recently, however, due to the overwhelming practice of posters here, I switched to 27g 1/2" needles. Specifically, for low dead space needles/syringes. I had never heard of them before until reading posts here. I had a few used syringes sitting around and I pulled back on the plungers and was surprised at all the fluid still in the syringe.

Anyway, back to scarring, I changed to low dead space, fixed needle insulin syringes and while there is very little T waste, there is a fair amount more pain involved that my previous method. I never drew and injected with the same needle. You wouldn't think that the plunger dulls the needle too much, but I'm thinking it does enough to possibly be a factor in scarring.

I've only been using the new method for 4 injections and each one was more painful (during and after) than any injection over the last decade. There is no visible skin bruising, but there is some pain when touched at the injection site. If most of us are injecting hundreds of times a year, with the same needles we withdraw with, I don't see how there cannot be some level of scarring.

Sakuraba39 said:

I have been injecting (thighs) for nearly 15 years. The last 10 or so have been with 27g 1 1/4 needles. I have not noticed any scarring (skin level, anyway, who knows what's going on underneath). There has never been any pain or indication of muscular scarring in all that time.

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Unless you have a very high level of body fat, I can't figure out why you would use such a long needle to inject into your quads. If you're built like most guys here, we just don't carry a lot of body fat in the quads. Most of us don't need anything more than a 1/2" needle to go shallow IM.

Sakuraba39 said:

Recently, however, due to the overwhelming practice of posters here, I switched to 27g 1/2" needles. Specifically, for low dead space needles/syringes. I had never heard of them before until reading posts here. I had a few used syringes sitting around and I pulled back on the plungers and was surprised at all the fluid still in the syringe.

Anyway, back to scarring, I changed to low dead space, fixed needle insulin syringes and while there is very little T waste, there is a fair amount more pain involved that my previous method. I never drew and injected with the same needle. You wouldn't think that the plunger dulls the needle too much, but I'm thinking it does enough to possibly be a factor in scarring.

Click to expand...

I use a 1/2"/29ga insulin pin to inject into my quads EOD, and I don't have any scarring. The notion that the rubber stopper on the vial dulls the needle enough to cause scarring is ridiculous IMHO. Of course, this is my personal opinion backed up by giving myself Test injections in the quads for the past 1 1/2 years. Your results may differ, but I doubt it. The vastus lateralis is a big muscle, with a lot of room to change up injection sites...use the entire muscle.