My endocrinologist recently switched me over from pills to patches and the dosage seems a bit weird. 0.075 mg seems like an astronomically small dose compared to the 6 mg a day I was on before on pills.
The amount of estrogen you're supposed to have in your blood is actually ridiculously small. It's measured in picograms per milliliter. Pico meaning 10^-12, so 1/1,000,000,000,000th of a gram. When you take estrogen orally most of it gets torn up in the stomach and only a small amount makes it to the liver to be metabolized. Patches have much better bioavailability, but I guess I'm not sure what an equivalent dosage would actually be
>>5334219
i'm sorry i don't know for certain, but if i had to guess, it might have something to do with the fact that because pills are ingested (did u swallow or were they sublingual?) a lot of it gets passed through ur system without being absorbed. whereas patches are applied directly to the skin, and are a lot stronger, as more of it is absorbed than pills.
this might be misinformative af, this is just an educated guess. i just know abt patches because my clinic prefers to use patches for patients and they've talked to me abt them before.
>>5334235
That's a damn good explanation, I was going to post something very similar.
Listen to this person, OP.
>>5334219
>When you take estrogen orally most of it gets torn up in the stomach and only a small amount makes it to the liver to be metabolized
What about if you take it under the tongue?
>>5334257
Taking it sublingually is more effective than orally but I'm not sure to what magnitude
>>5334264
Provided the pills are micronized. Else it's kinda pointless.
>>5334315
So if I'm reading this right, sublingual administration means you get a massive E spike that quickly drops down, but still remains higher than an equal oral dose
>>5334350
Yes indeed.
>>5334264
Can't remember exactly... found this through googling a while back (probably ended up on /r/asktransgender).. but I think orally taken pills lead to about 12% (maybe it was 2%) of the estrogen being absorbed into the bloodstream where as sublingually was roughly 80% absorption.
>>5334257
Provided you have pills that can actually be taken that way. It will just give you a massive peak and trough of serum estrogen levels. For this reason it's incredibly hard to get accurate blood test results since if you get a blood test say 2 hours after your dose it'll look like your dose is way to high but wait a few more hours and it can look too low.
I was on sublingual before getting swapped to patches and my levels ranged from 900 pmol/L to under 200 all while being on the same dosage. On patches I get a steady 500pmol/L.
