How to Prepare a Testosterone Injection | Step-by-Step (UPDATED)

Video Transcription

Dr. Philip Faler: Good morning, everyone. I’m Dr. Philip Faler with the Anti-Aging Northwest. Let’s see. Today I wanted to do an updated video on how to get testosterone, which is a thick oil to go into the very convenient 29 gauge one milliliter syringe. So if you just get your testosterone vial and you try to draw it with this syringe, you’re going to be there for a long time. It may not even draw because the oil’s so thick and the needle’s so fine, so what we do is we pressurize it. Now in a previous video, I did this with a smaller syringe numerous times, but this is the updated video. This is what all the patients are getting is a 10 milliliter, 20 gauge syringe, 20 gauge needle tip on a 10 mil syringe. Makes it real easy to just all in one shot, you’re going to go in, add pressure, and then you’ll be ready to draw.

Step 1: Pressurize the Testosterone Vial

So big idea here is we’re going to pressurize the testosterone vial so that when we go to draw, there’s pressure in the vial pushing the testosterone into the fine needle, 29 gauge syringe that we’ll use to inject.

Step 2: Remove the Cap and Sanitize the Vial

So you’ll start with a fresh vial of testosterone. It’s got this lovely little plastic cap on the top that just pops off like that. Grab an alcohol wipe and go ahead and clean the top of your vial. So you’ve got your rubber stopper there, you’re going to be going right in through the center of that rubber stopper. We’re just going to give that a little wipe. Let that dry. That’s when the alcohol does its work.

Step 3: Prepare the 10 mL Syringe

So now that this is drying, we’re going to ready our 10 milliliter, 20 gauge syringe. When these are brand new, these needles are not screwed on airtight. They’re a little bit loose.

So anytime you pick up a brand new one of these, you take it out of the packaging, just go ahead and hand tighten that just a little bit. What you’re going to do is you’re going to draw eight milliliters of air. So we’re going to put the bottom, well, in this case, the top of the rubber stopper right on that eight, right on that eight line there, just like that. Now this is air. We could go 8.2, we could go 9, it’s not super specific, but for drawing purposes, we put the top of the plunger on the line we want. In this case, that’s eight mils.

Step 4: Inject Air into the Vial

This is dried, so we’re going to go ahead and uncap our needle. We’ve got eight mils of air in here and we’re going to introduce eight mils of air into this closed container and that’s going to add pressure. So I’m going to go ahead and uncap this. I’m going to go straight in through the center of that rubber stopper just like that and I’m going to press that air in. Now, if I lift my thumb up, the pressure’s going to push that plunger back up and I’ll lose pressure, so I’m keeping my thumb on the plunger, pull that straight out. Now I’ve got a pressurized vial of testosterone and when I go to draw it with this fine little syringe, it’ll push the testosterone in.

Step 5: Draw the Testosterone

The other trick to this, an average dose of testosterone on this syringe is going to be 50 units, so right there.

Now again, thick oil, tiny syringe. So rather than draw to the 50 and wait, when I draw this, I’m going to draw to the 100 and wait. I’ll demonstrate that for you. The big idea is we want to maximize the potential suction of the syringe to speed up our draw. So I’m going to go straight in again through the center of the rubber stopper just like that. Always be careful not to be bending your needle. Try to keep everything straight. It takes a little practice to get good at how to hold all this so that everything stays straight. From here, we’re going to go ahead and pull all the way back down to 100. And as you can see there at the top, right in here, you can see the testosterone coming in. It’s still slow, but it’s maybe 25 seconds total time.

So it’s slowly filling up and sometimes what I’ll do is come back up to the top, I’ve got 0.15 and come back down and that just kind of reestablishes the suction. And sometimes I’ll even do a little pumping mechanism like this. I don’t know if that helps, but it keeps me busy. So we’re waiting, I generally say the length of the alphabet song or happy birthday song. We’re just going to do this in real time and let it fill all the way up to wherever we want it.

Step 6: Verify the Correct Dose

This particular dose today is going to be 50 units, which will be 75 milligrams.

Something just for your brain. Always look at the concentration, so we have 100 milligram, we have 150 milligram, 200 milligram, that’s all per milliliter. So 150 milligram per milliliter. You’re doing a half mil or 50 units, that’s going to be 75 milligrams. So we’re pretty close here, let’s go ahead up and check. We’re going to bring that fluid line in the syringe right to the edge. And then we’ve got 52 here if you can see that well, I’m doing my best to hold it steady. And I’m going to push a little back in right till I get to the 50 and then I lift my syringe right off of my needle.

Important Tips

Now, important tips. I’ve only used this particular needle to pierce that rubber stopper one time. If I do more than that, it’s going to get dull and my injection’s going to hurt more. So try to just do one time. If you end up at three or four, throw the needle away and start over. This is all drawn up. I’m going to go ahead and get ready to inject this. We’ll do that. We’ve done that in a separate video. I’ll probably update that one shortly as well. I hope that’s helpful to you. If you have any questions, you can always book a free 10-minute consult with me. Those are included in your membership so if you have any questions, feel free to reach out, book a free 10-minute consult with me. I look forward to working with you and speaking with you again and I hope everyone’s having a great day. Bye-bye.