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I was told by my therapist that injections don't really affect your liver but the patches and especially pills do.

Quote from: Gene24 on September 30, 2013, 09:31:56 PM
I was told by my therapist that injections don't really affect your liver but the patches and especially pills do.

The patches are similar to the injections, they go for the blood stream first, whereas the pills have to go through part of your digestive system, so the liver gets it early before the blood gets it unless you let some of it absorb by way of sublingual first, but even then, a lot gets swallowed. 

Patches no; they are as safe as injections. (My endocrinologist prefers them for this reason.) Basically, any hormones you swallow have to go through your digestive system and a "first pass" through the liver before it reaches the bloodstream. Any medication which goes directly into the bloodstream (patches, injections, creams/gels, sublingual pills, etc.) skips this first pass and is therefore safer for the liver, which will only have to filter out the *leftover* drug after the body has used what it needed. Some forms of HRT pills are even worse than that; the drug as swallowed *cannot* be used by the body, and the first pass is required to break it down into a usable form.

It also allows for lower dosages than pills, because anything swallowed also has to be in an amount sufficient to allow the liver to remove a lot of it and still have an effective dose left.

Quite honestly, I would not trust an MD who believed otherwise. (But your therapist may not be an MD, and may just be confused.)

I am on patches. I am over 40 is one reason. The second is patches cut down the risk for blood clots, Deep Vein Thrombosis and cardiac issues. Not a guarantee, but safer.

I am on patches. I did not even know about them until my endo recommended them.

Are you on Spiro also?