The proprietary injector mechanism like for Mounjaro makes it really easy for users. Even compounded versions of it use tiny insulin needles that have near zero pain when injected into the subcutaneous portion of like the stomach while pinched.
Source: I took compounded Mounjaro and compounded Ozempic/semaglutide.
Similarly, I grabbed one of the over-the-counter CGM biosensors (Stelo) to gather some data for a couple of weeks and the initial fear of "holy hell, I'm slamming a needle into my arm with something stuck to it" goes away as soon as you slap the injector release.
Just one little clap sound, you feel a little pat on your arm, and the sensor's already made it where it needed to with no pain.
When you remove the sensor it's a little bit of a shock when you see the sensor wire and realize just how small it was and how you never felt it run around inside your arm for a couple weeks.
fyi: the impact is an intentional decision. if your nerve endings are signaling something else(hot, cold, movement, etc), a needle prick can get blurred with the rest or ignored altogether. I suspect the bang/clag CGM applicators produce are much the same.
and, for me, its always been the needle moving around thats been mentally disturbing. digging around vecause they missed for the blood draw, trying to hold a large vaccination dose steady as it needs to be injected over 20seconds. So, I suspect the speed itself reduces discomfort.
I stopped taking compound Mounjaro a year ago. I started semaglutide in Sept and stopped because it made me sick (throwing up, other non desirable GI effects). My body couldn’t handle semaglutide.
Type 1 insulin user. One the alcohol should dry before the needle goes in. Two faster is better, within reason. Three about one in a few hundred shots hits a nerve bundle. That really hurts, but resolves after a short while. Both insulin and these GLP-1 injections are subcutaneous not intravenous which once a patient gets the skill it becomes like riding a bike, in that it becomes easier than imagined.
The only man to successfully battle and defeat glp-1's in war. his getting fit series is genuinely motivational. But not for any of the right reasons, lol.
Insulin users would have better answers to this question, since they might inject multiple times a day, whereas GLP-1 users typically inject only weekly.
But in either case, the answer for subcutaneous injections using needles sized 29g and smaller is no.
Injection drug user here. We're advised to rotate injection sites but the largest issue is actually the insulin (most of it diffuses into the bloodstream but there is a local effect, usually taking the form of increased fat accumulation at sites of repeated injection), not the "making holes in the skin" part.
I don't know the pharmacokinetics of GLP-1 drugs but my guess is that they don't have the same sort of effects on SC tissue?
Before I had a CGM I did somewhere around 20,000 blood glucose tests over the course of a decade using about 1 cm^2 of forearm and the skin there is clearly not in great shape -- but it's worsened on the level of "looks like the skin of someone who is a decade older or spent too long in the sun" rather than anything medically problematic.
> I don't know the pharmacokinetics of GLP-1 drugs but my guess is that they don't have the same sort of effects on SC tissue?
They do, but nothing like insulin does. GLP-1 drugs are more centrally and viscerally active than subcutaneously active, so the effects locally are more related to the physics of injecting solutions subcutaneously than the drugs themselves. They're also much smaller doses than are needed for insulin in general, so the volume averaged over a week is pretty tiny.
Also, as a result of the relative lack of local activity, injection sites are basically unlimited (anywhere from above the knee to above the elbow, except the neck) without fear of lipohypertrophy in the local area.
I’ve been diabetic for 30 years, and for more than twenty of those I did multiple daily measurements by pricking my fingertips and multiple insulin injections per day. Now I wear a sensor that I replace every two weeks and a catheter (which I change about once a week).
I really don’t understand this phobia of needles at all. After two days with one system or the other, you get used to it—there’s no pain, it’s just a mental issue of “having to make the gesture.”
My friends used to laugh at how normal it was for me to inject insulin outside a restaurant, while walking, chatting, and smoking at the same time.
Source: I took compounded Mounjaro and compounded Ozempic/semaglutide.