Of course!

For ester types it comes down to an individuals life balance preference more than anything. The longer the carbo chain & the longer the half life, the less frequently you'll need to inject because it takes your body longer to breakdown the compound and move it out. When you go with a longer lasting ester, you need to inject more so that your total Testosterone is the same as a shorter one.

Which makes you think, why not just pick the longest? Well, that also means that your levels have a lot high/lower peaks & valleys between injections, and your body reacts best to stable levels. To help alleviate some of those, you generally want to aim to still have the previous injection in your system and inject again as it's coming down.

From a practical standpoint in day-to-day life & for effective use, something like Ethanoate or Cypionate tend to work best & about every 3-4 days. This gives you stable enough levels and isn't super invasive to your time compared to every day or every two weeks. Some people like every day and some people hate injecting and would rather do it less often even if it's not as efficient. They all work, though.

For IM vs Subq, this is a bit more of a newer trend/option. Recently it's been shown Subq can work just as well as IM. The main downside is that you should really be doing this daily, as fat (dead) can't hold as large of volumes and disperse it as effectively as a muscle can. The upside is that your needles can be smaller, it goes faster, and is less painful for many folks. Another small downside to that Subq approach is just more expense due to more supplies. The down/up for daily vs not is the same as above.

I'll have another provider jump on to talk about Pellets today, who's more knowledgeable about those.

Obviously there are pros and cons to each treatment option. Longer acting esters means fewer shots. Fewer shots generally means better compliance and less soreness. Shorter esters are easier to dial in as far as finding a dose that is ideal for the individual patient, but that means more shots, and so naturally it is easier to forget a dose from time to time when you do it more often.

We typically recommend the cypionate ester as it is the most common, typically meaning it is the cheapest.

At our practice, we have no preference over IM or SQ. Our patients seem to do well on either regimen. The benefit of IM is that you can inject larger volumes into the muscle than you can SQ, so it means you can typically do fewer injections per week if you are on a higher dose of T. The benefit of SQ is that you can use smaller needles and syringes (insulin syringes with 30g needles).

Pellets are a popular choice, and work well for many. The benefits are that you essentially avoid shots altogether, so they are good for people who travel often or are forgetful. The downside is that the absorption of the pellets are very different for each individual patient, so it is very difficult to determine the correct dose. The other downside of this is, if the dose is incorrect, you have to wait until the pellet is dissolved before trying a different dose, or need to have it removed, which is painful and often expensive.