Transfem

Hormones are active in the brain and if you are low it can cause mood problems. Most sources I've seen show a 4-5 day half-life for estrodial valerate. This can leave you pretty low before 7 days are up if you are on weekly injections. There are two ways that people typically work around this:

• Increasing the dosage high enough that you don't dip too low. This unfortunately also means that your peak levels may get higher than your Dr is comfortable with.
• Splitting the dose in half and injecting two times a week instead of one. This will significantly smooth out the curve, but have the downside of requiring twice the injections.

This is an example simulation with a once weekly 5mg injection vs a twice weekly 2.5mg injection to illustrate the difference between the two:

I guess what I am saying is that there are options if the dosing schedule you start off with causes you problems that you can work through with your Dr. Also, the 5mg I used for the simulation was a semi random number and not a recommended dose.

If your friend is on Estradiol Valerat they should go for an injection ever 5 days as the depot effect for that ester isn't that long. If they are on Estradiol Valerat seven days should be fine, but maybe the dosage is a bit low. Are they getting regular blood tests for E2 levels?

Sounds like your friend is making assumptions about the correlation between their mental/emotional state and dopamine levels. It's a superficially reasonable assumption, but given the interplay between hormones and brain chemistry it's seems possible to me that dopamine levels simply have nothing to do with it and the issue is wholly to do with hormones.

I would be interested in reading any studies that support what your friend is saying. But minus evidence I have to think that your friend is l drawing incorrect conclusions about what would cause the phenomenon they're experiencing.

When doing injections your level of hormones does not remain consistent over the period in between your shots. This can definitely lead to hormonal days on both ends of the week when your levels are very high or getting lower. I haven't experienced this directly myself though, so I'll let someone else chime in with some first hand experience with it.

A week was a bit too long for me with 10mg e. valerate injections (monotherapy). It wasn't unbearable, but I'd feel pretty shitty by day 6 or so. I'm on patches now, which gives me a much more stable level without too much hassle. Highly recommended if you can get them and don't have a bad reaction to the adhesive.