How to avoid and reduce post injection pain

1) Big hole in your muscle! Obviously a needle is going to damage your muscle as it cuts a hole often an inch or deeper into your muscle. Usually this is the least of your worries/pain.

2) Forcing a bunch of oil into your muscle. Believe it or not, Mother Nature didn't design our muscles with the consideration that we'd be forcing a bunch of oil into them. The oil spreads the muscle fibres apart which causes muscle trauma.

3) Benzyl Alcohol. This is what's used to dissolve the steroid into the oil suspension. Your muscles don't particularly like this stuff.

So what can we do to lessen the pain?

1) Massage the muscle/injection site well after your injection. This helps to spread the oil out evenly throughout your muscle causing fewer traumas to any 1 particular part of the muscle.

2) Warm up your gear! Run your syringe under hot water for a couple of minutes. Heating the oil makes it thinner which again will help to allow it to spread out evenly throughout your muscle.

3) Cut your steroid with a less painful steroid, STERILE oil, or even Sterile Vitamin B12 oil. This will help dilute the concentration of Benzyl Alcohol. MAKE SURE IT'S STERILE OIL!!!!

4) More injections of fewer steroids. It's not the needle that causes post injection pain, it's the steroid. Often splitting up your 3cc dose into 2 x 1.5cc injections will make life much less painful.

5) Inject SLOWLY! The slower the better. This helps to allow some of the oil to move away from the injection site on its own. The more you force the oil into the muscle, the more the muscle fibres near the injection site are going to be forced apart (causing muscle trauma) to accommodate the oil.

6) Try to keep a steady hand. The tip of the needle is like a razor blade inside your muscle, the more you move it around, the more it's going to cut up your muscle.