welcome to the trt and hormone optimization youtube channel my name is steven devos and i have as a guest today back here guilty welcome girl thank you very much so gil today we want to talk about something very basic many men starting trt have hard times to grasp the basic concepts and medical terminology about dosage calculations milligrams versus milliliters versus units in an insulin syringe etc can you please clarify this a bit and also can you also explain how to convert between the different um lap measurement units like for testosterone and oestrogen um people have a hard time understanding nanograms per deciliter in the united states and then some laboratories here and often here in europe uh nanomoles per liter are used so clarify all this this is the trt and hormone optimization youtube channel and if you want to learn all about the science-based information on this topic consider subscribing hit that notification bell and you'll be on your way sure so for starters before we even get into units of measure in terms of different uh regions you have to first understand the differences in what they actually mean oftentimes we'll ask someone for a dose and when you ask them for adults they'll say way well i inject a cc or i inject uh 0.5 those aren't doses those are volumes and it's very important to differentiate between mass and volume because volume just tells you how much of a product in terms of volume in the syringe or in a vial actually exists to understand how much medication is actually in that volume of product we have to look at the concentration strength and the concentration is measured in mass per volume so milligrams or anything that you can essentially convert into weight on a scale grams milligrams micrograms etc are essentially mass and that is the dose of the medication and then that is then mixed into a fluid generally or a liquid in most cases oil or water and that gives you the volume so the concentration is how much mass is in volume so if we look at testosterone scipione which is the most common form used in the united states presumably where you have your largest audience of for simplicity let's just say pharmaceutical grade scipione in the us is generally concentrated at 200 milligrams per milliliter this means that for every milliliter of fluid okay which is generally in a carrier oil combined with everything else and every milliliter of volume we have 200 milligrams of actual testosterone now this is testosterone combined with an ester so we're not going to get into the breakdown of molecular weight of esters versus hormone and what ratio that is but let's just simplify it as 200 milligrams of actual testosterone in every one milliliter of carrier oil so when you say i inject one cc which by the way equals one ml okay they're interchangeable a cubic centimeter and a milliliter are one in the same one cc or one ml of testosterone recipient presumably if your concentration is 200 milligrams per ml contains 200 milligrams therefore half of an ml contains 100 milligrams 0.25 or a quarter of an ml contains 50 milligrams so divide the milligrams by the ratio of breaking down the volume so when someone says what is your dose the answer should be 50 milligrams or 80 milligrams or 100 milligrams not half of an ml that is not a dose that is just volume okay so that's to to differentiate between mass versus volume you got to look at the concentration when it comes down to actually measuring units an insulin syringe which i know we are big proponents of with regards to injections insulin syringes generally come in 100 unit or 50 unit or in some cases 30 unit applications generally speaking the 27 to 29 gauge syringes that we advocate for testosterone come in 100 unit syringes 100 units equals 1 ml so it's really nice and easy 25 units is a quarter of an ml 50 units is a half of an ml and 100 units is a full ml so when your dose says to draw and inject you know 30 units or 0.3 of an ml they're interchangeable 30 units so oftentimes we'll see guys come on a form and they'll say you know how much on this syringe do i draw if this is my dose so again this this should be a fairly simple way to convert in terms of different laboratories in different countries or regions of the world using different measurement units yes before we continue if you appreciate the content we bring to this channel check out the amazon links in the description of this video these are the links to the products we use going from supplements protein powder pre post intra workout anti-aging cream sunscreen needles and syringes to inject and so on if you'd like to purchase one of those products please use the direct link so that it will earn us a few cents as a tip and you'll be guided directly to the products we recommend thanks in advance all links should work on the us canadian and uk amazon stores uh the simplest way and i i hate to oversimplify this but the simplest way to do the conversion is go into google and type in the unit of measurement that you're looking to read off the lab and then the one you want to convert in google has a great calculator that will actually give you the conversion ratio of one two so for example we know that nanograms per deciliter equals a ten to one ratio or a one to ten ratio of picograms per milliliter so when something is reported at picograms per milliliter you divide by 10 to get nanograms per deciliter again lab values are essentially reported in concentration this is mass per volume a deciliter is a volume right a nanogram is a mass so this is how many nanograms mass are in one deciliter a picogram per milliliter these are concentrations so you have to do the conversion and the best way to do it is using the google calculator essentially it's not that complicated this is literally all it comes down to this is just math so if you step back and look at what units you're dealing with and simplify it you can kind of get a better understanding of exactly what's going on i would like to touch on the fact that lab core and we we say this all the time but for those that don't know actually report your free testosterone in nanograms per deciliter however on their lab it'll say picograms per milliliter and that is incorrect it is an error that's been brought up to their attention many times over the years by many different providers and they for some reason refused to fix this error but they are the only ones that i've seen and any lab that uses lab core for their specimen analysis will generally report back the same way so that is an error that many in this industry are aware of and many are not aware of okay thank you gil i hope this clarifies things and now give this video a thumbs up and go watch one of these videos to learn a ton more about trt and hormone optimization you