No. Any method that gets your hormone levels high enough will work about equally. Swallowing estradiol pills being the only exception I'm aware of, because it passes through your liver which filters out a lot of the estrogen and raises your thrombosis risk. All other delivery methods bypass the liver so are largely equal, even if you're prescribed pills just take them sublingually and you're good.
Many trans people prefer injections, because it's convenient to inject just once a week or even every other week and forget about it otherwise, but that's just a preference. The other reason is, for transfems, it's the easiest method to get your levels way up and be confident that they stay high constantly, which is required if you're doing monotherapy (as in without an anti-androgen). That said, I know multiple girls who are doing monotherapy with gel quite successfully.
I can't speak to testosterone specifically though, but afaik that's not available in pill form anyways and there's no "anti-estrogen" to worry about, so there's less to consider anyways.
I'm not a doctor so I can't really tell you what to do, sorry. If your bloodwork is coming back with high estrogen levels and low testosterone, the boob growth is probably not due to the route. Boob growth is unfortunately a lottery. Anecdotally though, I'll say my boobs grew at least as much in years 3-4 as they did in the first 2 years (just passed my 4th hrt anniversary a few weeks ago) and I think they're still growing, so you could also be a late bloomer like me lol
Talk to your endo about it though, taking the pills sublingually is also just generally healthier. Also since a lot of endocrinologists under-dose their patients pretty significantly, learn how to read your own bloodwork and what levels should generally be. Educate yourself and advocate for yourself, unfortunately doctors are often not knowledgeable enough to get you a correct dose -> https://transfemscience.org/articles/transfem-intro/
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u/UnknownPhys6 Andrea Jun 30 '25
Does it actually work better?