alt Hacker NewsInsulin users would have better answers to this question, since they might inject multiple times a day, whereas GLP-1 users typically inject only weekly.
But in either case, the answer for subcutaneous injections using needles sized 29g and smaller is no.
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Injection drug user here. We're advised to rotate injection sites but the largest issue is actually the insulin (most of it diffuses into the bloodstream but there is a local effect, usually taking the form of increased fat accumulation at sites of repeated injection), not the "making holes in the skin" part.
I don't know the pharmacokinetics of GLP-1 drugs but my guess is that they don't have the same sort of effects on SC tissue?
Before I had a CGM I did somewhere around 20,000 blood glucose tests over the course of a decade using about 1 cm^2 of forearm and the skin there is clearly not in great shape -- but it's worsened on the level of "looks like the skin of someone who is a decade older or spent too long in the sun" rather than anything medically problematic.
I’ve been diabetic for 30 years, and for more than twenty of those I did multiple daily measurements by pricking my fingertips and multiple insulin injections per day. Now I wear a sensor that I replace every two weeks and a catheter (which I change about once a week).
I really don’t understand this phobia of needles at all. After two days with one system or the other, you get used to it—there’s no pain, it’s just a mental issue of “having to make the gesture.”
My friends used to laugh at how normal it was for me to inject insulin outside a restaurant, while walking, chatting, and smoking at the same time.