My father is NW6 and I have been losing hair since around age 21 and now at 26 it has picked up. I have been using propecia and rogaine for 4 years with good results but it seems the effectiveness has decreased in the past year.

My father has tons of body hair and I have practically none-so I was wondering if the gene responsible for body hair and for hair loss were linked—possibly leaving me with a different fate then him?

Also, at the 4 year mark the effectiveness of my medications is decreasing or my hair loss is catching up. I have read that increasing propecia dose will not help- would switching to dutasteride be a good option in your opinion?

Thank you for your informative site.

It feels like I write about this every other day in different ways. If you have genetic hair loss, there is nothing that will completely stop it. So while it might seem like the medication is losing effectiveness, its more likely that the activity of your hair loss is increasing. Like a tug of war, where the genes are starting to win.

Increasing the dose of medication is a big question mark, but it’s possible that changing from finasteride to dutasteride may help. These are decisions your doctor will have to make with you. Some people report a better response to dutasteride when finasteride is not effective, but dutasteride (also known as Avodart) isn’t approved for treating hair loss, so your doctor will need to be willing to prescribe it off-label. Ideal dutasteride dosage isn’t known for treating hair loss (it’s a prostate medication).

I just turned 20 and since a month before i turned 18 year old, i started to shed hair. Yes my uncle and father have lost hair, but with receding hair lines. For these 2.5 years, my hair has gotten thinner with no visible bald spots on my crown and no receding hair line.

My dermatologist prescribed me with extina foam and clobex lotion which indeed seem to cause my scalp to thin even more and a visible spot from the front of my hair line to the back of my crown. My question is, is this worsening of hair loss the result of these medical tools or was this inevitable? Mind you just a few months back in Febuaray i had no visible spots on my scalp. Info would be great in searching for an answer.

It is interesting that you can pinpoint the exact timing of when your hair loss started. If you indeed have genetic male pattern baldness, you simply can’t completely stop the progressive nature of the process. Medications may be used to slow it down and surgery may be used to add hair, but nothing will reverse the time factor.

The only FDA approved and clinically proven treatments are Rogaine (minoxidil) and Propecia (finasteride). Extina Foam is ketoconazole, and while there may be some anecdotal evidence that ketoconazole helps with treating hair loss, it hasn’t been FDA approved as such. Clobex is a powerful steroid, so I would expect that it might just hasten the hair loss process, just as we see with oral steroids. I understand there are thousands of treatment products and the option to use them is you and your doctor’s prerogative to try.