I have heard that he got hair transplants. I am not sure if he also did SMP as his hairline is very dense and tight! We did another similar celebrity and did SMP with it to make it look that thick!
What do you think: Does fin hit harder for guys with previously high or low libido? Any personal experiences here?
Some context: Im not on any medication but considering getting on the big 3. Like everyone else I’m concerned about sides from fin. When I was 20 or under, my libido was always sky high but now that I’m 25 I’ve noticed that I’m in the mood a lot less frequently. I’m sure this is a natural consequence of me getting older and I’m totally ok with that, but I’d prefer to not artificially tank my libido if I can avoid it.
We know that men who are in their 20s have some ED at a rate of about 20%, men in their 30s have an ED rate of about 30% and men in their 40s have an ED rate of about 40% and so on. I have not seen a relationship between men’s previous ED elements in their history to those who get finasteride induced ED, but it may exist.
You probably won’t get enough hair growth from finasteride. A hair transplant at 25, is probably the best solution for you.
Very interesting article. Maybe we will be seeing it soon on the market.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2217050-a-hat-that-zaps-the-scalp-with-electricity-helps-reverse-male-balding/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=dailynewsletter&utm_campaign=23092019
How old are you? What have you done so for to treat your hair loss? The idea that you can get an estimate of how many grafts if you (1) are too young, (2) haven’t tried treatment without surgery, and (3) go forward without a Master Plan by a good doctor is crazy!
Doing a little reading on stem cells turns up a few stories from credible sources showing that skin can be grown in a lab to cover nearly an entire body. Couldn’t skin with hair also be grown then? A lab grown graft with hair follicles would be a better donor source than the scalp for a number of reasons. The risk of rejection is minimal, and the patient wouldn’t have to suffer the pain of having their scalp harvested.
You could always grow more follicles, so it’s a good potential path to having an unlimited number of grafts available to patients who could return for additional follicles as needed throughout life.
Skin is an organ. Each hair ‘Follicular Unit’ is a separate organ. When skin is grown, it doesn’t include hair follicles because these are separate organ systems with their own stem cell that are different than skin stem cells.
I’ve been using topical finasteride (Morr-F) for a period of about 8 months. 2 months ago, I had a blood test for a physical examination. Everything was fine, except that I showed elevated liver enzymes (ALT/AST) and just barely met the criteria for prediabetic fasting blood sugar. I repeated the test last week and my ALT/AST were even worse.
I’m a healthy male who doesn’t drink often at all (sometimes no drinks in a month, never more than 5 in a month). I exercise regularly, have no history of diabetes in my family, and eat an ovo-vegetarian diet with adequate protein for resistance training. I’ve recently found studies indicating that 5-AR inhibitors have been shown to interfere with liver function, elevating liver enzymes and interfering with glucose metabolism.
Don’t be your own doctor and get professional advice as finasteride will not cause liver enzyme elevation.
Can you image going out in public with this look on the left? The patient on the left is not our patient but compare our patient on the right and see the difference. We are obsessed with an undetectable look beginning when you leave our office. What this doctor did, was to leave his grafts elevated. These elevated grafts will remain visible for weeks after the surgery and they will crust over. I have seen patient photos showing this to last up to a month. I look at it as a month of hiding because of a poorly executed hair transplant. Both of these patients had the same hair transplant distribution
This is according to https://clincalc.com/DrugStats/
These owls may be doing the surgery as their cost per hour is low! That $0.11/graft. Do you think that it will be sterile by a technique or done by an experienced surgeon? That includes hotel and airport transfers. Is this too good to be true?
St.John Wart seems to have a connection as described in the following link https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19073252. It does seem to interfere with blood levels.
This is a patient with Central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia (CCCA) which is the most common scarring alopecia among African American women
https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(19)30685-1/fulltext
This article is taken from on of the most prestegeous journals in dermatology. Every medication has its risks. Hypertrichosis (excess body hair) is a common side effect in the study population making it difficult for a permanent solution for women who experience this side effect. My wife was on minoxidil topically and enough was absorbed into her body to produce early facial hair. It went away after she stopped it. For men, more body and facial hair may not be a problem, so this is a real alternative for those who can’t take finasteride.
You mentioned that you were confused by the Reuters article so I thought it would be worthwhile to send you some of the highlights to break it down. These are all based on objective facts that can be verified in the documents.
When you look at the current Propecia label, Merck discusses the sexual side effects from their original clinical trials and reports that “Resolution occurred in men who discontinued therapy with Propecia”. Seems simple enough. You’d think from reading this text that Merck found no evidence of PFS in their clinical trials. This language has been in Merck’s label from 2002 onward.
However, if you go all the way back to their 2001 label, the label says “Resolution occurred in all men who discontinued therapy with Propecia”. If you read this one, you’d also assume that Merck did not have subjects develop PFS during the trials.
But why is this interesting? If you look closely, you’ll see Merck took the word ALL out of the label all the way back in 2002. But why did they change the language?
Fortunately, we have an accidentally unsealed deposition with Charlotte Merritt, the Merck woman who oversaw regulatory activity related to Propecia so we can see what her answer is on page 52.
Some paraphrasing to get to the point…
Q: So the word “all” has been removed in this label… why is that? A: Well, as you saw, there were some men in whom after some period of time the AEs did not resolve so this is — so the word “all” was no longer factual as it relates to the longer term data beyond the initial period of the trial.
Q: There was nothing that prevented Merck, which as we agreed is responsible at all times for its label, from putting into this 2002 label that it now had information for over a year, at least as early as November 2000, about the lack of resolution upon discontinuation in some patients in the clinical data, right? A: Merck didn’t feel at the time that that was something that needed to be put in the label. FDA apparently agreed. This is the label that was, you know, the results of that submission and we can’t comment any further.
Later on there is a reference to the “Ruane memo” that was sent to top Merck executives that discussed the details about what they knew about persisting adverse events and what they were going to do about it. This memo still remains under seal but Reuters has done some great investigative work and has filed to have it unsealed for the sake of public safety. The law says that these documents should never be filed under seal except for very narrow exceptions and public embarrassment to a company does not fall into that category.
If you look more deeply in the documents which I suggest you do, you’ll see they had gathered internal market research that showed 50% of potential customers who were aware of REVERSIBLE side effects, would be unwilling to take the drug due to that risk. One can only imagine how high that number would go if Merck properly warned about the data they found about irreversible side effects. There are also more detailed descriptions about the test subjects who developed persistent side effects and how they were excluded from what was reported.
I saw you refer to this as “speculative” on your blog today but this is all fact based and verifiable, much of it confirmed by Merck employees. It’s undeniable that Merck had clinical trial subjects that developed persisting sexual AEs since 2000 and never reported this to the public.
I have the link to the full court document below. Merck tried to file this under seal away from the public eye and this is very common feataure of how the legal system operates even though it isn’t supposed to be that way. The Reuters article says that this document was accidentally filed publicly so that is the only reason the public gets to see this information that would have been otherwise buried.
A Second Reader posted this:
https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2019/09/12/merck-side-effects-opioids/
I just saw that StatNews reported on the same story last week too. Ed Silverman is another very credible journalist and in fact was a finalist for the Pulitzer for his work on explanatory reporting in the pharmaceutical industry.
If you still are confused, I suggest that you read the two primary source documents from the Reuters article which you may have missed. In fact I believe it is your moral responsibility to do so given many people look to your blog for medical advice about Propecia. The links are below.
The document in the first link was meant to be filed under seal which would have made it hidden from the public. You will see why Merck wanted it sealed after you read it.
The document in the second link was filed publicly but with redactions. You can remove the redactions by copy and pasting those sections into word.
Happy reading :)
A Third Reader posted this:
Thomson Reuters is as authoritative and respected as they come. It is one of the two major global news agencies along with AP. They report on the facts and the facts support PFS. You can review the underlying documents that are publicly available on the article.
You can do a quick internet search to see how people rank Reuters and it is always among the most objective, often above agencies like NYTimes, WSJ, CNN, Fox which have some editorializing.