Did Finasteride Stabilize Dr Rassman’s Hair Loss?
Hi.
I seem to recall reading a message of yours where in a reply to a reader you mentioned that you personally discontinued your usage of finasteride. You felt it had stabilized your hair loss.
What confused me is that you seemed to imply finasteride stabilized your hair loss and you could thusly stop treatment. (or at least chose to and wasn’t any worse for it). It was my understanding that hair-loss will always resume once treatment is discontinued. Is this not true? Or did I misunderstand your message?
Thanks.
You’re right that once you discontinue Propecia (finasteride 1mg) treatment, your hair loss resumes. For me though, since I originally had crown loss, I tried finasteride to see if I could increase the hair in the crown. At that point, my crown was clearly stable and I did not gain anything from the finasteride.
Considering that I was about 60 years old when I started taking the drug, I probably had as much hair loss as I could expect for my age. There are advantages of being a senior besides discounts in the movie theaters and on public buses. I hope that clears up any confusion!
I am confused too. I thought the good doctor had a fully transplanted crown. If so, why bother with Finasteride since these are permanent zone hairs.
One thing that confuses me is this. Normally a transplant takes hairs from a balding resistant area and puts them on the top or the crown. Do these hairs then retain their balding resistant properties or do they change and take the properties of the area they are transplanted to? (Requiring then that the patient uses something like Finasteride).
Another thing that puzzles me about finasteride is this. People say that when you stop taking the drug all the hairs that were genetically programmed to have fallen out, will then fall out in a relatively short time period. But that doesn’t seem to be consistent with the hypothesis that DHT causes hair loss. Surely once the DHT levels come back, your hair loss would resume, but at no higher rate than before?
Doctor Rassman,
I hope you know that finasteride was only approved in men between 18-41 years of age for hairless due to the sharp increase in side effects for older men.
How do I know what you’re obviously aware of? You’re still wrong about the age range. I’ll let it slide though.