Dutasteride Dosing and Steady State

Hello all. I have not been on the blog for some time, but I wanted to take an opportunity to answer a recurring question that I see (with the Doctor’s kind permission, of course) Many are asking about Avodart (5-6 weeks)and it’s superior half-life over Propecia (24 hours). Many are under the impression that you just pop the Avodart and magically, 90% of the circulating DHT is eliminated. This is not the case. In order for there to be a 90% DHT serum decrease, the patient must be on the drug, every day, for a minimum of 90 days. Probably more like 120 days.

There is a thing called “steady state”. This refers to blood levels of a drug. You must ingest the drug, on a regular basis, and for a predetermined period of time, in order to reach “steady state”. All steady state means, essentially, is saturation. This means that the blood is saturated with as much of the drug (in this case, Dutasteride) as it can hold. Dutasteride is bound to a blood protein called albumin very, very tightly. This is the reason for its half life. It doesn’t want to let go!

Now, after 90-120 days you should be able to get away with megadosing once or twice a week, however, there is this little concern regarding the law of “Diminished Returns”. Plus, if .5mg every day for 90 is sufficient at blocking 90% of type II 5ar, I personally don’t see how juicing it to 94 or 95 percent would have that much more clinical benefit.

Thank you for your opinion. I haven’t seen any information about the appropriate Avodart (dutasteride) dose for treating hair loss. More importantly, it has never been clearly shown that Avodart is necessarily better than Propecia (finasteride), particularly since it has a higher side effect potential.