I Have Increased Body Hair, Skin Aging, Belly Fat, and More After Stopping Finateride

Hello and thank you for all these answers and clarifying a lot of myths on balding!

My father, his brother and their dad are bald and I started balding in my early 20s. A quick visit to a dermatologist made me start 1/4 Proscar which I did for 6 years. By then end of that period I become increasingly worried that some depression symptoms, lack of motivation, memory and concentration were being caused by it. No major sexual problems… I stopped it over 1.5years ago.

Some people think stopping finasteride may not have any consequences… that’s very naive i think, specially if you took it for a long time. The major changes I’ve noticed were: increased body hair (beard, arms, back and legs mainly), more easy to gain muscle, but my belly suddenly also started accumulating fat way more easily, body smells are all of a sudden way more intense, my constant 4-5 colds/ throat “virus” per year reduced a lot (not been sick at all this past year…), erections are more potent (horny way more often), skin aging seems to have accelerated, hair is falling and receding fast! Many of these are consequences of a male hormone back into a high level i think. Depression, memory improvements? … very hard to tell!

Question: Have you heard of any of these depression/ mental problems? Some people claim nasty sexual sides, is it likely that i will develop those if i restart 1/4 proscar for some more years? I mean, given i had no major sides (apart from the elusive mental problems which doctors never believed) can i assume proscar is safe for me?

Also, may i ask what are the current guidelines for having a HT at an early balding stage? Could i just assume that balding is occurring and do half transplant now which lasts some years and do the rest in say… 10years time or so?

Many thanks in advance for your advice and for this blog!

I appreciate your problems, but you need to see a doctor to surround them. I’ve never heard of anyone having their body smells change or getting sick more often, nor have I heard that finasteride could cause skin aging. I am not surprised that your hair is receding fast, since you stopped the medication that was protecting your hair.

As for hair transplant guidelines, hair loss is a progressive process. You’ll need to talk with a surgeon to develop a Master Plan for treating your loss.