I have been on finasteride for more than 10 years, then I decided just recently to stop it. I lost basically everything in 3 months when I stopped min/fin. I started back 30 days ago is it possible to regain everything?
It is possible that some or all of the hair is still there. Good luck with a potential reversal. Let me know in 3 months so I know. I always want to be educated by the men who are balding and dealing with such problems.
For someone paranoid about balding, but currently too poor to do anything about it aside from fin/min (oral+top) and derma-stamping, is there any way to somehow save donor area hair for the future? I worry that if financial security ever comes, it’ll be too late as far as my donor area is concerned. Any cheap solution to this? Do I just scalp myself and toss it in the freezer? (Kidding).
The donor area remains intact in most men throughout their early years until 60. After 60, some men start losing their donor area hair. This is a normal process and nothing to worry about. Freezing hair for future use sounds extreme to me and not practical today.
You reported one year of treatment. The photo shows a perfectly normal hairline. The presence of the widow’s peak and the flat hairline to the sides suggests that you have a left-over component of your juvenile hairline still showing. I have seen or treated many men like you. If you want a consultation with me, my email address is williamrassman33@gmail.com. Please send me your post before you started treatment so I can understand what was reversed after a year of treatment.
A poster on Reddit suggested that a new drug verteporfin , would regrow hairs that were removed by FUE. The proof was shown here without before pictures of the same area after the FUE was performed. This is an incredible claim not backed up my this photo. Proper scientific investigation would have to be done. What this photo suggests is that the area on the left, didn’t have FUE. My comment is: prove me wrong.
If half-life of fin is 6-8 hours in the blood but 5-6 days in tissue (scalp) why don’t people apply topical every 3-4 days to minimize systemic?
Topical finasteride goes systemic. Perfect Hair Health has shown the relationship between systemic DHT level drops with higher and higher topical finasteride dosages as the effective topical dose increases. For men highly sensitive to finasteride, the standard topical finasteride will not change their problems by switching unless it is the liposomal preparation. Tissue levels remaining after stopping finasteride. Officially symptoms’ like sexual side effects should disappear within 6 days, but from my experience, it can last a month or more.
Doc, i have a question, Does it happen usually that someone stops reacting to the current dosage and has to move to higher concentrated dosages. Ex, someone stops reacting to 1mg finestride and has to move to 2mg to keep seeing results. I am kinda scared of it, I started with 1mg per day, but later came across someone mentioning it, so I reduced the dosage to 1mg every alternate day, bcoz 0.5mg per day wasn’t available. Was it a smart move or me just believing in a myth?
The original Merck studies showed that the 1mg dose was the ideal dose for hair loss. Half that dose is 82% as effective, so taking a pill every other day is essentially half the dose and it should still be 82% effective in your situation.
Do you think that it is safe taking finasteride and minoxidil at my age? My result are excellent.
Speak with your doctor, as I don’t give direct advice over blogs. I suspect that it will be okay. These topicals go systemic, so maybe you would be better off sticking with the oral forms of these medications so that you know exactly what your system is getting.
Hello Dr Rassman, I’ve had a lot of anxiety over finasteride not haunting my loss, it’s been 14 months since I started treatment and I’m unsure but do feel like my hair is worse than earlier this year. What can I do?
Finasteride works, I believe, in 100% of men by either slowing, stopping or reversing hair loss. Your genetic balding may be moving faster than the finasteride is slowing it down. That is a difficult analysis to make. See an expert in hair loss like me or another hair transplant surgeon or dermatologist that has an interest in this problem.
In just 3 months, you thickened your forelock and reversed some of the corner recession. This is a great response on these two drugs in just 3 months. Again, young men under 25m generally respond to finasteride.
Fantastic reversal of miniaturization. Because you are 18 years of age, your hair is very sensitive to the benefits of finasteride which easily reverses the miniaturization shown in your photo.
The typical Asian donor density is 1.9 hairs/follicular unit. African numbers are lower at 1.7 hairs/follicular unit. Caucasians average 2.2 hairs/follicular unit. These numbers, with all three of these races, reflect a bell curve, and the quoted numbers are the median of the bell curve. I have seen Africans with much higher densities and recently examined an Asian with a donor density of 2.5 hairs/follicular unit (on the extreme right of the bell curve).
I have had well over 1000 patients on finasteride for more than 20 years. It holds onto their hair. I know that because a small handful of these men stopped finasteride, and within three months, they lost significant amounts of hair. Before stopping the drug, they had no further hair loss.
Just 2 months, I noticed I developed mild gynomastia, and am now trying to figure out how to reverse any damage without the need for surgery. I stopped a week ago, and already feel better. I will never touch this drug ever again. If you’re willing to commit to taking pills every day for the rest of your life, just get a hair system.
You did the right thing stopping finasteride. Concealers, other medications like oral minoxidil and even a hair transplant are other great options.
I have been taking 1mg finasteride tablets for the past couple years. I recently experimented with breaking the tablets in half (I have the white octagonal tablets), and my side effects went away. However, my hair also began falling out after 2 weeks. Does breaking the tablets in half affect how they are absorbed? I am not sure if these tablets have coating or not (it’s hard to tell, unlike the red tablets, which appear to be coated), but if they do, does the coating help the drug get absorbed in a more effective manner? Is it possible that by breaking up the tablet and exposing its internal non-coated portion, some of it is going to waste and I am not getting the full .5mg? If there is no absorption issue, is there any risk pertaining to the tablet contents not being dispersed evenly throughout the volume of the tablet?
If you reduce your dose from 1mg to 0.25 mgs, that will reduce the effectiveness of finasteride and could cause hair loss, as in your case. Cutting the pills frequently is the way to go, so that cut pills are kept in an air tight sealed container and only done for a few day supply. Never cut in advance for a month, for example.
I transplanted two best friends a few years ago. This is the ideal hairline for each man. Note that their hairlines are shaped differently. That is because the hairline was negotiated with each man to meet their particular idea of what they wanted to look like. Both hairlines were appropriate, as I never agree to an abnormal hairline. Notice that the hairlines are not straight lines. That is because I always create a transition zone between forehead and the grafts that have more hairs per graft. I use about 400 single hair grafts in the leading edge of the hairline.
