The Effectiveness of My Hair Meds Seems to Be Decreasing After 4 Years

My father is NW6 and I have been losing hair since around age 21 and now at 26 it has picked up. I have been using propecia and rogaine for 4 years with good results but it seems the effectiveness has decreased in the past year.

My father has tons of body hair and I have practically none-so I was wondering if the gene responsible for body hair and for hair loss were linked—possibly leaving me with a different fate then him?

Also, at the 4 year mark the effectiveness of my medications is decreasing or my hair loss is catching up. I have read that increasing propecia dose will not help- would switching to dutasteride be a good option in your opinion?

Thank you for your informative site.

It feels like I write about this every other day in different ways. If you have genetic hair loss, there is nothing that will completely stop it. So while it might seem like the medication is losing effectiveness, its more likely that the activity of your hair loss is increasing. Like a tug of war, where the genes are starting to win.

Increasing the dose of medication is a big question mark, but it’s possible that changing from finasteride to dutasteride may help. These are decisions your doctor will have to make with you. Some people report a better response to dutasteride when finasteride is not effective, but dutasteride (also known as Avodart) isn’t approved for treating hair loss, so your doctor will need to be willing to prescribe it off-label. Ideal dutasteride dosage isn’t known for treating hair loss (it’s a prostate medication).