22 year old looking for best treatment options for maintenance

[pale]

Hi all, as the title says I'm a 22 year old male. For the past 4 years I've been sitting at NW2, with little if any continued recession. So I can (relatively) safely say my hair loss is not very aggressive. However, I won't be surprised if in a couple more years I can see a noticeable difference, even if it is minor. There is a pretty good history of hair in my family. Even my dad, who is bald now at 60, kept most of his hair into his 40s. I'm looking for the best treatment option, and I would like to avoid finasteride if possible, or at the very least take a small amount (something like .25mg EOD). I was also considering topical spironolactone for DHT clocking instead of finasteride but the jury seems out on that one. I really don't feel like I need to take finasteride every day, especially at 1mg. However, I'm also wary of having hormone levels go up and down like that may EOD. I would be perfectly ok with maintaining what I have and maybe paying for a minor hair transplant in the future for my hairline (hopefully when pilofocus comes out). So what would you say I need? How effective is spironolactone for my kind of hair loss?

I've attached two pics of my left temple, one from the other day and one from 2 years ago. Unfortunately, I have no other pics of the front of right side from 2 years ago, but hopefully you can get a sense of my hair loss from these two pictures.

 

[RB15]

Well i'm about to start 0.25mg of finasteride ED tomorrow, i feel like it is a safe amount to start with and have read that it is almost as effective as the higher doses, and with a view to increase to 0.5mg if i tolerate it..

i think if you decide to go on finasteride, then it's imortant to get off the forums for a while and try forget about it or you risk "reading" yourself into side effects...

 

[I.D WALKER]

I may be wrong Pale but honestly I have not seen enough encouraging or consistent evidence showing that spironolactone is a worthwhile option. Please I urge any users of it who are satisfied to please speak up. Sorry to say but you for now it's just the big 3 on your side. finasteride., dosing is still somewhat sketchy.Take it as your Doctor instructs and we can revisit the dosing question later on. All the best.

 

[abcdefg]

Propecia, propecia, or propecia. Honestly that is about it and you can throw in rogain, but even with that you still need propecia. Without that I dont think you can hold steady yet alone win the battle against male pattern baldness. You feel like a broken record telling people what to use because there is just 1 treatment that works. I could give you a small book on things that might work topical spironolactone would be in that list and probably higher up in comparison to most garbage, but I tried it too. I personally dont think topical spironolactone is strong enough and my hair loss is mild

 

[pale]

Propecia, propecia, or propecia. Honestly that is about it and you can throw in rogain, but even with that you still need propecia. Without that I dont think you can hold steady yet alone win the battle against male pattern baldness. You feel like a broken record telling people what to use because there is just 1 treatment that works. I could give you a small book on things that might work topical spironolactone would be in that list and probably higher up in comparison to most garbage, but I tried it too. I personally dont think topical spironolactone is strong enough and my hair loss is mild

OK. What about dosage? Should I get any bloodwork done before going on it? Can you explain in detail how the people over at propeciahelp are blowing things out of proportion?