Any tips on minimizing/ countering the Minoxidil skin sides?

[CM24]

Since I started Regaine foam I've been using it morning and night, just over 4 months now. My has definitely been affected. I've noticed wrinkles becoming more prominent, bags under my eyes and lots of blackheads. My skin just doesn't look smooth anymore and my face is bloated.

My hair does seem to be improving though so I'm hesitant to stop.

I've started using Apple Cider Vinegar and Coconut Oil on my skin. I don't know much about skin care at all but I've heard you should avoid stuff that's full of chemicals. I think Retinol is meant to be the best but it's mad expensive and requires a prescription too.

Anyone here managed to combat the sides?

 

[Raz]

Drink more water, drink green tea, use a decent moisturizer for your own skin type, consider some "skin masks" (eg. this - I've done it for a while) here and there, sleep as much as you can.

For what it is worth, I am not suffering any minoxidil-sides. At worst, my eyes seem a bit more tired (if I also have slept little, haha), but no prominent skin damage or anything. Just try to stay hydrated - drink an extra glass of water here and there, even if you were not thirsty. Green tea is great for your skin and health too (it's been my go-to drink for years in general as I don't drink coffee). Also, I reckon that if you'll skip an application here and there, it will be better for your skin. I am not telling you to do minoxidil once a day only, but I heard that its half-life is like 22 hours, so if you're missing out on the 2nd application and doing it once a day every now and then (one day a week or so), maybe that could give your skin a boost?

 

[fuugenes]

You can buy Retin-A online without a prescription. It can help. But ya, moisturize well, eat right (carrots, beats, add garlic to your diet, TONS of fruit) and apply retin-a at night.

Theres 0.025% 0.50% and 0.1% concentrations of Retin-A. You might wanna start lower than 0.1 to see how your skin handles it.

 

[benjt]

Having been affected from major facial skin-related side effects myself, I did a lot of research into it. According to what I could gather, it is very likely that skin side effects only show when your minoxidil dose already reached "maximum local effect" due to the tissue where you apply it reaches maximum saturation with minoxidil's bioactive metabolite, minoxidil sulfate. If maximum saturation is reached, any additional minoxidil sulfate will spread out to the surroundings.

The amount of local minoxidil sulfate is determined by the concentration of available minoxidil sulfotransferase. The higher it is, the more bioactive minoxidil sulfate is produced from the minoxidil you apply. This is also the reason why minoxidil doesn't work at all for some people: they have almost no minoxidil sulfotransferase or even none at all, meaning no bioactive minoxidil sulfate for them. People with side effects are at the other extreme of the spectrum, having way more minoxidil sulfotransferase and thus minoxidil sulfate than the average person.

As a consequence from saturation, you can safely reduce the dose without losing any hair-saving effect - the tissue is already saturated anyway, nothing more can be added.

Now the difficult task is to find the right dose for you, as it is dependent on your level of minoxidil sulfotransferase. I for myself found out that 1 ml per day is perfect, i.e. one application per day (which also fits in better with my lifestyle). Problem is that the half-life of minoxidil means that if I miss applications I lose a lot of effect, so I'm thinking about splitting into two applications of 0.5 ml per application twice a day.

Long story short: Reduce your dose and find the perfect one for you. It's not easy to find, but if you don't want the side effects to become more severe (which they did in my case over time with grave consequences on my looks... I looked like drug-addict with additional 10 years over my biological age. It took many months till I recovered from that.), you should do it.


In terms of battling: Green tea and sports.

 

[resu]

That's a good idea about applying only 0.5ml x2 a day.

 

[rcom440]

Exactly what Benjt said. You should decrease the dosage wait for sides to go away and then slowly increase the dosage to see how much you can handle.
I had very bad side effects when I started using liquid 5% minoxidil. I was experiencing extreme dizziness and headaches. I couldn't walk in a straight line. I could barely drive my car to work.
I had to drop minoxidil for a couple days and then started using it once a day just .5ml then I slowly increased it to 1ml a day (at night). It seems I was able to adjust to 1ml dosage without any sides.
Also you can buy Roc cream (it's with retinol) it will do wonders for your skin but use light sunscreen while using it.
You can buy Roc retinol cream in CVS or Walgreens. It's around $22.
Good luck and let us know how it goes.

 

[resu]

Exactly what Benjt said. You should decrease the dosage wait for sides to go away and then slowly increase the dosage to see how much you can handle.
I had very bad side effects when I started using liquid 5% minoxidil. I was experiencing extreme dizziness and headaches. I couldn't walk in a straight line. I could barely drive my car to work.
I had to drop minoxidil for a couple days and then started using it once a day just .5ml then I slowly increased it to 1ml a day (at night). It seems I was able to adjust to 1ml dosage without any sides.
Also you can buy Roc cream (it's with retinol) it will do wonders for your skin but use light sunscreen while using it.
You can buy Roc retinol cream in CVS or Walgreens. It's around $22.
Good luck and let us know how it goes.

Isn't that more of an effect of the alcohol?

 

[rcom440]

When minoxidil hits blood streams it can significantly lower blood pressure which causes dizziness.

 

[resu]

Have you actually measured your blood pressure before and after minoxidil?

 

[rcom440]

I didn't measure my blood pressure before using minoxidil. I measured it while I was experiencing dizziness and it was pretty low. I don't remember exactly how low because it was long time ago.

Minoxidil was originally used to treat high blood pressure.

 

[resu]

I measured one and a half hour later and I got pretty much the same values more or less.

174
73
72

 

[rcom440]

That's good. minoxidil shouldn not get absorbed systemically unless you are super sensitive, have scratched on your scalp, applauding it on the wet scalp or simply using too much/often.

 

[resu]

Half an hour later it should have been 80% absorbed. 0.5 ml seems tolerable specially since it's just the right amount for my bald spot.

It does go systematic but how susceptible you are to adverse side-effects like all things it depends on various factors that I have no idea.

My skin was a bit rough on 2ml a day, there was a constant irritation around the skin of the eye socket, by the end of the first week I looked like this:

 

[resu]

Wow it's gotten so much worse, check these bumps, I'm sure it's the water retention:

It's the same facial expression, I've been applying 0,5ml 2x a day and the skin around my eyes still feels inflated.

The sides are real, I have proof now, tried minoxidil two times, it's not my imagination. I just hope they subside now, I would rather be bald than look like this. I'm going to forget minoxidil.

Absolutely no dark circles though, why would you get it from minoxidil? Puffy face and these bumps make sense.

 

[rcom440]

Yeah it looks like water retention. Try to use minoxidil once a day, best would be at night. Go for .8 ml. or .75 ml. A little under indicator line.

Don't worry puffiness under your eyes should disappear, but check it you will be able to handle minoxidil once a day.

- - - Updated - - -

And decrease your sodium intake.

 

[CM24]

Thanks for the replies guys, especially Benjit. I remember reading a lot of his posts before, seems like a bit of an expert on this. The good news for me is the sides go away pretty quickly when I take a few days off minoxidil. I had a date last Saturday night so stopped using it on Thursday and resumed again Sunday morning. I think my problem was using too much and also using it too soon after a shower. I'm only going to use it once a day from now on.

Unfortunately, I think I permanently damaged my skin earlier this year. I moved from Ireland to Australia and in a rush to get a tan I went out sunbathing with low factor suncream on. Got scalded and my skin has looked more dry and less smooth ever since. The sun in Australia is properly dangerous. The shops here don't even really sell any suncream below factor 30.

 

[benjt]

resu, be happy that you only have this little retention. In my case it is much worse, even though I'm still on 1 x 1ml per day instead of 2 x 0.5 ml per day, so maybe switching would improve things.

Regarding dark circles and wrinkles: Just wait for it. If you get significant water retention, you will get dark circles in the long run, too. In my case, it took a few months to show. The reason is: minoxidil inhibits collagen production. You may have collagen in these areas now, but it constantly breaks down (due to sun and natural aging processes) and needs to be regenerated. minoxidil, however, inhibits this process. And as you know, less collagen, as it is the filling material of your skin, leads to thinner skin and thus wrinkles. Thinner skin around your eyes lets blood vessels show, hence the dark circles. Another theory is that minoxidil's vasodilatory function lets additional blood accumulate there, making the effect even stronger.

minoxidil' primary effect against balding is not yet fully understood, but keep in mind that one part of the balding process is the formation of fibrotic collagen on your balding scalp. Given that minoxidil confirmedly inhibits collagen formation (thus including the formation of fibrotic collagen in balding areas), the side effects go well hand in hand with its mode of action unfortunately. For more info on minoxidil and collagen, cf. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1546087 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7672621 .

 

[resu]

I gave up on minoxidil, my skin is back to normal though! Very happy about that but on the other hand I feel bad because I can't use any current treatments and I'll eventually become fully bald. Anyway it's still better to be bald than to have those really deep folds which would turn to even more wrinkles. It's a very unnatural look, those folds from minoxidil look absolutely awful in person, not only that but when I blinked there was a delay on the skin around the eyes, it affected my right side more for some reason. The puffiness on the eyes was the worse and wasn't tolerable, cosmetic issues aside.

Anyway I still recommend anyone to give it a go, try more than one time to make sure it's not your mind playing tricks, take photos of the skin smiling and relaxed, some things to look for is a crispy feeling on the face, specially under the eyes, the face muscles felt harder manly the cheeks and there was a general discomfort on the skin around the eye socket. I still can't believe these side affects are real, they seemed so far fetched. There's still foam and lipogaine to try.

 

[benjt]

Have you also tried reducing your dosage significantly? As I pointed out, when suffering facial skin-related side effects it is possible to reduce the dosage w/o losing effect (as long as you dont reduce too much).

When I suffered from the side effects the first time I was also like "f*ck it, not worth it", but my headshape is such that I cannot pull of a bald look at all, so I decided to keep going with a safe dose as long as possible.

 

[resu]

Yes I used 0.5ml 2x a day and the sides kept on progressing, alternatively I could try the 2% version. I feel maybe the foam or lipogaine depending on the vehicle may give me less sides.