dutasteride+finasteride-my story-is dutasteride causing a shed or made my follicles sensitive to DHT?What do?

[DHTDestroyer]

Hi guys,


I have been taking finasteride 1.25 mg daily for 16 months now, combined with minoxidil 5% for the same time and dutasteride for 5 months. I have attached pics of my progress.


As you see in third layer of pics (26/06/2013) I seem to have receded more. But why? All I did was added dutasteride to the mix. Could it be a dutasteride shed? Should I continue using or stop it? I think the chances are it is a dutasteride shed and should stabilize eventually.


I don't seem to have any problems with the crown region and overall hair density is ok.


Any advice?


Thanks!

 

[Adam87]

Firstly thank you for posting, and I can relate to your type of hairloss, take a look at my pics in my thread adam1987. Very very similar hair loss to mine mate, similar length as well, I also didn't get much response from finasteride and I am on my 1st month of dutasteride. Have you ever got yourself a blood test to see if dutasteride is helping your DHT levels? Sometimes dutasteride is so strong it can have the opposite effect or mess around with your DHT and testosterone, if I was you this would be the very first thing I would do if you can, as you need to know what your dealing with!!! There are a few factors why your hair is weaking, it might be the minoxidil your using, you could try giving that up for a few months and see if you get any reaction, I know some people and pictures with proof saying that minoxidil just made the situation worse, remember some products just don't have the effect that people want, everyone reacts differently. By the looks of it you should continue with finasteride to the 2 year mark to see if it has any effect, but it should have at least stablizied your hairloss by now, but I would still go to 2 years and see any difference. Another reason could be diet, lack of things....might want to add supplements....but I really think you should get a blood test for DHT and find out how dutasteride is impacting on you hairloss. Good luck though bud, ty for posting, first person I can see similar lines too mine so hang in there!!! Adam

 

[DHTDestroyer]

My diet is great. Why would minoxidil harm hair? It's main purpose is to help hair growth.

I will get my hormone levels checked on Monday. Unfortunately I did not have them checked before this, BUT I will at least be able to see if they are in "normal" levels, right?

 

[Adam87]

Well remember that your normal levels wont be normal because dutasteride would have altered them, in which way though I am unsure, but heres what you need to know regarding DHT levels......................Normal testosterone levels are about 500-600 ng/dl (17-21 nmol/l).

Normal DHT levels are ca. 45 ng/dl (1,6 nmol/l). Basically, you must get under 20 ng/dl (0,6 nmol/l) to be in the "safe zone", where you don't lose hair. One month ago, my DHT levels were 17,7 ng/dl. Ten year old boys have DHT about 10 ng/dl (0,3 nmol/l). There is a guy on here called warlord who gave me this info and basically im going to find out what I am up against.......might need my artillery if my DHT is still above 20ng/dl.

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Regarding your hormones, wen you get the results and you cant talk about them with people on here or your doctor/consultant then you will have an idea of what your up against basically and how dutasteride is effecting your levels....and then you must go from there. You could try a different minoxidil, as the one your using, if you have used it for over a year doesn't seem to be having any effect.....but look at your results, bring them back here and go from there, I am also getting tests done in a couple weeks.

 

[DHTDestroyer]

Well remember that your normal levels wont be normal because dutasteride would have altered them, in which way though I am unsure, but heres what you need to know regarding DHT levels......................Normal testosterone levels are about 500-600 ng/dl (17-21 nmol/l).

Normal DHT levels are ca. 45 ng/dl (1,6 nmol/l). Basically, you must get under 20 ng/dl (0,6 nmol/l) to be in the "safe zone", where you don't lose hair. One month ago, my DHT levels were 17,7 ng/dl. Ten year old boys have DHT about 10 ng/dl (0,3 nmol/l). There is a guy on here called warlord who gave me this info and basically im going to find out what I am up against.......might need my artillery if my DHT is still above 20ng/dl.

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Regarding your hormones, wen you get the results and you cant talk about them with people on here or your doctor/consultant then you will have an idea of what your up against basically and how dutasteride is effecting your levels....and then you must go from there. You could try a different minoxidil, as the one your using, if you have used it for over a year doesn't seem to be having any effect.....but look at your results, bring them back here and go from there, I am also getting tests done in a couple weeks.

Thanks for your input, I will definitely do this.

 

[Adam87]

I only literally just started learning about DHT levels from other posters on here who basically told me the most effective way to tell if a treatment is having any impact on hairloss is to have a blood test. So I don't know to much about this. Living corpse - I honestly don't know mate, I think the best thing is to get in contact with people on the board who might know about these things or talk to a specialist with your results - did you get your results whilst you were on finasteride/dutasteride/hairloss medication or are they just normal results? There is a guy on here called warlord, who knows about this stuff, hes very into blood test results and stuff so hopefully he will pop by this thread. Let me pm him.

 

[WarLord]

Adam87, I had a test done and my DHT levels are not measured in ng/dl, but rather ng/l. The scale according to my test is 250-1000, for a "normal" range. I had 101ng/l.

Is that in the safe zone? It seems very low.

Yes, that's 10.1 ng/dl. It is very low. You will be fine. You basically returned to your early childhood. But remember that you should do the tests in the same lab. The results may sometimes differ substantially between different labs.

Last week I finally got my results from 22th May. These are "dream values":

[FONT=&amp]DHEA-sulphate 5.56 | |*| | 3.59-11.91 umol/l[/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]Cortisol-S 325 | |*| | 260-720 nmol/l[/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]Testosterone 14.60 | |*| | 10.00-34.00 nmol/l[/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]Estradiol 0.066 | |*| | 0.000-0.228 nmol/l[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]
17-hydroxyprogesterone 2.59 | |*| | 1.50-5.40 nmol/l[/FONT]

[FONT=&amp]SHBG 41.2 | |*| | 31.1-52.1 nmol/l[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]
Dihydrotestosterone 0.25 | -| | | 0.90-3.60 nmol/l[/FONT]



DHT 0.25 nmol/l equals to 7.3 ng/dl. So I surpassed you! Testosterone could have been a bit higher, but I do hope that it will go up. Estradiol is low, so I don't have to be afraid of gyno. Furthermore, my liver values are O.K. as well:

S-ALT 0.55 ukat/l 0.05-0.85 (-*-)
S-AST 0.46 ukat/l 0.05-0.89 (-*-)
S-GGT 0.28 ukat/l 0.05-1.13 (-*-)

My ALT values used to be below 50 ukat/l, so there may be a slight elevation, but nothing dramatic. I'm fine.

On finasteride, I had DHT 0.9-1.1 nmol/l. The stuff was practically worthless. I started to take dutasteride on 9th February, very low dosages (0.5 mg every 4th day=0.125 mg/day), but I slowly increased them. In April, when I was taking 0.33 mg dutasteride/day (+1.25 mg finasteride/day), I still had DHT 0.6 nmol/l. During May, my dutasteride dosage was 0.375 mg/day (+1.25 mg finasteride/day), and DHT levels apparently started to drop very quickly. At this moment, I already take Avodart together with dutasteride powder, 0.75 mg/day altogether, and I wait for the results of my test from the last week.

BTW, I don't understand all those people, who don't do any blood tests whatsoever, and only visit internet forums to spit their frustration and negativism to all directions. For Goodness sake, how can you know, what is happening in your body? Why to wait for one year, if finasteride starts working?! With a blood test in your hands, you will know it after several weeks!

 

[Quantum Cat]

Warlord are you UK? Do you get your tests done by your NHS GP or a private consultant?

I would have to press pretty hard to persuade my GP to do all those tests, especially on a regular basis. When I did mention I wanted to find out my Test/Estr levels he basically said it wouldn't show much of use, so I didn't press him any further. Although he did to an LFT for me.

I am curious to see what my DHT levels are, although I have nothing to compare them with as I didn't measure them pre-finasteride (5 years ago) as I didn't know it was necessary then.

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where do you get your Dutasteride powder from btw?

 

[Adam87]

As I found out UK GP's are just legally bound by laws and as people have told me will cover there ***, so you wont get much luck with them, you just need to go privately and get a referral from a GP as I have done. Do you advise getting more than the Dihydrotestosterone done?

 

[DHTDestroyer]

I'm getting blood tests done on Monday. What should I get?

So far I have:
Testostorone,
DHT,
Estradiol.

Anything else?

 

[resu]

You can pick what to test?

 

[DHTDestroyer]

You can pick what to test?

Yes, I have to pick.

 

[Adam87]

I don't think I can pick with mine.....I have chose the DHT blood test, not really sure, if I can ask for anything else...im from the UK going private. I will try to get the other stuff as well.

 

[resu]

I would pick zinc, magnesium, the whole hormonal panel, TSH, T3, T4, Iron, etc.

 

[WarLord]

That's good for me then to have such low DHT when I'm only on finasteride. Could my DHT be naturally low already? It makes sense as I have mixed family history of it, and so far all my loss has come from meds.

Your test levels are super low though. You should look into optimising them somehow. Have you considered that? I'll probably be going on TRT soon because of low test, I just need to make sure whatever they give me isn't very androgenic. Could that affect my hair at all? If not I would like to take HGH or something to induce hypertrophy of the masseters.

Finally, what is "dutasteride powder"?

Dutasteride powder is raw dutasteride that you can buy for a 10-times lower price than Avodart, when you are clever enough

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Warlord are you UK? Do you get your tests done by your NHS GP or a private consultant?

I would have to press pretty hard to persuade my GP to do all those tests, especially on a regular basis. When I did mention I wanted to find out my Test/Estr levels he basically said it wouldn't show much of use, so I didn't press him any further. Although he did to an LFT for me.

I am curious to see what my DHT levels are, although I have nothing to compare them with as I didn't measure them pre-finasteride (5 years ago) as I didn't know it was necessary then.

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where do you get your Dutasteride powder from btw?

I am from Czech republic. I can get blood tests, whenever I want. There are private labs and they don't ask me, why I need it, if I pay the whole price for testing.

And as for the powder, I bought it from China. It is veeeeery cheap. I sent it to a laboratory, though, and the results were positive. In fact, the powder turned out to be more potent than dutasteride from an Avodart capsule that they used as a reference sample. This is probably due to the fact that the capsule was slightly underdosed.

If you are from EU, I can sell you 1 gram for 170 USD. I bought more than I needed, because the Chinese supplier had requirements for a certain minimum order. One gram is a dose for approximately 6 years ahead and it is roughly 10-times cheaper than "generic dutasteride" from the internet. The method of application can be somewhat inconvenient, though. In any case, you would need very precise digital scales and some good solvent.

 

[DHTDestroyer]

The results are finally in. I tested for Estradiol, Testostorone and DHT.

After 1.5 years of finasteride use and combined dutasteride use for about 7 months here are my levels:
Estradiol - 28.9 pg/mL
Testostorone - 6.98 ng/mL (year before it was 5.20 ng/mL)
DHT - 0.10 ug/L

What to make of this?

 

[resu]

Don't they give the range?

 

[DHTDestroyer]

Don't they give the range?

Yes, range for Testostorone is 3.30 - 8.05 ng/mL and range for DHT is 0.25 - 1.00 ug/L.

What does range mean anyway? Is it like the norm?

 

[talmoode]

Yes, range for Testostorone is 3.30 - 8.05 ng/mL and range for DHT is 0.25 - 1.00 ug/L.

What does range mean anyway? Is it like the norm?

isn't your doctor supposed to tell you if they are normal?

 

[resu]

Yes it's the normal range for (in this case) males. My Doctor she doesn't tell me anything, I have to search whatever blood test results mean and what are the purpose of doing them, they don't want you to know anything. I don't trust GP.