Hair getting much worse after finasteride

[shootingguard]

I'm about three months into finasteride, and really noticed increased thinning on my front (noticeably thinner than my left side, which is weird).

1. Is this just a side effect?
2. Once you start finasteride, doesn't it go into effect right away? How much carryover does male pattern baldness cycle have into the finasteride cycle?
3. When do side effects wear off?

 

[shootingguard]

78 looks, not one reply...

Maybe three questions was too much, but I'd have at least expected some encouragement

 

[monitoradiation]

1. Usually when people say "side effects" for hairloss drugs they mean things OTHER than what's being done to your hair. That's why it's called "side" effects.

2. What do you even mean by "[going] into effect"? Some people don't regrow hair at all, some maintain what they have, some regrow all of their hair. It depends on how lucky you are, but most people don't get any changes until the 3rd months, even if they're lucky.

3. No idea. If you get side effects, most people would advocate waiting for a few months and see if they go away on their own.

 

[DoctorHouse]

You won't know how well finasteride works for you until you are on it for one year. Take photos now and compare it each month. That will be the only proof to see what is really going on. finasteride MAY not control the balding in the front but it should help the crown area and mid scalp area. As you have read in my posts, I just felt finasteride triggered something in my system to cause more loss in the frontal area than in my whole lifetime. But most will tell you its just that finasteride is not as effective for the hairline as it is for the rest of the scalp. All you can do is stay on it for one year and then decide if it helped you or not. You have to be patient with hair loss treatments since hair cycles are long. Just take your pill each day and try not to worry about your hair too much. I honestly think if you worry too much about it, then you get stress related loss as well.

 

[heynow1234]

Hey man I was in EXACTLY the same boat as you at 3 months, incresed frontal thinning especially on the left side! No joke exactly the same time frame and experience as you. Well I am now at about 6 1/2 months on treatment and without a doubt the hair is growing back in the front that i lost on the treatment and its growing back thicker. I started to notice it about a month ago and each week its starting to look a little better. Stay with it man and try not to freak out.

Heres my timeline so far:

months 1-2 didnt notice anything
month 3- all of a sudden noticed my front went to sh*t especially the left side
month 4- pretty much stayed the same but didnt get much worse
month 5 -6 Regaining all the hair that i lost since starting the drug and its thick!

 

[ps1freak]

I'm about three months into finasteride, and really noticed increased thinning on my front (noticeably thinner than my left side, which is weird).

1. Is this just a side effect?
2. Once you start finasteride, doesn't it go into effect right away? How much carryover does male pattern baldness cycle have into the finasteride cycle?
3. When do side effects wear off?

at month 3 on finasteride, i seriously thought i was doomed and that it wasn't working. luckily i read a lot of success stories pointing for ppl to stay on and ride it out for a year.

i did and improvement started at month 7 and continued to improve slowly month after month. i'm at almost 3 years now and density has improved all over. i even got some of my temples back to the pt where i was close to a nw3 to now, a solid nw2.

hope this helps and encourages you to stay on.

 

[BodyDysmorphic]

Damn dude ( Irishpride), you ask everyone on this message board to show you more pics, whats up with that? Ryan, I think you need to just chill out and stop obcessing about your hairloss, obcessing will not help you at all, in fact the increased stress might actually worsen your male pattern baldness, just take your meds and relax, your hair looks good man.

pic pressure-er
it's getting pretty funny now

 

[litcII]

I am actually pretty interested in seeing these pre-shed and post-shed pics as well, as I am curious to see how noticeable a shed is

 

[heynow1234]

Hey guys, I wish i could post pics but i never took any! I prob should have. If i can find my digital camera ill try to get some shots now to show how a lot of my hairs up front are clearly new becuase they are about 1 inch long and about 4 inches shorter then all the others that i didnt shed (i have somewhat long hair).

I am honestly telling you the truth and am not just posting garbage. I use name brand Propecia 1 mg a day, have not missed a day. I use 1% Nizoral 1 to 2 times weekly, and Nioxin system 1 shampoo and conditioner the other days, however im 99.999% sure the Nioxin does absoulty nothing, I really dont think the nizoral helps either.

Irishpride If you look at the official propecia site (which im sure you have) it says that Hairloss wont even stop until the 6 month mark. So you have to think that maybe its just continued normal hairloss, your seeing.

So heres how I have looked at things so far, all of us are losing our hair, if propecia doesnt work there arnt really that many other options other then rogaine, which i dont want to use. So why not actually give it the full year that they tell you to give it, if you stop taking it your def going to lose your hair, so why not continue taking it, even if you think your hair is getting worse, and just hope it turns around. At the 3 1/2 month mark i went to my derm and complained that my hair was getting worse, he told me stick with it. Now at a little past 6 months my hair isnt getting any worse and the hair i lost since starting the drug is comming back. I really feel that the reason why Merck offers the persistance progam, where the last 3 month supply of your first year is free, is because they know that after 9 months or so alot of people will get discouraged and stop if they had to pay for another 3 months, and that last 3 months is prob when you get most the results, so they give you that 3 months free and then after a year you realize that it is working for you, and they got you hooked.

I understand why people freak out and quit I almost did, its completly up to you, but i feel like i dont have much of a choice either i def go bald without propecia or i give it a legit shot and hope that i can keep my hair! Good Luck guys!

 

[ps1freak]

hey i actually have no pictures - all the polaroid pictures were taken by my dermatologist who i don't see anymore because i buy my finasteride from inhouse pharm.

i will tell you that when i saw pictures at month 3, there was no further loss of hair even though i swore i lost more during that time from when i started to that month due to the increase in shedding.

i came back at month 6 and pictures looked almost the same, but by the time i was hitting that month, the shedding pretty much stopped.

then from month 8-9 and so forth things got really good.

i started foam however when i was one year into finasteride and i felt that a lot of regrowth that occured in my temples were because of foam.

feel free to ask me any questions but im sorry i dont have the pics.

 

[JWM]

Heynow and ps1freak's threads should be standard reading for EVERYONE on finasteride.

 

[pproctor]

A "shed" early in treatment that slows within a few weeks is very likely due to follicles coming out of dormancy early and shedding any loss-phase hair. This is benign- the haior was about to fall out anyway and this can be the first sign treatment is working.

What you should worry about is thinning due to reflex hyperandrogenicity from finasteride. This is much rarer, happens later, and is generally associated with other hyperandrogenic symptoms such as increased libido and skin oiliness.

Peter H. Proctor, PhD,MD

 

[DoctorHouse]

Dr Proctor doesn't your system eventually adjust to the reflex hyperandrogenicity after one to two years or could it be possible it never does?

 

[heynow1234]

Hey Irish heres my freak out story posted on May 21 viewtopic.php?f=28&t=53225


At the point when i wrote this i was about at my worst, pretty much since that time it hasnt gotten any worse and in the last month is starting to get noticebly better. Its better to the point where I can actually show family and friends the new growth and they can clearly see it, its just not me.

 

[shootingguard]

It can really get disheartening taking my finasteride and seeing my hairline digress, but it feels great having a resource like this website. Hearing these stories and encouragement always give me that extra incentive to continue treatment. I think I'm gonna hold off on minoxidil too until at least the six/seven month mark so I can establish where my regrowth is progressing

 

[heynow1234]

I think we all go through low points when we first start taking finasteride. I think we go into it knowing that it will take a year for real results, but that changes after a couple months when it hasnt done anything yet and your spending a ton of money on it. You sit in front of the mirror and over analysis everything. Did my hair get worse, yes, did it get as bad as i think it did, who knows. Now im at 6 and 1/2 months, propecia has not done anything drastic to me, but im 99 percent sure my hair loss has pretty much stopped, and I have been starting to get a bunch of new hairs (real hairs not short crappy ones), dont get the impression that my hair has greatly improved, it hasnt, but i now am confident that the medicince is working. Another thing is that everyone who knows im on the drug says my hair has not changed a bit for the worse since starting it, which to me is a good sign, because in december of last year i thought i would be looking much worse by now.

Irish i took a look at your pics and it does seem like your hair thinned on the meds, but i feel that its much worse in your head then it really is, if i had pictures when i was at my lowest point you would prob look at them and say the same thing to me, that it was much worse in my head than it really was. I really think you should stop taking the .5mg and take the full 1mg, unless you are having side effects. If your gonna take it you might as well take the whole pill. Here is the propecia.com timeline: http://www.propecia.com/finasteride/pro ... esults.jsp
I feel like this timeline is 100% right on with what Ive experienced. You cant expect anything in 3 months, it says you may start losing less hair at that time, so basically at 3 months most men who take it are still losing hair, it isnt until the 6 month point where it says hair should be slowing and new growth my be start.

So my best advice is to hang in there, id say 90% of guys who take propecia/finasteride go through this, and that almost all the guys who stick with it and dont quit are happy at the end. Good luck, and try to stop thinking about your hair, no matter how hard that is!


PS: incase you didnt know, there are some other good sites with great info, my 2 favs are:
Baldingblog.com
Thebaldtruth.com

 

[pproctor]

Dr Proctor doesn't your system eventually adjust to the reflex hyperandrogenicity after one to two years or could it be possible it never does?

Likely, it depends on the person. Strong feedback loops work to keep total androgenic activity more or less constant. These include increased testosterone production plus increased tissue androgen receptors. There may even be differences in tissue transport, etc. as well a a lot of stuff we don't know much about.

BTW, a lot of this was worked out from the use of really strong antiandrogens to treat prostate cancer. Here, the feedback loops, etc. are so powerful that it is necessary to castrate the patient to achieve continued efficacy.

Because it works indirectly and primarily only on a couple of tissues (the prostate and the hair follicle), finasteride does not elicit as strong a pro-androgenic feedback as (say) flutamide. So it generally keeps working, at least for a while.

But the feed-back loops are still there and androgenic equilibrium can vary widely. Occasionally, the feedback is so extreme that finasteride produces paradoxical pro-androgenic symptoms. Luckily, for most persons, things settle out in-between. In fact, I suspect that such reflex hyperandrogenicity helps minimize finasteride side-effects.

Peter H. Proctor, PhD,MD

 

[DoctorHouse]

Dr Proctor, do you have any patients that were able to go off Propecia and just use your topical products: Nano shampoo, with Proxiphen and not have any "catch up" loss?

 

[pproctor]

Dr Proctor, do you have any patients that were able to go off Propecia and just use your topical products: Nano shampoo, with Proxiphen and not have any "catch up" loss?

Yes. People often use our products following finasteride side-effects, which mean they cannot use this agent any more. Usually they make the transition without problems. We also use minoxidil in Proxiphen, though not as much because of solubility issues. BTW, it doesn't seem to matter whether we add minoxidil or not--- likely this is because some of our other ingredients substitute for it. Similarly, topical spironolactone seems to substitute for finasteride reasonably well. The additional growth given by the other ingredients seems to generally more than make up for anything else.

However, if you have been on finasteride for more than a couple months or so, we recommend that you taper off slowly. General principles, nothing specific. E.g., you may may have developed a dependency and because of reflex hyperandrogenicity. We recognize that this may not always be possible because of side-effects.

 

[HT55]

Dr proctor,


How come none of these products are being marketed main stream ? I mean if you could come out with a topical that was PROVEN to work as good as propecia I'm sure there would be a lot of money to be made and some pharmacuetical company would jump on it.


BTW do you have any studies that prove spironolactone works as well as finasteride on hair loss ?

I would love to jump off Propecia (no sides over 8 years) but I'm not ready to risk my hair.