I Need Input Here.....Tough Decision To Make.

[Odelay]

I know this is a real long post but it is important that I get some other points of view from people who know what I am talking about, so please give it a read.

I have been on Propecia for going on a year in about a week, I have also been on Minoxidil 5% for over a year and Nizoral for 7 months or so. My long story is posted on the topic "Chance of propecia working on frontal loss at early age..."

Ok to the point. When I started using the Propecia I had a good head of hair, just some thinning on the top, some temple recession and extremly small diffuse thinning at the mid. When I had my hair cut shorter it was just about unnoticeable that I was losing hair. Now after I have been on the treatments for going on a year my hair is a hell of a lot thinner and the temples have receded to the mid, leaving behind a trail of DHT thinned hairs. While my hair is not falling out as much as it did before I started treatments it has gotten a lot worse, to the point were I am maybe a year from being completely bald like Jason Alexander.

What I want to know is what you guys think. While I have lost a lot of hair I am not losing it as fast as I was before treatments. The thing is though according to the Propecia and Minoxidil site is if the treatment was working for me then I would not have the obvious lack of hair where there was hair when I started. I mean do I hang in there for another month and hope for a miracle burst of regrowth to what I had or do I just call it a year and burn all the remainder of my pills and minoxidil? I don't want people to tip toe around saying I am fucked, screwed or whatever I just want an outside prospective on the whole thing. From my point of view I think I am just fucked, but then there is always that thought lying in the back of your head somewhere that says how bad would it be if I quit too soon.

 

[Guest]

If it were me, I would add folligen spray and stay on course for 4 more months and then evaluate.

Good luck! :lol:

 

[morpheus]

I would give it like about 4 more months to, then you can say that youve given it enough time to see if its going to be effective, also how about adding a topical dht inhibitor, such as topical spironolactone, i would try and use all ammo available to you as well.

or if your really fed up with finesteride, dump it, it just may not be for you, and may even be having a negative effect on you personally, it wont work for absolutely everyone, then why not continue with minoxidil, as that wont do any harm, and try topical dht inhibitors, ie spironolactone, take arginine, msm, grape, seed extract, use a good scalp exfolient as well as nizoral, like i said use as much ammo available, but just not finasteride

 

[The Gardener]

Odelay,

Sorry to hear about the situation. Don't panic yet.

First off, what was the timeline on this all? Did you just plain NEVER see any positive results?... or did you get some positive results and now you have seen some backtracking? I have heard anecdotally that these darker months of the year are common times for people to go through sheds.

Additionally, do not worry about looking like Jason Alexander in a year! Hair recession typically does not happen all at once, it happens in stages that can often times be separated by many years. I had the same hairloss pattern that you say you have by my senior year of high school. I did nothing about it, nothing!, until I was 34. This is because my hairloss kind of leveled out at an NW2 and pretty much stayed there until last year. Of course, my hair is not yours and your mileage may vary so to speak but just don't believe now that the sky is falling, it probably isn't and you will hopefully have a lot of hair and time left to work with.

I would take heed of any suggestions here, and keep at it. Perhaps an anti-DHT topical might be the trick for you? If you are as thin as you say, the 5% spironolactone cream might be an option and is odorless as opposed to the 2% version. And if Bruce Lee suggests Folligen, then you might want to try that? I know I am just spewing random thoughts here, but I would not give up yet.

 

[Odelay]

It's not that I am fed up with the treatments it's just that according to the people who are selling these products are saying that my time is up, if nothing good has happened by now you are sh*t out of luck, figuratively speaking of course. The other thing is that I am really not happy with the hair I have now, so just keeping what's there now does not really interest me very much. I figure it is better to ride off into the abyss of hair loss at a rapid pace than to cling onto scraps for another year or two.

In conjunction with the obvious three I have been taking a few vitamins to help or aid the other treatments, I just did not add them because they are really not proven. For awhile I was taking 3 suppliments that could help in some way, but after about 5-6 months and less hair I cut back to the basics of the three proven and a multi-vitamin.

If I were to ditch one of the three it would have to be the Minoxidil. I know it's the best for regrowth but I am pretty sure that with continued use over a long period of time I start experiencing those dreaded side effects. I have also been using it for the longest out of any of my treatments which is about 1 year 4 months, and never really saw any benefits just chest pains and sheds.

The timeline is as follows for everything I have ever tried:

Propecia - Going on 1 year

Minoxidil - 7 months strait only missing 2 1/2 weeks approx. not at same time
2nd time - 2 to 3 months but stopped for 1.5 months
3rd time - 4 months, stopped completely

Nizoral - 7 months strait 3-4 times a week


I am pretty sure I have just never seen any positive results, at best it seems as if I am just slowing it down a little bit but not slow enough that things will reverse. I mean I can look at my temples and see miniaturized hairs, but that is were they stay and eventually just vanish altogether.

While I might be exaggerating a bit about looking like Jason Alexander in a year I kind of feel that I am dead on with my comment. Just about a year ago I had only minor recession on my temples and a 12 oz. can sized thinning spot on top, nothing extreme just very early stage hair loss stuff. Now I have diffuse thinning on the entire crown, mid vertex, and temples. To sum it all up the entire top part of my scalp is just thinning with the crown and temples being the hardest hit and the mid is gaining ground quickly.

I wish that my hair shedding was going to level off, but I have poor genetics working against me. My father started losing his hair when he was 23 and was bald around 30, my genetics seem to have gotten worse because I started losing my hair when I was 20 1/2 so I figure there is no way I'm holding out till 30.

I never had the illution that I was going to regrow my full head of hair when I first started, I began taking Propecia for all the right reasons which are to keep what you have. Back when I started I figured I would be sitting pretty keeping what I had, especially since I was also using Minoxidil. My thing is I don't want to keep hanging in there month after month hope that I will start regrowing what I started with, I mean if that was the case when is enough, enough? I could spend the next year going through the same thing I went through this year and be no better off. If there is a good chance of me reclaiming what I started with then I have no problem going another round on the treatments, but from the hundreds of hours I have read posts and info relating to hair loss it seems as if I should just stay down for the count.

 

[Slartibartfast]

Odelay,

I hadn't had seen an improvement in my hair at the 1 year mark of using finasteride and minoxidil, though I'm sure my loss was far less than it otherwise would've been, but around the 18 to 20 month stage it finally started to thicken up over most of my head.

The exception being the front, where at least the loss slowed to a crawl and the remaining hairs were thicker thanks to the minoxidil.

If, after another 6 months, you're getting nowhere you could always consider dutasteride, its working well for me so far.

 

[bombscience]

At the 8th month mark I'm in a similar situation except my hair is falling out faster than before I started treatments. I'm with you on minoxidil as well, I want to ditch it because I see no results and all it does is make my scalp irritated.

Try to ride it out if you can for another couple month. You could still see some improvement. I"m giving it until 16 months before I start reall making judgements on what's happening.

 

[Odelay]

I hear ya both. When I started the only place it was a little noticable I was losing hair was on the crown of my head, where these treatments are supposed to work the best. Even 6 months into the treatments I noticed that my temples were hanging in there better than my crown, which to this day is still the thinnest part of my head.

I was thinking about taking Dutasteride, but was a little leary of the increased side effects and the unknown long term effects that the pill might cause. While I still might jump on Dutasteride I would need to do a lot of research on it and run it by my doctor just to make sure I was not shooting myself in my foot later down the road concerning my health.

Totally agree with you Bomb, and I know how it feels to be one of those people who are not seeing results. You at least still have a few more months till the one year mark, so I hope you start seeing some benefits from your treatments. The minoxidil would always cause me more dandruff than anything else, even after using it for months in conjunction with Nizoral I would still get flakes wherever I would apply the Minoxidil.

That is good news Slartibartfast, how long have you been on Dutasteride? I could see myself being persuaded to jump on Dutasteride if I could find it on the internet pretty cheap, I would not be jeopardizing my health, and had good reason to believe I would get results. If you would not mind I would love to hear about your expirence on Dutasteride and how it is going.

 

[Odelay]

Back to the top you go.

 

[bombscience]

Have you ever wondered if you're only doing harm to your situation if you're applying a topical that isn't effective for your follicles?

Example: Say the minoxidil solution doesn't promote your hair follicles to grow; you're one of the 31%. But you keep putting this liquid on your head in hopes that one day it magically does kick in and grow hair. So day after day your head is subjected to alchohol, a glycerine, and a chemical. Your hair follicles are already having a tough time dealing with the DHT that is destroying them, but now there is this constant foreign substance being absorbed and a constant irritation of the scalp. You're immune system only attacks the hair follicles faster because they are in a state that is more unhealthy than that caused by DHT alone.

Does this sound impossible to anyone? It's something that I've wondered in my head about us slow/non-responders.

 

[Odelay]

That same exact question has run through my head so many times, even more so whenever I check out my hairline anymore. I probably should of just stopped using it after I gave it 6 months to work its magic and saw nothing regrowing. Like you said though you hear so many people saying it is working great for them you just hope that it is going to kick in for you at any moment and your hair is going to grow back. I wonder if by continuing to apply minoxidil, even though you have been on it for the required time and have not seen results, if you are not shooting yourself in the foot. It is obvious that minoxidil causes shedding even if it does not regrow hair for you, and by continuing to use it you are just shedding over and over again cancelling out any good that might be coming from Propecia.

Back to my situation I think I have decided to ditch the Propecia and I am contemplating jumping up a level and trying Dutasteride. One thing is for sure though I have given minoxidil enough time to work and it did jack for me. So never again will I ever have to put that stuff on my head and deal with that damn dropper.

Ohhhh Happy Day! :jump:

 

[Slartibartfast]

That is good news Slartibartfast, how long have you been on Dutasteride? I could see myself being persuaded to jump on Dutasteride if I could find it on the internet pretty cheap, I would not be jeopardizing my health, and had good reason to believe I would get results. If you would not mind I would love to hear about your expirence on Dutasteride and how it is going.

Yesterday was my 8 month mark on dutasteride.

I take one .5mg capsule every other day which makes it more affordable but certainly not cheap. Mind you, the drug has such a long half-life that I could probably cut it down to a much less frequent dose but I'm nervous about risking my hair.

I felt I had to switch to dutasteride to have any chance of keeping hair on the front of my head, my forehead is already high enough, so I took the plunge.

After a month I noticed that when I brushed my hair far fewer hairs were coming out and after about 3 months I realized that my hair fall was how it had been before I had male pattern baldness. Over the next 3 months my frontal density stayed fairly static but the minoxidil was still thickening up those hairs so the overall appearance improved. During this time the rest of my hair improved markedly, still not as thick as it once was but getting pretty close.

Between months 6 and 7 my frontal area decided to thin out but, in difference to any other frontal thinning I've had, new hairs appeared within a couple of weeks of the shed starting and are currently going through the process of becoming fully paid up members of my hair community (ie full length/thickness/darkness).

At month 8 the rest of my hair looks almost how it did before all this started, I'm just hoping the front inch or so will follow suit.

Wow, that was a bit longer than I thought it would be but I hope it helps.
Slarti

 

[Odelay]

Ya it helped a lot, thanks. One more question is how long were you on Finasteride before you switched over? One more question is did you get your Dutasteride off the internet, and if so where?

The more I though about my long term concerns with Dutasteride the more I realized that most likely something like cloning or a better treatment will come out in the next few years. I would just love to keep some good coverage until that time and then the hell with the pills and go get myself some cloned hair or whatever.

 

[Slartibartfast]

dutasteride

Odelay, I took finasteride for 20 months before switching to dutasteride and I've been buying it from internationalpharmacy.com with no problems.

Also, I'm side effect free so far.

 

[Odelay]

Thanks

Thanks for the input.

 

[jackster]

you might want to look into dutasteride instead of propecia and a topical anti-androgen like spirolactone or RU...also look into t-flavanone ..there's been some positive feedback coming in from users..i think it would be wise after 1 year if your worse off to re-evaluate your regimen....goodluck