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- 3
The idea of my hair getting worse on finasteride is terrifying and I want to be careful. Would taking a smallish dose like .5 mg plus eating foods that reduce testosterone help ensure that upregulation won't happen to me?
Is There A Way I Can Take finasteride That Will Reduce The Chance Of Getting Androgenic Upregulation?
- Thread starter chappaquiddick
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- dose finasteride
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If you can get your DHT level checked, do it first. That will give you an idea how well the drug might work for you. I think people losing hair with low dht levels are the ones at risk of accelerating hairloss with finasteride because low dht means greater follicular sensitivity to dht and follicles can upregulate making them way more sensitive to dht, way beyond any kind of protection finasteride can provide. .5 mg is almost no different than 1 mg so if you want to start low, go with .25 mg. I think it's about inhibiting dht just enough so the follicles don't go into a 'starvation mode' and scramble to produce more receptors for dht.
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Ive been on finasteride for almost 3 months and I havent experienced any of the symptoms, should I likely be fine?
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finasteride greatly accelerated my hairloss/thinning and I never had any 'reflex' symptoms. Shake some hairs out on a piece of paper and see if the hair is thinner towards the root end. That's just one of the things finasteride did to my hair and it is not a good sign.
Damn, I'm 3.5 months on finasteride and my hair is much thinner and I am still shedding a ton, definitely more than before finasteride. Not experiencing other sides of reflex, but I definitely fit the description of someone with low DHT initially so I am very worried that finasteride is f*****g my hair. Libido is lower too. Hair also gets thinner towards root which scares the sh*t out of me because I see posts like yours mentioning it but I don't know if I should stay on and hope it's just a shed or will stop soon, or if I should drop it and hope it will get better. Are you still on it? If there has been damage done, is it permanent so dropping it won't make anything better? No one could even tell I was balding before finasteride now 3 months later I use toppik everyday to fill in my hairline or it would look like sh*t and I'm still shedding.
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Unfortunately I don't think anyone knows for sure. I'm also just over 3 month on finasteride and my hair looks no better, possibly worse. But Im sticking with it (probably against my better judgment since I can't completely shake this dull ball pain I've been having) because of a couple reasons. 1.) Hair cycles are months long and 3 mo is too soon to draw conclusions. 2.) my scalp itches way less which gives me a hunch it's working. 3.) It seems like more than half of ppl who succeed with finasteride go through sheds before it gets better. 4.) If finasteride makes hair worse, I really think it can't be permanent but is caused by a change in cyclING from the hormone changes. I don't necessarily buy the upregulation theories, and even of theyre true, how do we know our receptors don't also downregulate eventually after dht levels normalize?