Low Local Estrone Ipotrichia Or... Just Inflammation?

[ChemHead]

In my experience, progesterone has never really done anything significant for hair growth. It's only made me feel somewhat drowsy and numb.. relaxed in a medicated sense. The only thing that has ever helped my hair has been high levels of estrogens and simultaneous inhibition of 5a-reductase. Unfortunately, that combination doesn't really work out so well unless it's localized to the scalp.

 

[Go_faster_Sonic]

guys, do you know if there's any study or case study or any guy here that puts together hair loss and autoimmune disorders...
as i said, i noticed that my hair are thinning in the itchy areas...

 

[Heinrich Harrer]

In my experience, progesterone has never really done anything significant for hair growth. It's only made me feel somewhat drowsy and numb.. relaxed in a medicated sense. The only thing that has ever helped my hair has been high levels of estrogens and simultaneous inhibition of 5a-reductase. Unfortunately, that combination doesn't really work out so well unless it's localized to the scalp.

I want to read your thoughts on gynecomastia and pseudogyno from finasteride. For me, puffiness in and around the areola happened within 48 hours. After stopping the drug at four months, the puffiness remained. Ultrasound showed no gland, only fat. But the area around the areola is clearly puffy, as if there is gland (head and also tail going to the side).

Now, my e2 levels were lower during two months of finasteride than they were before I started the medication. I was eating a ton of spinach, red gabbage and celery during the meds to help prevent sides.

I would like to hear what you have to say about why it’s developed in the first place, whether it can be reversed and how.

Cheers.

 

[ChemHead]

I want to read your thoughts on gynecomastia and pseudogyno from finasteride. For me, puffiness in and around the areola happened within 48 hours. After stopping the drug at four months, the puffiness remained. Ultrasound showed no gland, only fat. But the area around the areola is clearly puffy, as if there is gland (head and also tail going to the side).

Now, my e2 levels were lower during two months of finasteride than they were before I started the medication. I was eating a ton of spinach, red gabbage and celery during the meds to help prevent sides.

I would like to hear what you have to say about why it’s developed in the first place, whether it can be reversed and how.

Cheers.

As I mentioned before, finasteride is an incredibly potent drug. At 0.05 mg, it was still able to to suppress statistically significant levels of DHT production.

As far as why it has developed in the first place... we all have different genetically determined expression of different enzymes in all of our bodily tissues. It's the reason why some people have hair loss and others don't and it's also the reason for everyone else in between. Some people naturally experience hair loss, but don't get gynecomastia. Some people get gynecomastia, but have beautiful, thick heads of hair. Some people have beautiful, thick heads of hair and don't get gynecomastia. It all comes down to enzymatic expression in individual tissues. Serum concentrations of hormones can sometimes be helpful diagnostic tools, but they don't reveal the whole picture and low serum estradiol levels don't necessarily mean that one can't still get gynecomastia.

With that being said, you very likely have a high enzymatic expression of aromatase in your breast tissue and possibly high expression of estrogen receptors. You may also have weak 5a-reductase expression in that tissue, which was likely the only source of antagonism against estrogenic effects in your breast tissue. So, binding and subsequent destruction of the 5a-reductase enzyme in your breast tissue by finasteride made the environment in the tissue hospitable for feminization. With a lack of 5a-reductase, high aromatase expression and estrogen receptor expression is all that is needed along with sufficient levels of aromatizable androgens to cause feminization.

In regard to how it can be reversed, you want to make it easier for your body to normalize and recover. By eating ONLY raw fruits and vegetables, leafy greens, and potent root vegetables like ginger, garlic, beets, etc., your body is able to take a break from the energy it uses to break down foods that are difficult to digest and foods that are generally inflammatory. If your body doesn't have to deal with those external burdens from meats and difficult to digest foods, it can use that energy to renew itself. It's not easy to eat that way at first, but it's the only thing that has ever significantly sped up the recovery process for me.

In the short term, you can topically apply Andractim to your affected breast tissue to aid in catabolism of the gynecomastia.

 

[Go_faster_Sonic]

@ChemHead, i did an extensive research on the problem. soon i'll share what i've found. In the meanwhile, since you said that spironolactone and androgen receptor antagonists are safe, here's spironolactone horror story. pretty much like finasteride:
http://paleoforwomen.com/how-prescription-drugs-almost-killed-me-and-stole-years-of-my-life/

 

[Go_faster_Sonic]

@ChemHead i even have a question about this:

So, in essence, progesterone is not really a 5a-reductase inhibitor. You're just keeping the 5a-reductase enzyme busy reducing progesterone instead of testosterone or other steroids... you're pushing the system in favor of producing dihydroprogesterone instead of other 5a-reduced steroids like DHT and dihydrodeoxycorticosterone.

If my 5alpha is busy reducing prog in dhp, this means that it could even be useful managing my pfs symptoms? you know, because P and DHP are precursors of allopregnanolone...

Another question is: do i understand well when, looking at what i've found up to know, i assume that more T means less DHT?

 

[ChemHead]

@ChemHead, i did an extensive research on the problem. soon i'll share what i've found. In the meanwhile, since you said that spironolactone and androgen receptor antagonists are safe, here's spironolactone horror story. pretty much like finasteride:
http://paleoforwomen.com/how-prescription-drugs-almost-killed-me-and-stole-years-of-my-life/

I don't think I necessarily said they were safe... just that they were safer than finasteride only in regard to the reversal of their effects. Finasteride is a "suidicidal" inhibitor... it forms a permanent, irreversible enzyme complex and the only way to produce DHT again is for the body to create more 5AR since it cannot be release from the complex. It's also possible that 5AR expression has a self-perpetuating positive feedback mechanism (meaning the presence of 5AR or DHT positively affects the expression of 5AR) which means that wiping out your level of 5AR to very low levels makes it far more difficult to return to normal.

 

[ChemHead]

@ChemHead i even have a question about this:


If my 5alpha is busy reducing prog in dhp, this means that it could even be useful managing my pfs symptoms? you know, because P and DHP are precursors of allopregnanolone...

Another question is: do i understand well when, looking at what i've found up to know, i assume that more T means less DHT?

That's a difficult question to answer because you need to consider total steroid synthesis rate as well as steroid metabolism.. and those are equally difficult to measure because it's difficult to measure the true synthesis of autocrine and paracrine estrogens and androgens since they aren't measured in serum.

 

[Go_faster_Sonic]

btw, some guys on the hackstasis forum are fighting pfs using the tei (trace elements inc) and guess what? some of them even have their hairs back. anyway, i've found that the low local estorne ipotrichia is a valid theory but not confirmed clinically. I only disagree on the root of the problem. The doctors here think that estrone doesn't get produced because of a genetic issue. This is not possible. Research has found inflammation in the perifollicular area of women and men with femal pattern hair loss. I thnk that imflammation is the core of the problem here.
Uh, my diagnosis is frontoparietal alopecia. So, if inflammation is causing my shedding, what causes inflammation?

 

[Go_faster_Sonic]

@ChemHead, i want to shut down my lotion and use the dermaroller device. what do you think? i'm only afraid that by dermarolling, my hair will get caught in the needles and ripped off...

i also want to add osmething that acts like the minoxidil, increasing blood flow locally, vegf and igf-1? is there anything like minoxidil? i'm afraid that using minoxidil, would worsen my pfs...

 

[ChemHead]

@Go_faster_Sonic
I think for most people, minoxidil is relatively benign, but it is possible that if you're body is in a weakened state that it could be a load on your liver and kidneys.

I would definitely not use a dermaroller, but I would use a dermastamp, dermapen, or derminator device. You can use rosemary oil extract and ricinoleic acid from castor oil to help with the growth instead of minoxidil.

There's a guy on reddit that pretty much regrew all his hair with minoxidil and dermarolling/dermapen. Search Dermroller (later dermapen) and minoxidil results on google and you should find it.

 

[Go_faster_Sonic]

...but i just realized that, as i said in the first post, my problem is due to inflammation. applying rosemary oil ore other oils, will i make my scalp inflammation worse?

 

[ChemHead]

Diluted rosemary oil should improve inflammation and improve circulation. Also, by inducing acute inflammation with derma needling, you will ultimately improve inflammation by inducing the release of growth factors and triggering tissue remodeling. The needling should only be once a week, though, and the needle depth should be at least 1.5mm.

 

[Go_faster_Sonic]

Thank you a lot, chem. now i'm looking for the best microneedling options. I wanted to buy the original demraroller form germany, but i'm not a doctor, they wont' ship. in the studies i read, i even found that low quality needles, for example containing nickel, might be dangerous... any suggestion here?

 

[ChemHead]

I guess it depends on how much money you would like to spend. For a cheap, simple dermastamp, I would get something like this on eBay Professional 40 Needle Titanium Derma Stamp & Micro Needling . It's got 32ga needles, so pretty small in diameter.

I personally purchased the dermastamp above and I also purchased the derminator from here:

Derminator

The derminator has 34ga needles.. so very, very small in diameter. I only bought the dermastamp on eBay because the derminator may take awhile to reach the United States and I don't really want to wait to get started. You can also buy dermastamps from the same website as the derminator and I'm sure they're higher quality than the eBay ones. They ship from Czech Republic, so I'm sure they will reach anywhere in Europe faster than here.

Whatever you decide to get, you want to get at least 1.5mm needle depth and the smallest needle gauge/diameter. The derminator is adjustable for depth of penetration so, you don't really need to worry about size.

 

[Go_faster_Sonic]

wow, that fermastamp is very little and i have a typical fphl, it will take hours to cover all my head :-(
is the derminator fast enough to cover all the head?

got any result from using the derminator, anyway?

as for the rosemary oil, diluted in what? in which percentage? any idea?

 

[ChemHead]

I would probably dilute the rosemary oil in something like emu oil, jojoba oil, or coconut oil.

I don't yet have my derminator yet, so I can't report any results yet, but it should be pretty fast... but yeah, using a dermastamp will be kind of slow.

If you check this link out, this guy posted a video of himself using a cheaper version of a dermapen:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tressless/comments/9yyczs/dermroller_later_dermapen_and_minox_results/

video here:

 

[Go_faster_Sonic]

i see

I would probably dilute the rosemary oil in something like emu oil, jojoba oil, or coconut oil.

I don't yet have my derminator yet, so I can't report any results yet, but it should be pretty fast... but yeah, using a dermastamp will be kind of slow.

If you check this link out, this guy posted a video of himself using a cheaper version of a dermapen:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tressless/comments/9yyczs/dermroller_later_dermapen_and_minox_results/

video here:

... i see... i wonder how i should use it on the back of my head...

 

[ChemHead]

I would probably go by feel, but you could probably set up a couple mirrors so that you can see what you're doing. I will also be using this on the sides and back of my head as well as on scar tissue.

 

[Go_faster_Sonic]

Returning to the Topic, The inflammation. I just performed the allergic tests and i am positive for respiratory allergies to dust mites and cats but no dermatologic reactions. So, my scalp inflammation seems to be unrelated to allergies.
What shall i investigate now?

On a Side note, i noticed that my scalp becomes more itchy, like a lot, in front of monitors: smartphones, laptop, desktops... The Bigger The monitor, The Bigger The pruritus...