male pattern baldness prone and AAS testosterone cycle

[97viper]

I am 35 years old and started losing hair at a fast rate when I was about 18. I had a hair transplant and started finasteride at age 23. Over the past 12 years finasteride has done an excellent job at stabilizing my hair loss. I am considering starting my first AAS cycle of 500 mg test per week over 12 weeks. Is the increased amount of testosterone in my body going to cause more hair loss or will the finasteride continue to prevent the conversion to DHT regardless of the increase in testosterone?

If I had to guess, I'd imagine the finasteride is currently greatly reducing the amount of DHT, but not eliminating it, and the efficiency of the finasteride will diminish with increased testtosterone levels.

I'm also wondering if increasing the finasteride from 1mg/day to 2.5mg/day would be beneficial for hair loss during a test cycle. I have read that 1 mg is all that is needed to reduce hair loss and a higher dose does not improve results, but that is in a normal study, not a study when someone is injecting additional testosterone into their body.

 

[dusty]

yes it is going to cause hair loss and could destroy basically everything you saved on finasteride....it could seriously make you completely bald...not trying to scare you just saying that finasteride will do nothing against DHT increases due to steroids

 

[Captain Hook]

http://www.goodlookingloser.com/entr...n-guide-part-5

This guy apparently has a lot of experience with hair loss from steroids and based on his cycles he states that nandrolone (NPP) is considered a 'hair safe' steroid by itself if you aren't on finasteride. This may sound counterproductive not to be on finasteride but this is because the 5-alpha-reductase enzyme is needed to metabolise nandrolone into dihydronandrolone, a much weaker androgen, if you're on finasteride on cycle with NPP, 5AR will be inhibited and NPP, a potent androgen, won't be metabolised and hence will begin to miniaturise hair follicles.

He also says to be careful with testosterone as he experienced problems at 350 mg and higher per week. He recommends 250 mg of testosterone per week on cycle. Of course your mileage may vary, I'd titrate the dosage and see how it affects you if you're willing to risk it.

Ignore what he says about azelaic acid on his website, reason being is this:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3207614

As you can see it's only an in vitro study and hence not sound, there is no evidence azelaic acid has mechanisms to prevent Androgenetic Alopecia in vivo or in human trials

If you want more protection from Androgenetic Alopecia than just finasteride on cycle, use 2% ketoconazole shampoo (Nizoral) twice weekly and 5% spironolactone topical cream twice daily, they're both common additions I see used in the bodybuilding community and for good reason, they work.

To answer your question, no, 2.5 mg a day will not provide any greater benefit than 1mg, look at this dose response curve, 1mg inhibits the conversion of 68.7% of DHT, 2mg and up will inhibit close to 70% of type II 5AR and it levels off from there, you won't get any statistically significant nor noticeable difference from any dosage above 1mg. Switch to dutasteride if you want stronger inhibition of 5AR type II, as it inhibits the conversion of DHT by about 95%

http://s1071.photobucket.com/user/sofasale1/media/blah_zps37bfd8cb.jpg.html

 

[97viper]

Thank you for that information. Is there a ramp up period for dutasteride before it gets to max efficiency or will it begin working immediately? I'm only guessing but I would imaging blocking nearly 69% of dht at normal test levels may lead to similar dht levels as blocking 95% of dht at 500mg of test per week?

 

[Captain Hook]

If by 'ramp up period' you mean time until peak plasma concentration then it occurs anywhere from 1-3 hours after the first dose, but as for maximum efficacy, studies on people with BPH received a 7 day loading dose, so it would be prudent to have taken dutasteride for at least 7 days before starting your cycle.

To answer your question, not necessarily, look at it this way, the reference range for free testosterone in adult males is 270-1070 ng/dL

Let's say your normal free T levels are 500 ng/dL, using finasteride and hence inhibiting the conversion of 70% of this would leave you with 150 ng/dL converted to DHT

Now let's say while on cycle your free T goes up to even past the normal reference range, 1400 ng/dL, using dutasteride and hence inhibiting the conversion of 95% of this would leave you with 70 ng/dL converted to DHT

So as you can see dutasteride while on cycle would in theory be more potent at inhibiting 5AR than finasteride off cycle. These drugs are powerful and preventing hair loss from steroids is not an impossible thing.


(References: http://www.gsk.ca/english/docs-pdf/product-monographs/Avodart.pdf

http://www.webmd.com/men/testosterone-15738?page=3)

 

[97viper]

Excellent info! Last question - Walmart has Dutasteride at ~$195 for 30 days at .5 mg per day. Due to cost I'm considering going with a liquid dutasteride online, but I'm not positive that it's 100% legit so am considering continuing the finasteride along with using the liquid dutasteride. Would that be a bad idea to use both at the same time? I know there are side effects when using large doses of finasteride (5mg) but am not educated on sides when using both finasteride at 1 mg and dutasteride at .5mg together.

 

[Captain Hook]

I'd advise against it. You can find generic dutasteride from online pharmacies which is cheap and at least genuine. So my advice would be to just look around for generic 0.5 mg dutasteride and forgo the liquid as well as forgoing the finasteride, you need to pick just one. If you were able to find testosterone esters without a prescription, I'm confident you can do the same with dutasteride. It's redundant to use finasteride with dutasteride anyways, you'd just be wasting money. Best of luck

 

[shookwun]

I never lost any additional ground from test cycle. They are fairly safe when Propecia is being used.

Even tren sides are over rated. I ran tren for 20 weeks straight, even threw in Dianabol to end my cycle and dint noticed much difference. All though my temple points started getting a thinner pigmentation but once I came off they became more terminal and regained density and colour. The actual effects on my hair was very marginal.


Point being u can read all u want for a general idea but it effects everyone differently. Depends on how sensitive your scalp is to androgens and dht sensitivity being the primary factor. Trial and error


I'd avoid dht based compounds... I took a chanceand lucked out I guess