My hair is thinning in the front. Smart to get on finasteride?

[Mabe]

Hi. I'm 18 years old and I'm in the very early stages of male pattern baldness. As of right now I have a full head of hair with very early recession in the temples and thinning in the frontal scalp. Under a bright light you can see right through my scalp (I also have red hair so that just makes it worse) and under a normal light you can see thinning if you look closely. Still, I fear it's getting slightly worse week after week. Right now I'm just using 2% nizoral shampoo 3x a week in the shower.

So now I'm looking to get on finasteride to combat the progression, but is it true that finasteride may actually worsen my situation? Reading through some of these topics, specifically the topics about hairlines and sheds, I'm afraid my hair in the front may fall out and I won't recover. Being that I also have long hair, something like this would just be detrimental for me. Is this a valid concern I'm having and is it potentially unsafe to start on finasteride? I'd love to start treatments early in order to try and reverse my male pattern baldness, but not if I have to risk accelerating it at the same time.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mabe]

Bump, anyone?

 

[BalderThanABiscuit]

I don't know. I always get queasy when people mention that it made their hairline worse! I'm 27 and mine has been thinning very slow for maybe 5 years, but it's at the point where I need to try to do something about or just buzz it down/shave it.

I've read that there is an "accelerated shedding" for some people, which is really an "accelerated hair cycle" that tells the follicles with thinner/shorter hair to drop what their doing and restart the growth cycle with progressively larger and larger (instead of thinner and thinner) hairs because the follicles are no longer affected by DHT. The worst part about it is that a lot of your hair could cycle, causing it to all fall at the same time making you look even thinner. After, it is supposed to start growing back thicker, which is why most people don't see results for 6 months to a year depending on how long the hair is.

finasteride is like a joke on balding people! It may cause your worst fears to come true right before your eyes, making you get scared of it and stopping taking it. It's supposed to be that if you stay on it, the hair will grow back.

Some peoples' hair never does grow back, but that can't be conclusively blamed on the drug since the drug may not have worked and their balding just sped up.

I guess you have to make a decision:

Do you want your hair to progressively fall out until you are bald?

Or do you want to try to slow it down/stop it eventually after perhaps having an increased period of shed.

... or, do you want to risk that finasteride might accelerate your natural balding?

It's a hard choice, I know!