Pill Cutter for Proscar

[persistentone]

I'm interested in saving some money on Propecia by cutting Proscar into eight pills. For a 5 mg Proscar tablet that gives you about 0.625 mg per dose, slightly below Propecia. Does anyone make a pill cutter that will cut a circular pill into eight equal sections? Doing this manually by a traditional cutter is cumbersome and not very accurate.

I'm interested in experimenting with lower than 1mg doses of Finasteride. My hair loss and scalp itching tell me almost immediately when I am off the critical threshold dose of Finasteride. I get enormous hair loss and itchy scalp very quickly after stopping the drug cold turkey. I have had some success taking one 1.25mg pill (Finasteride divided by four) every other day, but would like to try a lower dose daily.

Any insights into pill cutting hardware available for this task is appreciated.

 

[Lukas73]

Hey, sorry I haven't ever seen a pill cutter like that. I believe that all of them are pretty much the same and only cut the pills in half. Maybe try dissolving finasteride in vodka and drink an appropriate amount each day.

I'm interested in experimenting with lower than 1mg doses of Finasteride. My hair loss and scalp itching tell me almost immediately when I am off the critical threshold dose of Finasteride.

Did you mean that taking higher dose than your threshold will increase the scalp itching and hairloss? Or lower dose? And can I ask why you don't want take 1.25mg every day? I am just being curious since I am kind of experimenting with the dosages myself.

 

[talmoode]

Did you mean that taking higher dose than your threshold will increase the scalp itching and hairloss? Or lower dose? And can I ask why you don't want take 1.25mg every day? I am just being curious since I am kind of experimenting with the dosages myself.

I am curious about this as well. I am taking 1mg a day and the scalp pain/soreness is becoming unberable and am thinking if it's that extra testosterone that wasn't converted to DHT floating around and making my scalp oily and sore or if 1mg is just not enough for me to stop DHT attacking hair follicles and maybe I need bigger dose..

 

[persistentone]

Hey, sorry I haven't ever seen a pill cutter like that. I believe that all of them are pretty much the same and only cut the pills in half. Maybe try dissolving finasteride in vodka and drink an appropriate amount each day. Did you mean that taking higher dose than your threshold will increase the scalp itching and hairloss? Or lower dose? And can I ask why you don't want take 1.25mg every day? I am just being curious since I am kind of experimenting with the dosages myself.

I answered this question earlier today and my response just completely disappeared. I am not sure what is going on there.

In my case, with no Finasteride, I get about 100 to 200 hairs lost each day in shower (a LOT of hair loss) and my scalp gets itchy. If I go onto Finasteride, this itchiness goes away about 80% to 90%, and the hair loss comes down to about 30 per day. I can duplicate these results like clockwork. I stop Finasteride and hair loss and itchiness come back quickly. I re-start Finasteride and those symptoms go away quickly (less than a full week).

Unfortunately, I get bad sexual side effects from the drug, so I want to see if I can make due with a lower dose and at least partially improve the sexual side effects. So taking about 0.625 mg per day was going to be my first experiment, which corresponds to a 5 mg Proscar tablet divided into eight parts.

- - - Updated - - -

I am curious about this as well. I am taking 1mg a day and the scalp pain/soreness is becoming unberable and am thinking if it's that extra testosterone that wasn't converted to DHT floating around and making my scalp oily and sore or if 1mg is just not enough for me to stop DHT attacking hair follicles and maybe I need bigger dose..

talmoode, did you talk to your doctor about this? Was Finasteride ever controlling your symptoms at all?

Maybe you are overdrying your scalp or using too strong a shampoo? I use Nioxin for fine hair and really scrub the scalp heavily when I use it, leaving it on about two minutes, sometimes two applications per shower. That seems to be right *for my scalp* but you need to experiment to make sure you are not using something too harsh or over-using whatever does work.

Any chance you are taking Testosterone or DHEA or something that would increase DHT levels?

 

[talmoode]

hi thanks for the reply. No I haven't talked to my doctor about it. My hair is pretty short and I can see my scalp through and there is no redness and nothing that indicates that my scalp is in bad shape (though I have seborrheic dermatitis on my face and body). It's just this horrible feeling like someone is pulling my hair out. I think I first noticed this weird pain on my scalp just before I started Propecia. Then everything seemed okay until 7 or 8 months mark of treatment and it's been all downhill since then. I've noticed that my scalp has become oiler (it was on the drier side before finasteride) and the oiler my scalp gets, the more soreness I get. I wash my hair with an organic shampoo or bodywasher with no harsh chemicals in it. I am taking vitamin, zinc, fish oil and milk thistle (for liver)....I have been thinking of trying the Paleo Diet...

 

[persistentone]

It's really not very advisable for one to adjust dose of a drug without consultation with a professional Doctor or Pharmacist. Drugs work at a certain dosage for a certain condition. Simply adjusting the dose may end up under dosing whereby you would not see results that you wish for and going for higher doses may end up having an overdose which may lead to undesirable or even potentially fatal side effects.

I would strongly advise one to check with Dr or pharmacist before adjusting dose of any drug.

John, that is clear, but what is any dermatologist going to say? They are going to recommend the doses used in studies, and they aren't going to approve experiments, just for liability reasons. I had one doctor that refused to prescribe Proscar and let me cut into four parts. She insisted the study was for a single pill at exactly 1 mg. That sort of rigid thinking satisfies statisticians and doesn't use much common sense or help patients. You save a ton of money by cutting Proscar into four parts, and unlikely getting a 1.25mg dose instead of 1mg is going to change the result.

In my case, I have a very very very clear marker for whether this drug is working. Without the drug, I shed hair like crazy and my scalp itches. With the drug that all reverses within one week. Without such a clear marker for the drug I would hesitate to adjust the dose. But I think simply by counting the number of hairs I lose each day in shower I can get a reasonable signal that the drug is at its critical dose.

And, the fact is, this drug has nasty sexual side effects for some of us. I had one dermatologist tell me "You need to choose between great sex and having hair." He's only partly joking, but the fact is there is a tradeoff here. You need to seek a balance between too much DHT in your body tissues and too little DHT, and each of the metrics that are affected by that contradict each other. That leaves the patient in a position where you have to make some terrible choices, and it's not a mystery why someone would want to achieve a better life balance and get 90% of the benefit of Propecia while improving sex life maybe 10%+