Thickening During Anagen (growth) Phase

[shulk]

Hello,

I am about 8 months on finasteride 1.25mg, when i yank out hairs in my problem areas like the vertex, i can still see some hairs (6cm) gradually thinning from the top till the root.

So;
1. The hair is not good at repairing itself during the growth phase and first needs to fall out first before growing back thicker.
2. Finasteride is not effective enough for me.

Has anyone ever yanked out hairs and seen the reverse of what i have? Thinner at the top and gradually increasing diameter towards the root? I am not talking about just the first or last 0.5 cm of the hair.

Thanks

 

[shulk]

shameless boop

 

[Jameston]

With finasteride you are still not fully protected because it only stops half of the dht and still gives testosterone the chance to kill your hair. You can maybe add spironolactone cream or other topical anti androgens to overcome remaining androgens.

Are you using minoxidil ?

 

[shulk]

Thanks for the reply. If you look at it from that viewpoint, it only stops 35% of DHT (70/2). I have used minoxidil before finasteride and am still on it, i don't think it has done anything for me though. Currently i have some positive signs like 2cm long barely pigmented hairs filling in the temple areas, but on the other hand the more important already present hairs seem to be thinning.

So i am still very curious to how finasteride works. Does it thicken hairs during growing phase (and reflecting that in diameter). Or does a thicker hair only appears after it falls out.

 

[rclark]

Finasteride can actually make the diameter of your hair thicker. So, that's not someone's imagination.

That said, are you plucking your hair?

Also, don't know if .5 is effective, but it's better than nothing at all.

 

[shulk]

Thank you for the replies.

I though it was called thinning because your hair strands actually thin over the length. Here are a few pics of hairs i just combed out, i used to have more extreme examples, but my hair does not seem to grow that thick anymore.. http://imgur.com/a/eRuxe

I would be surprised if it was alopecia areata though. I got the classic burning sensation which is plainly painful on the vertex. I started losing the most hair there first. Finasteride 1.25mg over almost 9 months did Nothing to the inflammation and it looks way worse now. I'm debating about starting dutasteride, it seems my only option but i am nervous about it .

 

[shulk]

Will do. The bulb on the pictures above is just under the coin at the thin end. So all the hairs are thinning towards the root.

 

[michel sapin]

jameston you are saying wrong information : propecia 1 mg block 85 % of DHT 2-5ar in the scalp , the important one . Dutasteride 0,5 mg block 95 % of the 2-5 ar .

 

[Samson123]

My shed hairs before finasteride had even thickness from tip to root. I know this because I have for many years analyzed my shed hairs. After a couple of months on finasteride I noticed a shed hair in the sink that was very thick at the tip and noticeably thinner towards the root. I didn't exactly know what to make of this and I kept on with the drug. It's not alopecia areata, In my case it was finasteride that was doing this. Were your hairs thinning towards the root before finasteride? My shed hairs looked nothing like exclamation point hairs. Those taper very dramatically near the root. Mine were gradual. After about 10 months or so, I was shedding hairs that were white, shredded looking, and so thin that they were almost invisible. I never had a single hair that looked like that before finasteride, now they are everywhere. finasteride basically just destroyed my hair in every way possible and I can only attribute this to AR upregulation whereby the hair follicle receptor becomes sensitized to dht way beyond the protective effects of finasteride.

 

[shulk]

Great information lacy, thank you. This apparently strange thinning of my hair is something that has started before finasteride, even before minoxidil, always thought it was normal and has been ongoing for at least three years. I can even see it happen really mildly in the horseshoe area now.

Like Samson said "my shed hairs looked nothing like exclamation point hairs. Those taper very dramatically near the root. Mine were gradual.". The pics on the googles indeed look a lot different.

I am gonna see if i can find some sort of hair specialist in the area and see what they think. I am also gonna order a thyroid blood test, something that ive always wanted to do, and now may be a possible culprit in speeding my hair loss.

How are you now Samson and what are you using?