Topical Finasteride goes systemic too: who has experienced its sides?

[hair2stay]

Hello

I was hoping that topical finasteride did not go systemic but the research is clear: topical application leads to the same systemic reduction in DHT as oral: If you watch MATT DOMINANCE videos, or Hair Cafe or More Plates more Dates, or the Hair Loss talk Show (ALL YOU TUBE channels) they review research studies that clearly show that DHT reduction was systemic (aka serum DHT) just as much as oral....

So, I wonder if topical finasteride simply caters to people prone to believe that they are experiencing sides from the oral...

Has anyone here experienced side effects from topical finasteride. I know Post finasteride syndrome is very rare BUT who would choose to ruin their mental and sexual health to avoid balding?

Anyone experience sides from topical finasteride?

Thank you

 

[debyne]

Recent studies show that topical goes less systemic than oral

 

[hair2stay]

Recent studies show that topical goes less systemic than oral

Do you have a link or source. I hope you're right. But it's unlikely recent studies show something different. They're using same process to measure whether a recent or past experiment right?

Can you provide? Thank you

 

[corkmeister]

- Topical finasteride goes less systemic than taking it orally, because swallowing pills is the essence of 'going systemic'
- The difference is that topical finasteride has a localized effect, but a part of it will always go systemic
- The part that goes systemic will build up over time, and unless you're using very low amounts of topical finasteride, the amount of dht reduced in serum will eventually appear equal to oral
- But serum dht doesn't give the full picture, it's possible that you'd still be better off doing it topically (in terms of avoiding side effects), even when serum dht reduction appears to be equal

 

[debyne]

If you want to use fina, do it topically.

Or rectally

 

[hair2stay]

- Topical finasteride goes less systemic than taking it orally, because swallowing pills is the essence of 'going systemic'
- The difference is that topical finasteride has a localized effect, but a part of it will always go systemic
- The part that goes systemic will build up over time, and unless you're using very low amounts of topical finasteride, the amount of dht reduced in serum will eventually appear equal to oral
- But serum dht doesn't give the full picture, it's possible that you'd still be better off doing it topically (in terms of avoiding side effects), even when serum dht reduction appears to be equal

Very interesting. Thank you. Can you explain more? I thought serum DGT is ultimately the cause of side effects....

 

[hair2stay]

If you want to use fina, do it topically.

Hey Pigeon, your post ( I think it was the "eventually we all get sides on finasteride"....post) on the sides associated with finasteride was terrifying

I think you noted most men assume that their libido is just less due to age and thus ignore the possibility that finasteride is the cause....

Do you think topical is relatively safer? Your expertise is appreciated

 

[hair2stay]

Yes a new study came out and showed serum DHT was less inhibited by topical fina. But still, be cautious I know cases of PFS from topical fina.

You can also look into alternative methods like minoxidil + needling. Check the big thread.

Interesting..... How common is PFS with topical? PFS us TERRIFYING.. lol

Do you think .25mgs of topical applied daily will help? I've been using min and microneedling for 4 months. Some improvement for sure. I'm a Norwood 3 which is fine...but my crown is thinning ....not noticeable...

Do you think putting entire .25 mg on crown makesd sense as this is trouble area or spread everywhere?

Thank you very much!!

 

[Moosey]

Everyone knows it goes systemic. And the amount that goes systemic is enough to cause complete 70% reduction in DHT because people put like 1mg of finasteride on their heads, meanwhile studies show as little as 0.1mg of finasteride is enough to suppress your DHT near 70%.
If you want to have only a topical effect (which i think is useless anyways), use nore more than 0.1mg. There isnt even a reason to use more than that. Its literally just a tiny piece of your skin. You need very little amounts of a drug to cover your scalp.

 

[hair2stay]

Everyone knows it goes systemic. And the amount that goes systemic is enough to cause complete 70% reduction in DHT because people put like 1mg of finasteride on their heads, meanwhile studies show as little as 0.1mg of finasteride is enough to suppress your DHT near 70%.
If you want to have only a topical effect (which i think is useless anyways), use nore more than 0.1mg. There isnt even a reason to use more than that. Its literally just a tiny piece of your skin. You need very little amounts of a drug to cover your scalp.

Hey Noisy

I can only find one study that suggests 0.1 mg causes 70% reduction and that study is suspicious....the same study showed that 0.2 mg caused only a 50% reduction in systemic DHT....That's why I thought a .25 as it's easy to divide a pill

None the less I like your reasoning on only needing a little BUT why do you say it's useless???

Thank you moosey

 

[Moosey]

Hey Noisy

I can only find one study that suggests 0.1 mg causes 70% reduction and that study is suspicious....the same study showed that 0.2 mg caused only a 50% reduction in systemic DHT....That's why I thought a .25 as it's easy to divide a pill

None the less I like your reasoning on only needing a little BUT why do you say it's useless???

Thank you moosey

Let it be 0.25. The top of your head is such a tiny, tiny piece of your body. I bet even 0.01mg are enough to block all 5-ar enzymes there. Its better to be on the safe side if local inhibition is your goal

Well you blocked the 5-ar enzymes on your scalp. You still have all of that DHT circulating in your body, in your blood, reaching your hair and scalp. Are we just going to ignore that?

 

[hair2stay]

Let it be 0.25. The top of your head is such a tiny, tiny piece of your body. I bet even 0.01mg are enough to block all 5-ar enzymes there. Its better to be on the safe side if local inhibition is your goal

Well you blocked the 5-ar enzymes on your scalp. You still have all of that DHT circulating in your body, in your blood, reaching your hair and scalp. Are we just going to ignore that?

No, you're right, DHT will still circulate and reach scalp but like you said earlier even when applied to scalp it will absorb internally.....and significantly lower DHT....Ive seen dermatologists before after pics that show topical works and it seems to be less risky in terms of PFS

If I wasn't so vain and insecure I'd never take the risk but going bald is 100% going to cause me depression so I'd rather risk PFS...and PFS sounds miserable...I know it's rare but there's channel on YouTube PFS network: it's real and really debilitating....

Thank you Moosey

 

[badnewsbearer]

- Topical finasteride goes less systemic than taking it orally, because swallowing pills is the essence of 'going systemic'
- The difference is that topical finasteride has a localized effect, but a part of it will always go systemic
- The part that goes systemic will build up over time, and unless you're using very low amounts of topical finasteride, the amount of dht reduced in serum will eventually appear equal to oral
- But serum dht doesn't give the full picture, it's possible that you'd still be better off doing it topically (in terms of avoiding side effects), even when serum dht reduction appears to be equal

its not equal and it does not accumulate to that level

 

[badnewsbearer]

i dont understand how so many people are are literally so illitarate that they can not read a study finding. probably brain fog from finasteride? it goes systemic and after 2 weeks stops accumulating, peak plasma concentrarions are 110-150 times less than with oral finasteride.serum dht is reduced by 35% compared to 55% after 6 months when not more accumulates. that is with 0.5mg applied topically every day. link to the full study that nobody ever talls about:


actually not sure how to upload documents but i have the full study.

after 24 weeks hair counts was similar to oral finasteride, serum dht was reduced by 35% and reached steady state equillibrium after 2 weeks with peak plasma concentration of 48pg/mL and oral finasteride peak plasma concentration was 7166 pg/mL so about a 150 fold less ppasma concentration of finastride.

sample size 160 subjects in placebo and 160 in topical finasteride group, 81 in oral finasteride group

it would be so f*****g weird if a 150 fold reducrion in finasteride concentration in your body does not come with a reduction in negative adverse events. sure dht inhibirion curve is exponential after a low cut off and this is not for dht only as 5AR is saturated around that point.


but serum dht only tells half the picture.

your serum dht is already lower when your scalp dht is reduced because 5AR is highly expressed on scalps of men with AA. so if you nuke thag you already have systemic reduction because the makeup of dhtbin the body is as follows:

20% of dht is synthesised by the cells in the testicles and directly releases into the blood stream as an endeocrine like hormone. the other 80% are as i understand "leakage" from dht rich tissues. dht is a paracrine and autocrine hormone which means various tissues produce it locally and it is being used locally as well.


why do men take 5mg for prostate problems when 0.5mg reduces serum dht almost as much? why do hair counts differ(they do read studies on this) between 5mg, 1mg and 0.25 mg finasteride? people say the serum dht suppression is almost the same yet hair count and prostate size reduction correlates with a higher dose

that is because serum dht means nothing here. tissuedht is all that matters and there is reaskn to believe that there is differences with dosage. 0.25mg EOD nukes serum dht by as much as the full dose yet this is not effecrive for prostate hyperplasia

now the theory, side effects on finasteride come from lower dht in target tissues, for ED the target is the penis, the epithelial cells and the neurons in the penis.

andeogens are important for regulating expression of nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) and PDE. as i understand thsy also have non genomic(act in the cytoplasm and not over transcription factors) on smooth muscle relaxation by regulation of kalium ion concentrations

this is what gives people ED. also tissue integrity but that is a long term effect not short term

so if the theory i suppose is solid, penis tissue may not be different than prostate tissue and a lower dose especially topically may not reduce dht levels in these tissues far enough to have the ED effect.

also notice that in addition to not the entire dose penetration, many of the 5AR molecules, what is the first target tissue they meet? scalp which is rich in 5AR.so low dose topical, a lot od the finasteeide molecules should go into binding with scalp 5AR and thus are useless to bind and reduces dht in the penis or the brain for example


i think people who just state the serum dht reduction are beinf dishonest because of that. sure, to get a really good result we wpuld need to measure tissue dht levels with various doses. for example if scalp dht is higher in 0.01mg oral finasteride than in 1mg oral finasteride then in my opinion it is reasonable to assume that this also occurs in the penis and brain and thus sides might be mitigated and avoided while scalp dht is still low befause it is applied on scalp skin and not the penis skin

 

[badnewsbearer]

Everyone knows it goes systemic. And the amount that goes systemic is enough to cause complete 70% reduction in DHT because people put like 1mg of finasteride on their heads, meanwhile studies show as little as 0.1mg of finasteride is enough to suppress your DHT near 70%.
If you want to have only a topical effect (which i think is useless anyways), use nore more than 0.1mg. There isnt even a reason to use more than that. Its literally just a tiny piece of your skin. You need very little amounts of a drug to cover your scalp.

not true in every possible way. why not apply scientific mehod when you can just babble like a covid denier

 

[badnewsbearer]

Let it be 0.25. The top of your head is such a tiny, tiny piece of your body. I bet even 0.01mg are enough to block all 5-ar enzymes there. Its better to be on the safe side if local inhibition is your goal

Well you blocked the 5-ar enzymes on your scalp. You still have all of that DHT circulating in your body, in your blood, reaching your hair and scalp. Are we just going to ignore that?

5AR expression is higher on frontal scalp than occipitul scalp in men with Androgenetic Alopecia. this is one of the reasons you do not lose hair on the back fo your head, you still have the same serum dht provided to the back of your head you know.. of course another importanr factor is expression of AR but scalp dht is absolutely more important, serum dht is utterly useless and relative to scalp is actually quite minor, only about 8-10% of testosterone is converted to dht anyway ans dht is a very high binding affinity for SHBG higher than T and thus most of the DHT us not available to your body anyway. this is why scalp dht correlates better with hair count than serum dht actually

 

[badnewsbearer]

i am going to experiment with topical finasteride. i think i am a good research subject because i have over the past two years tried oral finasteride at various times, various doses, 1.25mg ED, EOD, 1mg, 0.25mg, 0.25mg EOD and i pretty consistently get very substabtial reduction in libido at around day 10 and then 2-3 days later i lose the ability to maintain an erection, it is very weak and i have to actually focus keeping it, i could never have sex like this. 2 weeks after stopping i always return to baseline

i have also gotten blood work.(after a month on 0.5mg every day) pretty suprisingly my free testosterone almost got cut in half probably due to the rise in SHBG that was previosuly bound to dht(which has a very hogh affijity for it)
from 19ng/dL to 11.4ng/dL reference range 7-19.

my estradiol is highly elevated at 65ng/dL where the reference range is from 10-45 so way out of the range. my total T was reduced from 584ng/dl to 482ng/dl. its weird bc finasteride is supposed to raise T and not affect SHBG but i calculated that it must have almosz tripled my SHBG so in addition to a 70% reducrion in DHT i got a 40% reduction in free testosterone and a 50% raise in estradiol. pretty crazy sh*t and i am not suprised that i have no libido tbh. my T/E ratio is that of a 85 year old man woth hypogonadism no joke

its like finasterde stimulated aromatisation or some sh*t. dht is a 9 on a referencr range of 30-80 so way out as well.

so i guess it will be easy to find out if topical finasteride messes up my hormones in a similar way, i will try 0.05% 1ml ED for at least 2 months and then get blood work done too see the impact.


also i respond extremely well to finasteride(no suprise not only have i barely any DHT but estradiol is good for hair and my free Testosterone is also reduced so very low androgen estrogen ratio, good for hair, bad for erextion and libido) and i notice a few weeks after stopping very apparent itch which finasteride gets completely rid of and strong shedding increase so i efficacy will be very obvious to me as well

 

[debyne]

I've been on varying doses of oral finasteride over 13 years; I'm in my mid-40s. 1mg/day stops my hairloss in its tracks. 0.5mg/day causes shedding but I feel better on that dose. 0.67mg/day stopped my shedding and had less side effects than 1mg/day. Latetly, I've been on 1mg EOD and feel fine and my hair doesn't seem to be shedding. I've also been on min 5% 2x/day for the last 13 years and had good regrowth with it.

Starting this morning, I started on a homemade solution of topical finasteride 0.025%/mL and 5% min by dropping three 5mg Proscar tablets in my Kirkland 60mL minoxidil bottle. I'm going to keep taking oral finasteride but only 0.5mg EOD (instead of my current 1mg EOD) to see how things go without going 100% all in on topical because I don't want to lose ground. If I feel like my hairloss continues to be halted and I'm maintaining after a month or two, I'll drop the oral finasteride altogether. I'll report back on this forum on how it goes.

 

[corkmeister]

i am going to experiment with topical finasteride. i think i am a good research subject because i have over the past two years tried oral finasteride at various times, various doses, 1.25mg ED, EOD, 1mg, 0.25mg, 0.25mg EOD and i pretty consistently get very substabtial reduction in libido at around day 10 and then 2-3 days later i lose the ability to maintain an erection, it is very weak and i have to actually focus keeping it, i could never have sex like this. 2 weeks after stopping i always return to baseline

i have also gotten blood work.(after a month on 0.5mg every day) pretty suprisingly my free testosterone almost got cut in half probably due to the rise in SHBG that was previosuly bound to dht(which has a very hogh affijity for it)
from 19ng/dL to 11.4ng/dL reference range 7-19.

my estradiol is highly elevated at 65ng/dL where the reference range is from 10-45 so way out of the range. my total T was reduced from 584ng/dl to 482ng/dl. its weird bc finasteride is supposed to raise T and not affect SHBG but i calculated that it must have almosz tripled my SHBG so in addition to a 70% reducrion in DHT i got a 40% reduction in free testosterone and a 50% raise in estradiol. pretty crazy sh*t and i am not suprised that i have no libido tbh. my T/E ratio is that of a 85 year old man woth hypogonadism no joke

its like finasterde stimulated aromatisation or some sh*t. dht is a 9 on a referencr range of 30-80 so way out as well.

so i guess it will be easy to find out if topical finasteride messes up my hormones in a similar way, i will try 0.05% 1ml ED for at least 2 months and then get blood work done too see the impact.


also i respond extremely well to finasteride(no suprise not only have i barely any DHT but estradiol is good for hair and my free Testosterone is also reduced so very low androgen estrogen ratio, good for hair, bad for erextion and libido) and i notice a few weeks after stopping very apparent itch which finasteride gets completely rid of and strong shedding increase so i efficacy will be very obvious to me as well

Good luck brother, am curious about the results

 

[badnewsbearer]

Good luck brother, am curious about the results

thanks. only thing i care about not getting ED :/