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Well I've been looking at a way of tackling my hair loss without suffering the side effects I had when I took (1mg) Finasteride daily. After experimenting with Finasteride I noticed that when I took a single dose of (.5mg) Finasteride my head would not feel itchy for another 3 days. I thought well maybe thats just all in my head but I tried it again and had the same result.

After looking at the chart I saw that plasma levels of DHT would rise once again after 3-4 days:



I also discovered that taking (.2mg) is almost the same as taking (1mg) Finasteride:

http://www.hairloss-research.org/Update ... an-08.html

It also mentions that taking (.5mg) every 3 days is as effective as a daily dose of (1mg). For the educated users on this Forum , explain to me why this would/wouldn't be the case. What does it mean that the half life of the drug in the body is about 5 hours? Why would (1mg) be reccomended if it is not needed? Were these conclusions made by the Drug companies that sell Finasteride (Cipla)?

Wouldn't taking 0.5 create every 3 days constantly fluctuating levels of DHT and mess up your hormonal sytem even more?

How and why? I don't have the answers to these questions I'm hoping someone will answer them for us..

Before finasteide became available in its 1 mg. Propecia formulation, many physicians (myself included ) would prescribe one 5 mg "proscar" (the formulation for prostate enlargement) every three days. This seems to work just fine. I don't know if .5 mg would also work.

But it might be worth a shot. Finasteride has a "flat" dose-response curve. In English, this means a little often works as well as a lot. I.e., 1 mg works as well as 5 mg. The curve starts to turn down a little somewhere around .5 mg. But the agent still seems to work in many persons even below this dose.

As for the "every three days". While the blood half-life of finasteride is only 8 hours or so, it forms an essentially unbreakable complex with the active site of the target enzyme, type-2 5-AR. That is, it takes synthesis of new enzyme to restore activity. This takes "days". How many is uncertain, but by analogy with other drugs that cause permanent inactivation of a target (e.g., aspirin and platelets) likely longer than three days.

Peter H. Proctor, PhD,MD

Thanks for the post, Peter.

Regarding so many people splitting Proscar here, i read this isn't that great of an idea. Well, not ideal as compared to simple 1mg tablets of fin.

I read that these tablets have fin unevenly spread throughout them so cutting it into 5 doesn't equate to 5 1mb does, in fact you could be taking 4mg in one piece and none in some others...

any commnents on this?

I would like to know this as well ^

It is very unikely that finasteride is anything but more or less evenly spread in a proscar tablet, since this would be technically difficult and there is no specific reason to do it.

Anyway, the unusual pharmacokinetics of the drug ( blood half life of hours, but essentially irreversible inhibition of the target enzyme ) plus the flat dose-response curve ( a little works as well as a lot ) cover a lot of therapeutic sins. I.e., the exact treatment schedule or dose on any one day likely don't matter very much over a pretty broad range.

Peter H. Proctor, PhD,MD

I did experiment with different doses of finastride..

Personally I didn't see any difference between .5 and 1mg. I also tried .25, ie a quarter pill. I tried .5 EOD, 1mg every 2-3 days, .25 every day, etc...

I don't like the way fin made me feel and I thought there might be a dose that doesn't give me that feeling... I couldn't find that range...

Anyway, for me, the effects of 1mg and .5mg lasted about 5-6 days. I don't know what that means in hair terms, but I could feel it in my body for at least 5 days. I would say .5 every 3 days is probably something worth trying.