8 months on finasteride, no regrowth, will I ever get any?

[reckless]

I'm 27 and slowly been losing hair since I was 21. I don't have a receding hairline but have diffuse hairloss on my crown and vertex.

I decided to take action 8 months ago with finasteride. My hair now looks exactly the same as it was 8 months ago which is good but I would like some regrowth.

If I was to get regrowth from finasteride, would it have happened now or is there still a chance I could get some regrowth in the next few months?


I've already tried minoxidil for 5 months, all it did was make my body hair thicker, did nothing for my head hair, so I stopped it.

 

[TheGrayMan2001]

There's a chance but if you have seen the thinning stop, and no regrowth yet, there's a pretty slim chance you'll see anything significant.

I'm surprised minoxidil didn't work for you. Did you try liquid or the foam? You might want to considering a different minoxidil regimen and see if it works for you.

 

[PileOn]

any pics?

 

[reckless]

I used Kirkland Minoxidil 5% twice a day. I really couldn't see any difference in my hair after 5 months usage. However the hairs on my arm started to become thicker, especially my left forearm since I was using my left hand to rub in the minoxidil.

Plus applying the minoxidil was a pain, it made my hair look greasy.

Do you think foam could be better?

 

[hairhoper]

You won't get regrowth from finasteride alone in that timescale (but you might have expected to see results from finasteride+minoxidil). I can't really judge or say what I would've done in your situation cos I saw changes earlier myself, but perhaps I would give the finasteride+minoxidil combo a bit longer?

If you have aggressive loss which you halted on finasteride, that's a result in itself.

To regrow solely using finasteride it is my understanding it would take most people ~2 years to see any improvement.

finasteride targets the cause of hairloss or at least breaks one link in the chain (DHT) so your loss doesn't progress. But it's down to your follicles whether they recover or not with DHT out of the equation. Some do, some don't.

minoxidil will give you short term gains if you're lucky, if in 5 months you saw no change at all you may have been unlucky, maybe just impatient and minoxidil's effects would have kicked in later. (I personally started to see small improvements fairly early, within 6 weeks, though it's been slow progress since).

 

[Todd]

What you can expect of finasteride is to stop your shedding, and thicken the existing hairs. This happens to about 90% of finasteride users. About 60% or so experiences some kind of regrowth as well, but since finasteride does not boost growth like minoxidil, this may take some time. One study suggests than finasteride starts working at about 6 months, and has its peak effect at about 2 years.

I don't know this for certain, but in theory; combining the preventive effect of finasteride, with the growth effect of minoxidil, the two drugs will work synergistically.
That is, the abscence of DHT (caused by finasteride) will make more hair grown (by minoxidil) survive for a longer period than had you just used minoxidil. And minoxidil will make more hair grow and thicken (facilitated by finasteride), had you just used finasteride alone.

 

[reckless]

My hairloss isn't aggressive, I still have a good hairline, in fact my hairline is the thickest part of my hair. I just have diffuse thinning.

I'm quite a hairy guy so when I saw the extra body hair from the minoxidil usage I stopped. Also I think if you are going to get good results from minoxidil you would have seen them by 4 months.

I'll continue the finasteride and see how I look after 2 years.