Chris87's Finasteride Diary (starting 11/10/2010)

[Chris87]

Alright guys. After a few months of research, deliberation, a trip to Dr. Paul McAndrews' office here in CA, and hanging onto a prescription that I've had for about 2 weeks now..I'm popping my first Propecia.

I will be starting off taking half a pill (.5mg) a day, as Ive heard that .5 has close to the same effect as 1mg. I'm taking brand name Propecia so, thatll save me some money. Plus I want to see if I encounter any sides on .5...if not I'll bump to 1mg or 1.25 (proscar).

Baseline pics will be posted tonight when I get home from my office (I wanted to make this post now though to make sure I dont pussy out on taking the pill LOL). I am also currently using Rogaine Foam once a day on the temples, which I've been on for about a month. Previous to that I tried the lasercomb (most of you know how that works....which is...it doesnt)

Just some other stats in case anyone is interested:

Age: 23
Height: 6'1
Weight: somewhere in the 155-160lbs range (about 4-5% body fat)
Health status: no health conditions, I lift weights regularly and am very active.
Hair loss: starting losing at the temples about 1.5 years ago, and within the last few months I've started losing at the crown. In general my hair loss is not a HUGE issue, as I've always had a lot of hair that is pretty thick and most people, even people who know me would not look at me and say "hes losing his hair". In any case, I've decided to hop on finasteride because I know that people who start early have the best results.

If anyone has any other questions feel free to ask. Hopefully within 6 months-1 year I'll get moved to the success stories board unk:

EDIT: and now for the pics

 

[mashang]

Hi mate and welcome,
like you i started 0.5mg towards the end of May 2010, along with minoxidil 2x 1mg daily,

with reference to sides, apart from initial nut ache which subsided after a week or so i have had no sides at all... i had an episode where 20 mins after popping my first pill, i felt as if manhood was going to be destroyed and started panicking (but i blame a well known fear monger website for that lol ).
seriously thou i think 0.5mg is a good dose to start with (dont wimp out you will be fine)....

getting on to the hair now, okay been nearly 7 months on 0.5mg of finasteride,
i personally and IMHO can not see any gains or regrowth, some days i feel as my hair looks worse, but others have said that my hair is looking better (mainly my GF and other close mates,).... but if nothing changes in the new year i am seriously considering the full dose at 1mg ("in for a penny in for a pound" as the saying goes)

will be good to keep us updated of your regime and how you progress,
let me say that you are on the right track,

Good Luck

Regards
Mashang

 

[holdfasthope]

Hey man,

I'm in the same shoes as you (Started taking finasteride around the middle of October, and I'm also 23)

I know my stuff's legit as I get it from the biggest pharmacy chain here in the UK.

I have had no sides so far (except watery jizz which seems to be pretty typical) How are you getting on?

It would be interesting to compare progress as time passes.

Take it easy.

 

[Chris87]

Sorry about not getting the pics up guys, i spent the last 2 days over this girls house. Will get baseline pics up tonight after work

 

[Chris87]

baseline pics are up

 

[Chris87]

Hi all,

Going to do a quick update. Its been about a week (6 days) since starting finasteride. I probably wont do another update until im at the one month point.

So I've been taking finasteride for about a week at .5mg a day. So far so good. As far as side effects go, the first couple days i thought i was having a harder time getting and maintaining an erection when having sex. This could have just been in my head and due to me being nervous about performance issues due to the finasteride, because, since then I've had no problem. I still get rock solid random erections during the day and I've had no problem getting it up and going at it during sex.

I've had a bit of pain on and off in my right testicle. I'm not sure if this is caused by the finasteride, as I have experienced pain like this in my right testicle before (i think every guy at some point in his life experiences some ball pain)....so I cant say for SURE whether this is from finasteride or not but it did seem to start a few days after starting finasteride.

Semen is a bit more watery than usual. Still pretty much the same volume-wise and still the same distance-wise...just more "liquidy" than before.

Mood is fine..no brain fog or anything like that.

Libido is fine...if not slightly improved actually (i've been taking 30mg zinc a day, and on days where I know I'll have sex I have been taking Horny Goat Weed 1000mg..so that might have something to do with it). Also, I dont know if its because of the finasteride, or the horny goat weed or the zinc but...I feel like my resting period after sex has lessened. Usually I have to wait an hour or two before being able to go at it again. The past week I've been able to go at it within a half hour easily (sometimes 3 times a night) So maybe that has something to do with elevated test. levels?

I know it may be too early to tell..so this is sort of anecdotal at this point...but i feel like im losing less hair in the shower. I dont know if its possible to respond this quickly as far as preventing hair miniaturization...but usually i shed every single time i wash my hair (every other day)..usually about 50 hairs..for the past year and a half...i've always consistently shed. Since starting finasteride i feel like this has dropped. I did a little experiment this week where i went 2 days without shampooing my hair just to test this. Usually if I do this, by the second day my crown will start to itch a bit and when I shampoo my hair i'll get a bunch of shedding. This time I didnt get any head itch, and I probably lost like 10-15 hairs total in the shower. Usually when I get out of the shower I look in the tub and see hairs scattered here and there and have to wash them down so my roommate doesnt see...this time...nothing.


So...so far so good...we'll see how things go in a few more weeks.

 

[Chris87]

One Month Update

Hello hello. Just going to do a quick one month update here. So anyways after a couple weeks into taking .5mg i realized I was getting sides from finasteride. I had weird ejaculations (watery, less volume, would come out weird), a harder time maintaining/getting erections and I felt like my size wasnt the same (felt like my penis has "lost weight" or something). Also morning erections pretty much stopped, and when they would happen theyd be weaker. This was disappointing because the first week I didnt really have anything.

So for about the last week i've switched to .25mg a day. I figure its better than nothing and Ive heard sides improve on .25. I also started taking about 60mg of zinc a day. The first day after I switched to .25mg i woke up with a raging morning erection hah. I've since had them on a decent basis. Also my ejaculations have pretty much returned to normal and my dick size seems to be back to normal.

So I'm going to stick with .25 for awhile as the sides seem to have gone away for the most part. Maybe i'll try bumping back to .5 after a few months, maybe not..going to play it by ear, and if I dont feel 100% (libido/erection quality wise) in another month or two, I'll have to quit completely.

As far as the hair goes: After about the first week or two on finasteride my shedding seemed to decrease drastically almost to the point where I wasnt shedding at all in the shower (maybe 5 hairs total instead of 50). After that though I started a pretty bad shed where I was shedding 50-100 hairs in the shower everytime I washed my hair. This lasted like a week maybe a bit more and I now feel like it has slowed down again although its too early to say that its stopped. My hair and scalp feel better though I would say. No male pattern baldness itching, hair quality seems to be better, I missed taking the pull 1 day and my crown started itching again.

I also stopped using minoxidil around when i started finasteride. I figured that I should just use finasteride for 6 months and see what happened, and I had only been on minoxidil for a month so I figured itd be ok to stop. I am now back on minoxidil though because I know finasteride isnt great for the hairline, and I dont want to risk 6 months-a year of losing the hairline in order to give finasteride a chance. So I decided I should do everything possible NOW to save the hairline. So I'm back on minoxidil (foam) on the hairline, using it on the crown as well.

As far as pictures, I may take one month pics when my hair gets to the length it is in the originals, or I may wait until month 3 to take pics. If people really want to see pics at a month I'll take them

I think thats all for now. Thanks to Enden for his advice on finasteride sides by the way