I posted this recently in my story:
I will post an update in a few days when my 14th month is completed. I have read a few interesting things. One is the well known 5y finasteride study. It is worth reading.
http://www.jle.com/fr/revues/medecin.../FE/article.md
It contains many things that are often said on these forums, but it is also often hard to overlook them:
1) ".....peak efficacy was observed at one to two years of treatment with finasteride." To me it seems that the second year is also more interesting in my case, I'm seeing my hair change for real now. It really takes a long time, but this looks promising. 90% of men in this study had success with finasteride, albeit to a different extent. While on Finasteride we should just enjoy life and forget baldness. The key is to jump on DHT-altering treatments as soon as you start losing it because you can keep what you have for at least a prolonged time.
2) This excerpt is a good explanation why I seem to be seeing so much shedding:
"In that study, initiation of finasteride treatment was shown to increase the number of anagen-phase hairs and to increase the anagen to telogen ratio, consistent with normalization of the growth cycles of previously miniaturized hairs due to the release of hair follicles from the inhibitory effects of DHT [26]. Consistent with these results, finasteride treatment was also shown to increase the growth rate and/or thickness of hairs, based on analysis of serial hair weight measurements [27]. Because these beneficial changes in the hair growth cycle are dependent on when therapy with finasteride is initiated and occur rapidly, the affected hairs are driven to cycle in a synchronous manner. If these hairs have somewhat similar anagen phase durations, they would enter telogen phase as the anagen (and catagen) phase ended, followed by subsequent shedding, in a partially synchronized fashion. This would be expected to produce a gradual decline from peak hair count after a period of time equal to the average anagen phase duration. Eventually, as subsequent growth cycles recurred, these hairs would be expected to become increasingly independent, thereby losing their synchronous character as their growth cycles further normalized over time, leading to a sustained increase in hair count at a plateau above baseline, as suggested by the 5-year data presented here."
I'm now convinced that the 100 hairs a day-rule does not apply to people on Finasteride, at least not initially before the growth cycle of the animated hairs becomes independent.
