Does anyone have pictures/proof of Rogaine eating a hairline

[Thickandthin]

I've been using the foam for a little over a month once a day and being the paranoid obsessed person I am, I'm starting to believe it may be causing my hairline to recede even more. (if so, its nothing drastic, but I'm highly attuned to the state of my hairline at any given time).

Is there any conclusive proof - or even any pictures - to support the idea that minoxidil can mess up your hairline?

I'm really debating on just throwing my can of foam away and stopping treatments altogether, as my only thinning place is my hairline - and I don't want to make it worse with foam.

And for those of you whose hairline has been "eaten" by minoxidil - just how bad was it? How long did it take? Did it grow back?

 

[DoctorHouse]

I think treeshrew showed a very good example of what minoxidil can do to the hairline but he did improve later. This is a big topic posted over and over again. Are you taking Propecia /or finasteride? If you are just using minoxidil at least you know thats the only possible cause other than genetics of why your hairline is thinning. Something is eating my hairline too lately. Its either Propecia or minoxidil or of course genetics. All doctors will tell you its genetics and those meds cannot beat genetic always. There is guy who posted on here named timallen who said his hair is thinner on one side he put minoxidil and thicker on the side he did not put it. Its the luck of the draw, it works or it doesn't. The only thing I do not understand is how the heck can it cause a shed of thick healthy terminal hairs, and then they do not come back at all. What happened to the hair follicle? Did it go to sleep? I am still waiting for someone to tell me why it won't come back.

 

[Tikimik]

I can't stand hearsay.

Why would avodart/finasteride/minoxidil cause you to shed at your hairline?

Have there been any studies at all about this?

I think most of the time people just aren't responsive and then blame the product.

There is something called the Post Hoc fallacy which basically states that just because one thing follows another it doesn't mean they are related.

There is proof that rogaine increases hair growth, and I personally being on Avodart and Rogaine have been terrified that they will both eat my hairline because of some of the posts on these forums, but scientific evidence has never supported any claims of any of these products eating hairline specifically.

What is the logic behind it?

If someone can post actual testing of this then please do, otherwise it's hearsay.

 

[DoctorHouse]

Tikimik, I don't think we are literally meaning "eating" the hairline. You think hairloss treatments causing shedding of the hairline is hearsay. How come as soon as I increase my minoxidil dosage, I all of sudden shed more hairs and when I decrease the dosage I shed less. How come as soon as I upped my dosage back to 1mg of finasteride from 0.5mg of finasteride, I get an increase in shedding. I don't call that hearsay. I call that shedding. These drugs induce a chemical telogen effluvium. It just some people are affected different than others. And the hairs that shed are not little miniaturized hair, they are thick long uniform terminal hairs. Yet they don't come back.

 

[PersonGuy]

If someone can post actual testing of this then please do, otherwise it's hearsay.

Yeah don't pay attention to the fact that they have an entire forum topic dedicated to shedding and multiple reports of people experiencing sheds at different points after starting treatments. :smack:

Hey guys don't worry about shedding anymore, it's all hearsay because no one's done a study on it. This is great, suddenly I can feel my shed hair growing back because it was all psychological to begin with.

 

[masculineyourheart]

Change your bloody regimen, DoctorHouse. How long's it been? A year?
Too long either way for the amount of time you've spent telling us about your big 3 horror story.

If you stick to your regimen and don't see any regrowth, how long will you wait before you try something else?
No offense intended. You seem like a switched on guy, which makes me all the more curious why you put all your eggs in the propecia/minoxidil basket.

 

[DoctorHouse]

Masculineyourheart, You obviously need to read more of my posts. I have tried every hairloss treatment. Here is my list: Propecia, Minoxidil, Promox, Proxiphen,Nano, Revivogen, Folligen, Tricomin, Laser, Keratocyte, Topical spironolactone. I am not going to use dutas because it seems to risky and it has not been proven safe for hairloss. For your information, I had a thick full head of hair with mild thinning. I got on the big 3 and I went downhill within 6 to 8 months and never recovered to my baseline. I changed my treatments and still nothing brought me back. Maybe I need to quit everything so I can get back to where I was before I started these treatments. I read by these so called expert doctors that if you quit these treatments, you will just go back to the state you were before you started. Good, I would love that. I was doing fine without them. Now my hair is so dependent on them( I don't care what doctors think that its impossible for you to become dependent on these treatments) so I don't want to risk quitting. And I think its kind of strange, how the number one complaint from a majority of all forum posters is how the hairline went so fast as so as they started using minoxidil or Propecia. I don't think these people are making up stories. I am not saying these drugs don't work. But I think there is a percentage of people that it can make things worse. Maybe that is why hair transplant doctors want us to take those meds. so the drugs can thin out our hairline so we can give them more work in the future to fill them back in with surgery. I am just frustrated because I must read a new post a day on how minoxidil or Propecia is killing my hairline.

 

[Tikimik]

Regardless of what you say it doesn't prove anything.

If I made a forum dedicated to how awesome avodart and rogaine foam is, especially at not causing shedding, and lots of people post saying "omg yus these are the best and they don't cause shedding" does that make it true?

The problem here is that there are so many variables and way too many things to take into consideration.

The majority of the time its the people who are totally content with results who don't post anything, and the maybe 10% of people who for some unforeseen reason have a bad result and make a suggestion that it is due to a product, which of course spreads like wildfire.

This also has the effect of discouraging people who are willing to try these products.

Fact is fact.

If you have them then post them. If you don't then like I said.. it's all hearsay no matter how long your paragraphs are, and vasts your posts are.

It's called the fallacy of majority and fallacy of consensus.

 

[DoctorHouse]

I am sure you probably think Propecia causing gyno, loss of libido, and sexual dysfunction is hearsay too. :shakehead:

 

[Thickandthin]

The one thing that worries me is the fact that minoxidil apparently sheds hairs that were in the resting phase in order to regrow them in the growing phase. This would obviously be a good thing if it ONLY targeted male pattern baldness/DHT afflicted hairs, but how do we know that is the case? It could be causing all hairs in the resting phase - even the thick terminal healthy ones - to shed, along with the thin male pattern baldness ones. I mean, how can it differentiate between the two?

It really sucks because minoxidil is STILL a mystery 20+ years after first being released. Why can't they figure it out? Why do they still not know exactly what it does?

For now, I'm gonna keep applying once a day. I figure that even with my recession - if I can atleast thicken up the areas behind the temples then I'll be set. I'd basically have a Pierce Brosnan in "The Matador" hairline

If I could accomplish that I'd be quite happy (which is sorta sad since I'm 21 and he's 60, lol).

 

[JWM]

AWESOME movie!

 

[Tikimik]

I am sure you probably think Propecia causing gyno, loss of libido, and sexual dysfunction is hearsay too. :shakehead:

No because that statement has a little thing called a "controlled study" behind it.

Things like facts are nice. When the company that produces the drug admits to those specific side effects, it's probably best to believe it along with all the documentation that comes with it to prove that.

 

[DoctorHouse]

Minoxidil is still the only FDA approved regrowth agent to treat androgenetic alopecia and the substance of choice for many customers. The response rate for Minoxidil treatment is around 55 % for patients with signs of micro-inflammation and up to 77 % for micro-inflammation free patients. Unfortunately Minoxidil is only soluble up to 2 % in alcohol and up to 5 % in alcohol and PPG ( propylene glycol ).
But there are two major downsides of alcohol and PPG in topical anti-hairloss products .First many people have allergic reactions to PPG and/or their scalp suffers in various forms from long term use of topical alcohol. ( redness , itching, flakes,dandruff,light sensitivity ,general inflammation) . Just recently in July 2005 the University of Bonn,Germany, published a study about contact dermatitis caused by either PPG or Minoxidil itself.
The second downside is the hairloss promoting effect of alcohol itself.
There are some new studies showing concerns about alcohol as caspase-3 and apoptosis inducer being contraproductive for the use of topical hairloss products. Activation of caspase 3 is thought to be a direct cause of cell apoptosis
Experiments revealed that processing of caspase-3 is a principal event during apoptosis of hair cell types. Conclusion: alcohol simular as TGF-b induces caspase-3 which causes apoptosis of hair cells. Another study result: Chronic ethanol treatment activates signalling pathways and transcription factors involved in inflammatory damage and cell death.
Alcohol strongly reduces the positive effect of anti-hairloss ingredients and should be reduced to a minimum or elimitated at all.
In addition chronical inflammation caused by alcohol or PPG should be avoided by any means because inflammation is believed to be a major factor in causing hairloss. A study on 412 patients (193 men and 219 women) confirmed the presence of a significant degree of inflammation and fibrosis in at least 37% of Androgenetic Alopecia cases. I think this maybe a possible explanation why some people don't do well with minoxidil.

 

[Bryan]

The second downside is the hairloss promoting effect of alcohol itself. ... Alcohol strongly reduces the positive effect of anti-hairloss ingredients and should be reduced to a minimum or elimitated at all.

I see people occasionally try to make the argument that the alcohol in various hairloss topicals has a very negative effect on hair follicles, but the problem with that theory is that it's totally contradicted by some very good scientific evidence. Here, take another look at these graphs from Dr. Vera Price's excellent 1999 study of topical minoxidil:

http://www.geocities.com/bryan50001/quitting-minoxidil.htm

Ignore the two groups that used 2% and 5% Rogaine, and focus on the remaining two groups, one of which got the placebo (which consisted of the standard Rogaine vehicle WITH ALCOHOL, but without minoxidil), while the other (the "Untreated" group) got no topical application of anything at all, but got the same haircount and hairweight measurements as everybody else.

As you can plainly see, the placebo group getting the alcohol had haircount and hairweight measurements that were closely intertwined with those of the group that got nothing at all applied to their scalps, and that was for the total length of the study which lasted for nearly TWO YEARS. The obvious conclusion to be reached is that even if topical alcohol _does_ have some theoretical ability to induce apoptosis in hair follicles, it's so damned slight that it's not even worth worrying about. Even this two-year study that carefully measured haircounts and hairweights was unable to see any difference between using alcohol and not using it. To claim that alcohol "strongly reduces" the positive effect of hairloss topicals is preposterous.

 

[Tikimik]

That is a very interesting study.

I'm a bit lost in the weight vs the actual count?

What are they both representing? The right graph seems like it is number (of hairs?) gained per week?

 

[Bryan]

What are they both representing? The right graph seems like it is number (of hairs?) gained per week?

Measurements were taken every 6 weeks, not weekly. The weights were determined by shaving the hairs in the test area, and directly weighing them with a scale. The counts were determined by directly counting all the visible hairs. The graphs show the percentage changes in both weights and counts.

 

[DoctorHouse]

Bryan, these are studies. They don't always represent the real world. In life, there are always exceptions to every rule. If you have a good explanation of why someone will use minoxidil and have an increase of hairs in the loss phase( I know you don't like the word shedding). And when looking at the hairs that fall out, they are thick, long and symmetrical with white bulbs. Then if they reduce the frequency of use of the minoxidil, there is a decrease of hairs in the loss phase. Then they notice that new hairs do not come back to replace the thick hairs they lost. If someone has Telogen Effluvium would that be possible that the hairs will stay in the telogen phase even if they are using minoxidil? What I am trying to get at is would Telogen Effluvium react differently than male pattern baldness to minoxidil? If that is the case, I have Telogen Effluvium and everything makes sense now about minoxidil. I know Propecia will not have any effect on someone with Telogen Effluvium. I am starting to think I might have chronic or long Telogen Effluvium not male pattern baldness. I am just trying to make sense out of everything. Chronic Telogen Effluvium can mimic male pattern baldness and I don't have the typical pattern of male pattern baldness. I went to my dermatologist and she says Telogen Effluvium could be a possible cause because I am so stressed from all these treatments.

 

[Timi]

DoctorHouse

Stop minoxidil

my Hair get better and better

finasteride 2x 1mg and evenning 0,5mg

and Topic finasteride in the Corner
little Hairs coming

minoxidil was a big error for me
i have lost 50000 Hairs over the full Head and the Rest
ill and straw
when i stop minoxidil for 5-10 Days my Hair look good
put i minoxidil on my Skalp the Hairs look schocked
itsching -burning arround my Head
i think i am Allergic from minoxidil
then my face ist red after minoxidil as Sunburn
the eys red and burning

Today the Hairs geht much Healthier very fast

Timi

 

[DoctorHouse]

Timi, I did stop it and my hair is getting better and less shedding.

 

[Tikimik]

lol timi I'm pretty new to actually replying to this forum but I've been reading it for awhile.

It seems like between finasteride, dutast, and minoxidil, all of them have been your savior and your curse at one point in time.

Are you giving all of these products enough time to react?