Does Finasteride Suddenly Lose Its Effectiveness? Been On It For 5yrs And Suddenly Shedding

[russelldawso]

I'm thinking of transitioning to dutasteride, any advice please. I've been on finasteride, min and nizoral for 5 years now and it's been pretty good. However in the last couple weeks just all of a sudden started losing 30 hairs in the shower and just feels all of a sudden much thinner. Is this just normal shedding cycle or has finasteride suddenly lost effectiveness. Ant advice please, should I move to dutasteride starting with once a week keeping finasteride on the other 6 days?

 

[Derelict]

Shedding hair is normal, happens to everyone. If it starts having an impact on your density then start to worry, 80 something percent of men maintained for 5 years on finasteride, i think you should be safe for now, if you start thinning jump on dutasteride.

 

[Hair-pun]

Hey Russell, this happened to me after 9 years but from what you are saying it may be the end of your run on finasteride. When finasteride stopped holding my hair I lost everything i had maintained over one year so please do prepare to switch to dutasteride if you are seeing any drop in density. Maybe check my thread 'Propecia stopped working...It's time to switch to avodart' to transition effectively. One or two dutasteride a week may not be much of an improvement- i think you will need every other day to see results. Even with daily dutasteride i didn't stabilise and now use 50mg of RU on the front

 

[russelldawso]

Hey Russell, this happened to me after 9 years but from what you are saying it may be the end of your run on finasteride. When finasteride stopped holding my hair I lost everything i had maintained over one year so please do prepare to switch to dutasteride if you are seeing any drop in density. Maybe check my thread 'Propecia stopped working...It's time to switch to avodart' to transition effectively. One or two dutasteride a week may not be much of an improvement- i think you will need every other day to see results. Even with daily dutasteride i didn't stabilise and now use 50mg of RU on the front

Thanks man for the reply. I checked out your thread and got carried away with some of your other threads. .. good stuff. I appreciate your knowledge haha... I have some dutasteride in hand, haven't started it yet. Thinking about starting twice a week for now. Do I take the dutasteride instead of taking the finasteride tablet on the particular 2 days, or continue with finasteride 7 days and add the dutasteride on top during those 2 days?

 

[Hair-pun]

Thanks man for the reply. I checked out your thread and got carried away with some of your other threads. .. good stuff. I appreciate your knowledge haha... I have some dutasteride in hand, haven't started it yet. Thinking about starting twice a week for now. Do I take the dutasteride instead of taking the finasteride tablet on the particular 2 days, or continue with finasteride 7 days and add the dutasteride on top during those 2 days?

No probs at all, I'm glad that you appreciate my posts! Thank you for saying so, that means a lot. I screwed up big time after getting some bad advice from a derm and this was very painful, so I'm hoping to prevent others making the same mistakes. Great news that you have started Dutasteride, two a week sounds good- if you respond well this could even be enough to top up. I saw some slight thickening at the back within 2-3 months so you may be able to judge if it is working after this amount of time. As to dosage- take the dutasteride in addition to finasteride on the days you take it at first. Finasteride is fairly inert really and you only need to do this for 3/4 months as dutasteride builds up in your body. If you feel like it you can drop finasteride on the dutasteride days after doing this for 3/4 months. Keep taking finasteride on the other days though of course. If no stabilisation within like 4 months i would then start taking dutasteride every other day. This may well be just as effective as every day. Maybe up it to every day at month 6-7 if still nothing. dutasteride is often not much better than finasteride at the front/ hair line so you may need to apply RU topically (50mg in 1ml of stemoxydine) on the hair line to protect it, if you see the hairline going down hill after month 6