Does Propecia Really Work??

[Scuffernoose]

im starting to wonder if it does. i wonder how much of it is propaganda. i have been on propecia since october, and my hair has continued to cycle finer and finer. my hairline has become very diffuse and doesnt look like a line at all. the vertex of my head, which propecia is supposed to target the most, has gotten thinner and thinner along the same pace that it always has. my cowlick in back has gotten bigger and brighter and has tons of cobweb fine hairs. although my hair has gotten much thinner and recieded a little bit, you still cant tell i have mbp depending on how i comb it because i had so much hair to start with, but its getting more obvious that my hair is thinning. i used to style it up and messy, but now to hide my scalp i have to comb it down and messy because the temples and front have gotten so much thinner. i use toppix on the back to hide the scalp a bit, but i was hoping that propecia would have started to thicken the top up and it hasnt. i have alot of vellous hairs all over my head and they are still cycling thinner.

i dont know if i have expirienced the typical "shed" that i have heard about, although the last week or so, i have had alot of thin hairs that have fallen out, and i can pretty much pull out some of the long wispy ones as if they arent even attatched. im hoping that this might be the shed and that my hair might come back thicker, but i havent noticed any shorter, thicker hairs on my head. when the temples fall out, they seem to be gone for good. but in 8 months i havent seen anything that definately tells me if it is a shed or just my hair falling out faster because of the faster cycle. my regimine is propecia only because my lifestyle cant find time to put a wet or greasy product like minoxidil on my head 2x a day. but if propecia is supposed to work, it is supposed to work. they shouldnt advertise it as a solution if it is dependant on other products to work. i still have alot of hair but it is of poor quality and that makes my hair pretty see through but not enough to have a transplant. but when i started propecia i had a head of hair that i would be happy with today. now i am holding on tight to the hair i have hoping that the next month wont be evident to everyone of my hairloss. but the unmanagibility of my hair has me planning a shave in the next couple of months. i was hoping propecia would save me from this because i am 28 but i look very young and i might look like a kid that is losing his hair for most of my life. but now i wonder how much of this is just another propaganda remedy from people making billions of dollars. where is my shed and where is my regrowth?????

 

[Guest]

Does Propecia Really Work??

yes

 

[Scuffernoose]

i have been on propecia for 8 months now. i have never seen anything that i would consider a shed. my hair has continued to get finer and thinner. upon examination, the hair always seems to look like it is getting smaller from the top of the shaft to the root. my hair seems to be falling out more than it has in the past, but i dont know if i could consider it a shed or just the fact that my head is producing thinner, shorter cycling, dying hair. it seems as if most people have a shed much earlier and it sounds like the amount that falls out might be worse than what i am going through right now, but my hair is definately worse than it has ever been. i have resorted to the messy caesar cut.

is this how it goes?? does this mean that i should expect a regrowth now after 8 months of nothing?? how did it go for some of you guys?? does my story sound like any of yours??

 

[Scuffernoose]

how the hell can a post about some dumb@ss jacking off 37 times a day get 10 replies, but a serious question like mine can only get a one word reply?? no wonder he posted that garbage.

 

[youngguy_uk]

hey. im sure it does work. look at the clinical data. its not one big fairy tale. even if it doesnt seem to work for some people, i.e. they are still losing their hair, or its getting finer or whatever, im sure it at the very least slows the process down. it blocks the production of dht, which has been clinically proven to cause hairloss. ok, so there are other factors that contribute to male pattern baldness. but dht is a major one and finasteride blocks most dht so its only logical.

that and ive not heard one person post here saying "i dropped finasteride and my hairloss didnt pick up". and no i dont think finasteride causes hairloss. maybe sheds, but not greater overall loss in the long term. logical.

 

[youngguy_uk]

p.s. im in your situation too, kindof. at 6 months on finasteride and wish my hair was thicker than it is. mind you, i did see some thickening stages at about 4 months. but since then its thinned consantly, albeit at slightly different speeds. anyway, hold in there.

***what we really need is some poss from people who saw regrowth/thickening after sheds or without sheds at the 6 months or after mark***

someone please help us out with this. thanks.

 

[Cassin]

how the hell can a post about some dumb@ss jacking off 37 times a day get 10 replies, but a serious question like mine can only get a one word reply?? no wonder he posted that garbage.

Because this type of post is made about twice a day. The subject header and actual content is just worded slightly different. Just do some searching.

 

[Guest]

Because this type of post is made about twice a day. The subject header and actual content is just worded slightly different. Just do some searching.

....also there are desperate people here who are prepared to do pretty much what it takes to get their hair to regrow

my regimine is propecia only because my lifestyle cant find time to put a wet or greasy product like minoxidil on my head 2x a day

this line above and the fact that, as cassin said, you had not bothered to search the wealth of info here on your question probably gave the wrong impression, that you were not one of those people who were particularly desperate. There is mountains of data on the efficacy of finasteride both clincal and anacdotal, and the data says yes it works for most people to some degree.


Ty

 

[Cassin]

Another point. If you really want to use Minoxidil, consider Dr Lees version. It dries to in about 30 minutes.

http://www.minoxidil.com

And once again, for the Propecia function question, start at the beginning of this website http://www.hairlosstalk.com . HairLossTalk.com has put together articles that cross scientific data and abstract explanations. Then work your way to the forums. Its a bad idea to get all of your information from discussion forums wihtout doing a lot of research first.

But if you just want an answer, tynanW already did that.

YES

 

[The shedder]

Yea i say stick with it for at least a year, some people stop because they consider finasteride a miracle drug. It takes a while for finasteride to affect your hairs biology, and even then male pattern baldness will still progress albeit significantly slower. You may be a late responder but I doubt finasteride is making it worse. Also you may try minoxidil once a day cause i kno some people that do. Don't pay too much attention to it and let it do its job, thats what i'm tryin lol

 

[Guest]

People need to keep in mind that regrowth is such a slow process, especially with finasteride alone. The best way to even judge regrowth or maintaning would be with photos. I am telling you that if you are to judge your hair just by looking at it time to time, you will never be able to properly judge your situation. I would have never even noticed that my temples have gotten better with minoxidil and that the top of my diffuse patern balding looks slightly better than it did at baseline without photos. I actually thought the top of my head has been slowly getting worse when it has actually improved. I only realised this recently when comparing my baseline photo to my recent photos which i have just developed. I wish i could post them, but i don't have a scanner or digital camera. THat peice of sh*t camera phone i used to have sucks too much to even show results anyways. NEWBIES, listen to my advice, take high quality photos to chart your progress.

 

[Scuffernoose]

thanks guys for some info. if nothing else i was hoping to maintain hair, and i never thought that at month 8 it would be definately worse when i started. but i can only hope that the next month is better because when i think about how my hair has progressed, in a month or two i may be shaving my head for the rest of my life, and that makes me very nervous. i have good coverage now, but from lots of thick hair to being so unmanageble and not framing my face, i dont know if i can stand years of spending an hour or more in the mirror trying to fix it and never getting it right because of more loss. i almost wonder if not looking as attractive might be worth putting the whole hair thing behind me and shaving.

i relate to alot of these depression posts and feeling like things are over, because i noticed my hairloss not long before i ended a 7 year relationship. cruel irony has me losing my hair NOW. but at the same time i do know that the mind is more powerfull than anyone can imagine, and i know that the way you see yourself is the way others see you. its just so d@mn hard to convince yourself that you look good when you dont think you do. i have been a confident person, but now i feel myself sinking and i know that no matter how well i hide it, there is negative energy that others can sense. but there is no doubt that i get just as desperate as all of you from time to time. only i cant get myself to spend hundreds of dollars a month to throw everthing at my hair while it continues to fall out when propecia itself wont even make a dent in it. i guess god wants me bald no matter how much i tell him that he is making a mistake. maybe its a reason i cat see now.

i think all of us depressed baldys are going to have to find another source of happiness if we ever want to get out of this. maybe things like hair is being taken from us untill we feel so desperate that we give up and can only look to a higher power to get us out of this. i know up to this point, there is no pill that has given me reason to be happy, and there is no transplant that will return me to the feeling the same way i did about myself before my hair started to dissappear, because nothing will ever be the same at the time i feel it matters most.

 

[jason566]

has your hiarloss speed up since being on propecia?

i mean were u losin hair before i just started using it..but now im scared even...dammit

 

[Scuffernoose]

no, i cant say that it has sped up or slowed down on propecia. it seems to be going along the same rate of loss that it has all along. its been pretty slow because i first started noticing loss over a year ago, and now it is to the point where i cant do much with it except style it down and messy. before i started loosing hair, i used to style it like ross on friends, and buzz cut it every now and then. i had a ton of hair and a low hairline with not much of a widows peak. now my hair is very fine, straight and stringy, and my fear is if i cut it short it will show a pattern off loss. when i started propecia i was still able to style it with waxy products, but it eventually graduated to tons of hairspray to thicken the hair and make it more course. 8 months later my hair is too see through to do that, but i have good coverage when i style it down. i wouldnt say that propecia has made it better or worse, but now i find many fine hairs from the top 3rd of my scalp and temples falling out. i hope it is a shed that will produce regrowth, but i dont know. either way i am going to stick with it for 1 year because more than likely if you lose alot of hair using one of these methods, you were meant to be bald anyway. i just hate that i have spent so much money and heard about good results from some, but nothing for me.

if i were you i would take propecia for a year reguardless of what happens to your hair. its hard to, but expect the worst. start coming to grips now with shaving your head or whatever you have to do, because the shock of having to do it out of the blue has to be hard. i almost wonder if the anticipation of losing hair is worse than being bald, but either way it sux. maybe it will work for you, but for me it has just lined the pockets of merck. im 28 years old, single good looking guy, 6' 160lbs, athletic muscular build and i work for a school district. with good hair i felt like i owned the room. with a shaved head and a possible thinning pattern on my head i dont know if i can convince myself to feel the same way. so you can see the predicament i am in with the possible decision i have to face.

 

[extremekicks]

Propecia works plain and simple Im 36 and was a norwood 2.5 im at a 2 or 1.5 now I think I need to take pics.


I hope ur eating good / working out a lil and telling us ur reigme correctly

 

[Scuffernoose]

well, i can tell you it doesnt help that i took a hair test and found that i was toxic in 4 medals. arsenic, uranium and lead was 3 of them, but the only one that i found CAN affect hair is arsenic. those medals have allegedly effected the function of my kidneys and caused them to leak too much protien when i urinate. add on top that i work with computers, and i wouldnt be suprised if the chronic radiation from sitting 2 feet from a monitor every day for several years has effected my thyroid. and i noticed the hairloss a few months before a pretty tough breakup, but all of that i believe may have just sped up the timeline. i have a very bald grandfather on my fathers side. these are the things i have been researching to find if there is any other possible explaination, but i have come to grips with the fact that i believe its good old fashioned mbp possibly brought on by other factors.

my hair has not fallen out, it has simply cycled finer and finer, with im sure some loss, and my temples and hairline has diffusely been falling out and gotten pretty fine and stringy. the sides and sideburns have become a little finer (although the sides and sideburns were never very thick and course), but the back has pretty much remained from what i can tell. my body hair seems to be uneffected also, except some slight thinning of my eyebrows, so that tells me to put my money on male pattern baldness. but it also shows me that there are alot of outside influences that may cause it to come sooner. i was hoping that propecia would lower the dht and thicken the hair up at least, but nothing after 8 months.

 

[Bryan]

no, i cant say that it has sped up or slowed down on propecia. it seems to be going along the same rate of loss that it has all along.

I agree with what the others said: give it a while longer before you try to draw any firm conclusions about how well it's working for you.

The male pattern baldness process is pretty complicated and involves numerous factors. Generally speaking, androgens set into motion processes which, after a while, are not entirely dependent on them anymore. Sometimes it takes a while for balding to "coast to a stop" after removing them. Be patient.

Bryan

 

[Kevin fretwell]

I found in a recent search of fda trials on this site that a good third of the participants didn't respond .

 

[HairlossTalk]

im starting to wonder if it does. i wonder how much of it is propaganda. i have been on propecia since october, and my hair has continued to cycle finer and finer.

Two points to remember:

1. 17% of people wont respond to treatment at all. Why would you assume an international scam over the possibility that you're just not one of the responders?

2. Merck plainly states that it took up to a full 12 months before some people started seeing results. Why would you assume an international scam when you haven't been on the treatment long enough yet?

This is why we don't judge the effectiveness of a hair loss treatment upon a single individuals personal experience with it. Everyone is different. You have to look to the large scale trials to get a real assessment of the effectiveness of a product. There are too many variables when it comes to personal opinion, and too much subjectivity in one person's "minds eye" to be 100% accurate.

my regimine is propecia only

You should also be using Nizoral shampoo once every 3 days. Without this, I saw no results on Propecia.

Please make sure you read up on the products before making decisions on them. A good place to start is to actually read the FDA clinical trial data. Read the product review. Do a search for it and see what people say. Read the insert that comes glued to the side of the bottle. 100% of your concerns would have been answered before even making this thread, and we wouldn't have to come here and repeat what has been said 1,000 times either. :lol:

In any case, start using Nizoral and be patient.

HairLossTalk.com