Few Quick Questions On finasteride: Brand, Dose, and Random

AlecGaro · Jun 24, 2014

Hey everyone! so i got a finasteride prescription and am planning on starting it within a month. just curious does it matter what type of finasteride it is? Because Ive heard proscar is the best but the pharmacy gave me Dr. Reddy's Finax. Also what dose do you recommend? Because he said with these 5mg fins I should just do a quarter tablet (1.25mg) daily dose.. is that okay to start with for a 20 year old.. or would it be better to try to cut it into 5 and lower the dose now so that later I will be able to up the dose if it ever loses its effectiveness.

Also as a side note I have one more quick question that maybe you can help me with. Basically my question is when you use finasteride (lets say it works for 5 years and then starts to lose its effectiveness). After that point does your hair then just continue on its natural path of balding? Or will your hair be on a slower balding path due to the finasteride, or a faster more aggressive path (to catch up for lost time, to where your hair should of naturally been)?

Thank you so much for all of your help!

Vlatch · Jun 24, 2014

It doesn't matter which type of finasteride you take and 1.25 mg will get you the same results as 1mg.

I'm not sure finasteride loses effectiveness. I may be wrong (tell me if I am or if there is a study proving it inhibits less DHT after some time) : It blocks 70 % of DHT, so you will still have some DHT in your body when you take it. In the first years, the follicles that were too weak to grow hair can heal a bit because of the dramatic loss in DHT, and the rest of the hair also looks better because of it. But IF the remaining 30% DHT is still enough to slowly destroy your hair : at 5-10 years you will probably return to baseline and after that your hair will slowly get worse, just much slower than without finasteride. But I'm no doctor.

Don't worry too much though, there is a 10 year study showing that even after 10 years, the majority of men taking finasteride was still above baseline.

zzzzz · Jun 24, 2014

proscar is "the best" only because it is the cheapest way to take finasteride. It doesn't matter what brand it is. 1mg or 1.25mg daily is good dosage doesn't matter a whole lot.

finasteride will slow your loss or maintain indefinately