WangMQ
Established Member
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This is an important issue worth particular attention to long term AA users. It's upsetting that the alert received is rare. I'm going to discuss it along with my own story.
I've been using finasteride ever since 2008 winter (with minoxidil). For the first year I got pretty promising regrowth. For the first five years I more or less maintained my hair, even though my temples were slightly thinning (still kept my hairline back then). From early 2015, I started to lose ground on my hair. I started to see increased shedding and itching. And I kept losing miniaturized hair along my hairline. Since 2016 things are totally out of control. I literally climbed at least 1.5 grades upon the Norwood scale within six months ( I had great hair before, Norwood 0.5 hairline with thick hair elsewhere. When I grow it long people even thought I was wearing a wig).
In the meantime, the side effects of finasteride has been building up. For the first three or four years no big deal. Just minor sex related sides. However, since 2013 the mental sides are coming into sight: sleep problems, fatigue, brain fog, mood swings, etc. Having lived quite an unhealthy lifestyle during my fight for degree, I once blamed it all to my poor sleep quality. I even rambled in insomnia forums for help haha. Since I've been doing a lot of readings about the true profound impact of finasteride during the past year, I connected the dots and realized that finasteride caused all these. I lowered the dosage and skipped doses just to test and it confirmed that.
Since I can't take finasteride anymore, I tried microdosing. It seems that the highest amount I'm able to take with no noticeable sides is 0.125 mg ED (1/8 pill). However, at this dosage, I'm feeling it's not helping my hair at all. The itch comes and go everyday and I'm literally shedding the same amount before I started any treatment at all in 2008. But wait, doesn't the Drake et al. study say that even 0.05 mg finasteride is nearly as efficient as 0.2 and 1 mg considering scalp DHT inhibition?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10495374
Isn't that also the reason why quite a few guys of the male pattern baldness communities, such as shulk here and Desmond on BTT. had success with microdosing? Why is it not working for me?
Recently, I've been running into stories of long term AA users losing ground on the same (or even higher) dosage. For example, this:
http://www.hairlosshelp.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=10&threadid=115798
(The guy can't even maintain with dutasteride. He's sticking to it even with terrible sides. We are really desperate at this point)
Here's a study that might explain why:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21557276
Finasteride up regulate androgen receptor with long term usage. That's the reason why the same dosage doesn't work anymore and you have to bring in bigger guns year after year. Even though finasteride might be just as effective as reducing DHT- let's say full 70% reduction-the remaining 30% can be doing as much damage as the original 100% when AR are upregulated. Let's say you further reduce it by 90% with dutasteride, that 10% left might eventually be as damaging. However, the mental sides that are not related to DHT (but rather other 5AR mediated hormones) are bound to build up, since you've been hitting them with stronger and stronger weapons.
Considering finasteride has only been approved to treat male pattern baldness since 1999 (am I remembering correct?), testimonials longer than 15 years is unlikely. I've been using finasteride for 8 years and I think that's quite something on this scale.
As I read this I feel completely fxxked. I started from the standard 1 mg and I even tried upping it for a few times back out of despair. Now due to clear sides I can't even take 0.2 mg. No wonder why I'm losing as if I'm not on any drugs at all. What's even worse is that my case indicates that the androgen sensitivity in me has already been increased. If I quit finasteride completely I'd be losing even faster than a guy on my Norwood level without any medication. I'm literally kidnapped by this drug.
So I guess there are are few things that new starters should keep in mind before playing with AA drugs:
1. Start from lower dosage and check if it works for you. Don't go higher as long as it still works. 0.2 mg is already very promising for most new starters.
2. Do an estimation of how many years your hair has left before starting this lifetime commitment. Think twice. I, being extremely sensitive to my hair and image, started finasteride at full dosage at the slightest early sign of male pattern baldness. I gave me a few years of glory, but now I'm paying the debt.
3. The sides of finasteride are real. Trust your own body.
I don't mean to let anyone who has a success story to tell stop treatments. But obviously this whole idea of treating hairloss from an upstream and systemic angle is meant to be flawed in the first place. Now it seems that there's not much I can do except waiting for the PGD2 inhibition breakthrough, which deals with the problem at the most downstream stage we currently know.
If by then I still have any hair left.
I've been using finasteride ever since 2008 winter (with minoxidil). For the first year I got pretty promising regrowth. For the first five years I more or less maintained my hair, even though my temples were slightly thinning (still kept my hairline back then). From early 2015, I started to lose ground on my hair. I started to see increased shedding and itching. And I kept losing miniaturized hair along my hairline. Since 2016 things are totally out of control. I literally climbed at least 1.5 grades upon the Norwood scale within six months ( I had great hair before, Norwood 0.5 hairline with thick hair elsewhere. When I grow it long people even thought I was wearing a wig).
In the meantime, the side effects of finasteride has been building up. For the first three or four years no big deal. Just minor sex related sides. However, since 2013 the mental sides are coming into sight: sleep problems, fatigue, brain fog, mood swings, etc. Having lived quite an unhealthy lifestyle during my fight for degree, I once blamed it all to my poor sleep quality. I even rambled in insomnia forums for help haha. Since I've been doing a lot of readings about the true profound impact of finasteride during the past year, I connected the dots and realized that finasteride caused all these. I lowered the dosage and skipped doses just to test and it confirmed that.
Since I can't take finasteride anymore, I tried microdosing. It seems that the highest amount I'm able to take with no noticeable sides is 0.125 mg ED (1/8 pill). However, at this dosage, I'm feeling it's not helping my hair at all. The itch comes and go everyday and I'm literally shedding the same amount before I started any treatment at all in 2008. But wait, doesn't the Drake et al. study say that even 0.05 mg finasteride is nearly as efficient as 0.2 and 1 mg considering scalp DHT inhibition?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10495374
Isn't that also the reason why quite a few guys of the male pattern baldness communities, such as shulk here and Desmond on BTT. had success with microdosing? Why is it not working for me?
Recently, I've been running into stories of long term AA users losing ground on the same (or even higher) dosage. For example, this:
http://www.hairlosshelp.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=10&threadid=115798
(The guy can't even maintain with dutasteride. He's sticking to it even with terrible sides. We are really desperate at this point)
Here's a study that might explain why:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21557276
Finasteride up regulate androgen receptor with long term usage. That's the reason why the same dosage doesn't work anymore and you have to bring in bigger guns year after year. Even though finasteride might be just as effective as reducing DHT- let's say full 70% reduction-the remaining 30% can be doing as much damage as the original 100% when AR are upregulated. Let's say you further reduce it by 90% with dutasteride, that 10% left might eventually be as damaging. However, the mental sides that are not related to DHT (but rather other 5AR mediated hormones) are bound to build up, since you've been hitting them with stronger and stronger weapons.
Considering finasteride has only been approved to treat male pattern baldness since 1999 (am I remembering correct?), testimonials longer than 15 years is unlikely. I've been using finasteride for 8 years and I think that's quite something on this scale.
As I read this I feel completely fxxked. I started from the standard 1 mg and I even tried upping it for a few times back out of despair. Now due to clear sides I can't even take 0.2 mg. No wonder why I'm losing as if I'm not on any drugs at all. What's even worse is that my case indicates that the androgen sensitivity in me has already been increased. If I quit finasteride completely I'd be losing even faster than a guy on my Norwood level without any medication. I'm literally kidnapped by this drug.
So I guess there are are few things that new starters should keep in mind before playing with AA drugs:
1. Start from lower dosage and check if it works for you. Don't go higher as long as it still works. 0.2 mg is already very promising for most new starters.
2. Do an estimation of how many years your hair has left before starting this lifetime commitment. Think twice. I, being extremely sensitive to my hair and image, started finasteride at full dosage at the slightest early sign of male pattern baldness. I gave me a few years of glory, but now I'm paying the debt.
3. The sides of finasteride are real. Trust your own body.
I don't mean to let anyone who has a success story to tell stop treatments. But obviously this whole idea of treating hairloss from an upstream and systemic angle is meant to be flawed in the first place. Now it seems that there's not much I can do except waiting for the PGD2 inhibition breakthrough, which deals with the problem at the most downstream stage we currently know.
If by then I still have any hair left.
