How Many Years Finasteride Stops Hair Loss?

[cyclonite]

I am 24 years old and 3 years ago I started losing hair, my "male pattern hair loss" barely have "pattern" at all and it seems to completely skip my temples and caused mild to serious hair thinning(but pretty far from complete baldness in those areas) in parts of my front part of my head and it stayed like that for three years without any visible worsening. recently(month ago) I decided that I had enough with this and began taking propecia and minoxidil. I plan to quickly(relatively) improve the condition of my hair with the minoxidil and "protect" and keep my gains with propecia alone to my mid/late thirties but after reading on studies about the long term effectiveness of propecia(finasteride) I got a bit confused.
I heard some people saying that propecia don't stops hair loss after 5-6 years but I found a study that says that out of 118 patients who took finasteride(1 mg) over 10 years only 14% lost hair and that almost half of the patients kept growing more hair after 10 years but than I found another research that claims that as much as 35% of the patients who took finasteride for 5 years lost hair but there was also a weird note: "overall hair counts and percentage of responders continued to decline in the 4th and 5th years of treatment just like they did in the 2nd and 3rd years. The decrease in responders and hair counts was small, in fact the decrease was largest in the 2nd year and was smaller in each successive year and seems to almost even out by year 5"
its look like the article/research claim that if you didn't lost hair in your fifth year you have smaller chance of starting losing hair in the following year in comparison to someone who is on his second year of finasteride. than I found an answer of someone talking about another research that claims that: "According to Kaufman et al., >90% of the patients who carry on Finasteride 1 mg >5 years will have positive results regarding hair inhibition and reversion of hair follicle shrinkage, while >66%will grow new hair of normal thickness and length both on the top and frontal area" which is much more than the 65% of the previous research.

which study is right? I want to keep a "normal hair"(without noticeable hair loss) to my mid thirties with the propecia, do I have a good chance for that?. if not, would I have a good chance for that if I take dutasteride 0.5 or higher dose? I don't care from the side effects at all and I will take any medicine that will save my hair(not just part of it) even if it will ruin my health and make me puke blood.

sorry for the very long post, it came out longer than I expected cause it seems that I can't post links as a new member.
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[Bigbone]

finasteride won't stop working, but it might not be enough if/when your hair follicles become more sensitive. It comes down to how aggressive your hair loss is. Do you have a lot of advanced hair loss sufferers in your family?
What you have to look in that study is the participants in your age group. Early hair loss is more likely to be aggressive.

If you're fine with the increased risk of side effects then why not, I mean dutasteride is supposed to work better. But IMO, why not wait and see if finasteride is enough? If you notice more hair loss you make the switch.

 

[cyclonite]

finasteride won't stop working, but it might not be enough if/when your hair follicles become more sensitive. It comes down to how aggressive your hair loss is. Do you have a lot of advanced hair loss sufferers in your family?
What you have to look in that study is the participants in your age group. Early hair loss is more likely to be aggressive.

If you're fine with the increased risk of side effects then why not, I mean dutasteride is supposed to work better. But IMO, why not wait and see if finasteride is enough? If you notice more hair loss you make the switch.

for now in the last 3 years my hair loss didn't seem to worsen and is generaly just mild to serious hair thinning without the bald areas people usualy get on the temples. does it say much?.
BTW you are talking about the 10 years old study? I remember that they said that people who where 30+ olds or older grew more hair than 20+ years olds but also said that people with more advanced hair loss grew more hair than the ones with mild hair loss so the 30+ years olds probably just grew more hair cause they lost more hair than the 20+ years old ones.

the bottom line I get from the researches is that most people still keeping and even growing more hair from the finasteride after 5 years of use but I am trying to understand what are the odds with finasteride over 10 years, does it looks to you like the second research suggest that if you didn't lost hair on year five you have better chance at keeping it over the following years? it will partly explain how in the former research people had better chances of 86% at 10 years and not 42%-+ which is 65% of the 65% from the second research who didn't suffered from hair loss. other researches i saw on finasteride over 5 or more years showed much better results in comparison to the second research and i want to know why.

 

[UberBaldaten]

Follicles don't become more sensitive, just the remaining DHT because it's lowered needs more time to do the damage.

 

[Bigbone]

for now in the last 3 years my hair loss didn't seem to worsen and is generaly just mild to serious hair thinning without the bald areas people usualy get on the temples. does it say much?.
BTW you are talking about the 10 years old study? I remember that they said that people who where 30+ olds or older grew more hair than 20+ years olds but also said that people with more advanced hair loss grew more hair than the ones with mild hair loss so the 30+ years olds probably just grew more hair cause they lost more hair than the 20+ years old ones.

the bottom line I get from the researches is that most people still keeping and even growing more hair from the finasteride after 5 years of use but I am trying to understand what are the odds with finasteride over 10 years, does it looks to you like the second research suggest that if you didn't lost hair on year five you have better chance at keeping it over the following years? it will partly explain how in the former research people had better chances of 86% at 10 years and not 42%-+ which is 65% of the 65% from the second research who didn't suffered from hair loss. other researches i saw on finasteride over 5 or more years showed much better results in comparison to the second research and i want to know why.

I'm not sure what studies you're talking about. But it doesn't matter because you're doing good on finasteride atm, if it gets bad you'll get on dutasteride and that's all you can do in terms of basic hair loss-treatments. You can go hardcore with other treatments but you'll have to ask others about that.

Follicles don't become more sensitive, just the remaining DHT because it's lowered needs more time to do the damage.

If follicles don't become more sensitive with time, how come everybody isn't bald by 25 when your DHT is at its peak? What you're saying is that hair loss should slow down naturally with age, which isn't the case.

 

[cyclonite]

Follicles don't become more sensitive, just the remaining DHT because it's lowered needs more time to do the damage.

I don't think its true, people who stops with medications like propecia loose a lot of hair and ends up in the condition they would have been if they didn't took medications in the first place. it also explains why hair loss usualy progress in stages and completely ruin some hair follicles while hairs who are very close to those balding spots doesn't get affected.

 

[UberBaldaten]

If follicles don't become more sensitive with time, how come everybody isn't bald by 25 when your DHT is at its peak? What you're saying is that hair loss should slow down naturally with age, which isn't the case.[/QUOTE]

Hairloss slows down with age. They won't be bald because by age 25 the health of follicle went from 100hp to 75 hp.

Decimating already dead follicles from 50hp to 25 is a lot easier even with lower amounts of androgens.

 

[cyclonite]

I'm not sure what studies you're talking about. But it doesn't matter because you're doing good on finasteride atm, if it gets bad you'll get on dutasteride and that's all you can do in terms of basic hair loss-treatments. You can go hardcore with other treatments but you'll have to ask others about that.

you talk about the 10 years research? I tried to post a link at the beginning but I couldn't post links from some reason
https://www.bernsteinmedical.com/re...-to-investigate-long-term-effects-and-safety/

I prefer to be longer as possible on one medication, and still want to know if I could stay on finasteride for the long term without hair loss in case I will have problems in getting dutasteride.

 

[cyclonite]

you talk about the 10 years research? I tried to post a link at the beginning but I couldn't post links from some reason
https://www.bernsteinmedical.com/re...-to-investigate-long-term-effects-and-safety/

I prefer to be longer as possible on one medication, and still want to know if I could stay on finasteride for the long term without hair loss in case I will have problems in getting dutasteride.

I just noticed a weird thing about this research(didn't readed all of it...) there is a section of "Photographic assessments" where it said :

"No Propecia users had their hair counts decrease greatly compared to about 19% of placebo users. A small 3% of Propecia users showed a moderate decrease in hair compared to 31% of placebo users, and 7% of patients showed a slight decrease in hair compared to 25% of placebo users. Forty-two percent of Propecia users showed no change in their hair compared to 19% of placebo users, 22% showed a slight increase in hair compared to 6% of placebo users, 21% had a moderate increase in hair compared to no placebo users, and interestingly enough, 5% showed a great increase in hair (the same as in previous years). So apparently the better a responder you are, the more likely you are to maintain your results."

according to this only 10% of the patients who took propecia lost hair during the study so why they say 35% at the beginning?... someone understand what is going on here?

 

[davesmith420]

I wish I could find it, but there was a thread on Hair Loss Help from long term finasteride/dutasteride users. On average from the users in the thread, it seems like people on the drugs for 7+ years more or less had the same head of hair with some possible worsening. A few even said that their hair was still above baseline. Realistically as long as you respond well to the drug over the 1st two years, you'll likely have a good head of hair over the next decade or so.

 

[cyclonite]

I wish I could find it, but there was a thread on Hair Loss Help from long term finasteride/dutasteride users. On average from the users in the thread, it seems like people on the drugs for 7+ years more or less had the same head of hair with some possible worsening. A few even said that their hair was still above baseline. Realistically as long as you respond well to the drug over the 1st two years, you'll likely have a good head of hair over the next decade or so.

can you tell me what is "baseline"? I hear this term a lot but even after trying to read about it I didn't realy understood what is it

 

[davesmith420]

can you tell me what is "baseline"? I hear this term a lot but even after trying to read about it I didn't realy understood what is it

Baseline is your starting point.

 

[Aethas]

What happen if you stop using this treatment compared to people who never initialy used it?