I hope my meds were fake

[jc444]

Hi all, I would really appreciate any advice on what might be causing my sudden and fast thinning and secondly any comments on my suggested regime change.
Timeline:
- Been on propecia (from doctor) for nearly 7 years.
Really good hair maintenance. Temple recession continued slowly but hair volume remained good. Really happy.
- Then 6 months ago changed to proscar 1/4s from cyberatlantis.com
Over these 6 months, noticed thinning on top and crown for the first time
- Added spironolactone and minoxidil 5% from Dr Lee four months ago
Continued thinning at front, top and crown. Temples not improving, but probably not getting worse.

My concern is the very fast thinning I have experienced all over the top and crown. I have never had any thinning at all until changing from my propecia regime. I simply cannot style my hair like i could, i basically am like a new person - one with obvious male pattern baldness. This is a great concern for me. I can only the deteremine the cause must be due to one of the following:

1. After 7 years on finasteride, it just lost its effect
2. My online proscar was fake, meaning ive had no internal meds at all for 6 months!!
3. The proscar was real but was far less effective than propecia (maybe due to the cutting and consistency of dosage, etc)

Im hoping my meds were fake cause then at least i have some hope at improving again (even i've already screwed my hair). So out of depesparation Im thinking of the following regime:

Propecia 1mg/day - from elitenetphramacy
dutasteride 0.5mg/3days - from elitenetphramacy
minoxidil 5% mornings - dr lee
minoxidil 12.5% nights - dr lee
spironolactone 5 % mornings and evenings. - dr lee

I feel this would answer all teh potential problems listed above.

Any advice would be really appreciated, im freaking out man. Im 29 by the way

CHeers all,
JC

 

[Thinning]

Yeah its probably fake. Half of online generics from overseas are fakes. Thats why I pay more for the real thing.

 

[jc444]

thanks for your reply. While i am devastated that they may have been fake, I kind of hope they were as this means starting back on genuine propecia may halt things where they are.

This is crazy, 7 years propecia has served me well, slowed my hairloss so much that, while i naturally had many worrying times, overall i must say I am delighted to have kept my hair in the state i did for so long. Now its Fcuked and im so gutted. I feel all my efforts have been wasted to a degree.

My pills looked very genuine and the printing on the pill itself was very tight, very professional looking, so you knows. Well thats the problem, not knowing. It does my head in.

I want to get my propecia now from elitenetpharmacy because of the good price, but there is still no evidence that those are real. They look real, but who knows. Some random poster called "elitenetpharmacy" saying they are real and saying the same about loads of medicines on loads of other forums does not exactly inspire confidence.

CollegeChemistryStudent was going to do some test, would love to know how he got on.

If you can afford the meds via the doctors prescription route, I would say don't consider anything else.

But also, does anyone think there is a possibility that finasteride just lost its effect since 7 years if very long term use.

Thanks and sorry for the rant.

 

[Thinning]

I wouldent order from that place until the tests came back.

 

[beaner]

There has been recent problems with counterfeit Proscar...did it come from Hong Kong? You're better off going with the Indian generics rather than name brand when purchasing from internet pharmacies. The Indian generics (Fincar, Finpecia) work just as well and chances are slim to none that these would be fakes.

 

[jc444]

Thinning, yeah I know what you are sayig, but being the irrational paniced fool I am at the moment, I have gone ahead and ordered anyway. I figure, if its fake then its no worse than sticking with my current batch of fake stuff right?

Beaner, it was proscar from cyberatlantis.dom. It was delivered from Taiwan. Sounds dodgy for sure, but i dont see how ordering Indian generics would be any different as they could be fakes too. Or are you saying that it is less likely that someone will go to the effort to counterfeit an already cheap indian generic drug? Actaully, thats a good point, cheers!

Well the 3 responses so far seem agreed that the culprit is fake meds. This gives me hope that one on teh meds again I can at least not get any worse. At this rate, Im going to basically go from a guy who could hide is hairloss nearly completely, with some determined styling, to a guy who is obviously and clearly diffuse and balding, within a year

 

[beaner]

Yes..that is exactly what I'm saying. There wouldn't be much money to be made in counterfeiting Indian generics and I think if anyone orders from an internet pharmacy that should be the route to take. I simply would no longer feel comfortable having a pretty blue Proscar pill in front of me if it came from overseas and not my corner drugstore.

 

[hairwegoagain]

Why risk buying cheap 3rd world mystery stuff from ANY fly-by-night internet "pharmacy" when the real thing via prescription has worked for you for 7 years !!!??? Why tempt fate? For an extra buck a day (probably much less), you don't have to worry about it. If $ is an issue, cut out Starbucks or one fast food meal/week. Wouldn't it be worth it not to sink into depression?

I don't understand how it is that some fret 24/7 about their hair - putting their lives on hold - yet are still willing to play Russian Roulette, buying questionable medications from unknown sources to save a few nickels. The logic is absolutely absurd.

 

[powersam]

this is something as a group that we can really have an effect on. if anyone on this forum had the means to test the potentcy of these meds then we could all be safe from fakes. i heard collegechemistrystudent mention something about this earlier.

 

[jeffsss]

It still baffles me that anyone would buy drugs from a website.

go to a pharmacy people!! this isnt something you should try saving money on.

 

[ShedMaster]

It still baffles me that anyone would buy drugs from a website.

go to a pharmacy people!! this isnt something you should try saving money on.

Because many either can't afford them like college students or justify to themselves spending that much more money for the same thing I suppose.

We need to take a sampling of medications from various websites and have them tested by collegechemistrystudent or something to that effect..

 

[Thinning]

Is collegechemistrystudent rich or something? Because it costs several hundred dollars each to test drugs like this. Unless somebody has 1000$ to throw away, its not going to happen.

If anyone thinks its a silly idea to fake 1$ a day pills they are crazy. It can quickly add up to millions of dollars in profit.

No Indian generics are not a better bet, they are easier to fake most likely.

Best bet is to buy from a US pharmacy.

 

[joeylloyd]

If he is an actual chemistry student presumably he can do it at a uni lab himself.

Fwiw, the proscar and avodart at that site is identical to what you find in a Uk pharmacy.

 

[bubka]

did you have them exposed to sunlight or moisture, that can really denature the finasteride, if you cut your 5mg pills, do it one at a time, and keep them sealed and dry

 

[jc444]

Hey everyone, thanks for all the replies! The thing is i have always used meds from a pharmacy with prescription but about 2 years ago I met the girl of my dreams, but she was scandinavian, so i moved to Finland 6 months ago to be with her. Everything is weird here, the language, the way things work is all backwards, and the prices astronomical and this is the reason i switched to getting my meds online.

Ya know i was so stressed about losing my hair cause i thought i wouldnt find my dream girl, and now i have, my hair is vanishing and Im still stressing out even worried about losing her. It sucks because she is still the same beauty i met and yet im going to look completely different if i dont do something very soon.

Anyways, you have given me motivation to get out of my comfort zone and try to find a doctor that can give me a prescription. I want to find out if finasteride is covered with insurance but all these simple things are quite tricky here with the language barrier. But you guys have made me realise its worth the effort. Arrrggh how frustrating this has become. I just wish i was sorted on a nice solid regime again, then at least i think i could deal with my decline a little better.

BUt still I would be very interested in hearing what college has to say about his testing. For the guy who queried it, yeah he has access to the equipment and apparently knows what hes doing, so it sounds encouraging.

 

[CCS]

Or instead of cutting out coffee, you could cut the real pill in half and get almost the same effects. There is less motive to fake an indian drug, but I'd still worry.

I figured out a way to make a fake that would look like dutasteride to two different spectroscopy tests. I'm not posting it for obvious reasons. I can use my proscar as a standart to test finasteride, if any one i PM'd mails me theirs. I'm waiting for them to email me so I can give them my address, without using this site. Also, the lab I called said they don't do DHT tests. I'm looking threw my organic and analytic chemistry text books and lab manuals to pic some tests that would catch these fakes if they were used.

I'm also worried about fake spironolactone, and will design tests for that.

It is hard to make tests without standards, but I can get some info from some tests to rule out certain possibilities.

Another scary point is that even if I report that sites X and Y have good meds and Z does not, it could mean these pharmacies bought good or bad products because they don't check theirs, and next month or box will be different. When X and Y get more business, they may need to buy from more sources. Then they might get shut down, and start a different site, and we don't know who they are again.

Could someone find GSK's patent for dutasteride for me? I'm hoping it has spectral info in it, or more, like merks topical finasteride patent application did. I'm also hoping that absorption magnitude of finasteride will be similar to dutasteride, though teh benzene ring will be different. With such low concentrations and the need for accuracy, many of my organic reaction tests will be ineffective.

 

[CCS]

We need to take a sampling of medications from various websites and have them tested by collegechemistrystudent or something to that effect..

it would be great if we could do samplings. the problem is we don't want one pharmacy posing as a user and sending fake samples and claiming to have got it from a different pharmacy, or sending real ones just for the test. There are only about 6 people on here I know would not pull a stunt,

shedmaster, aplunk1, beaner, oldbaldy, goingat20, felk. Maybe a few others. Hairwegoagain does not buy oversees, and i don't need standards from him since i have proscar from a real pharmacy.

I need someone to find me the IR and UV absorption peaks of benzene, different hallogenated benzenes, cholesterol, cortizone, any other steroids, finasteride (just to see how much error the machine has), and dutasteride. I suspect i will see some similarites. Since i don't have the pure form, I can't use my organic chemsitry techniques. Spectroscopy and chromatography are all i have, and I don't have a dutasteride standard. I have graduate student friends in the chemistry department who can get me access to any machine I want.

And I'm really worried that even if my test gives definative results, I won't know if the products will change next month. my only reason for buying $60 avodart online from elitenetpharmacy instead of $90 avodart here is i can't get a prescription for avodart. Got a solution to that, hairwegoagain?

The only way a wide sampling could help us is if we got some from many brands and sources and they all tested legit. Then we would know that not many fakes are floating around out there. But if half are fake, we are screwed.

 

[CCS]

i don't have a dutasteride standard, but i can compare dutasteride samples to each other, to finasteride samples, to benzene and hopefully tri-fluorobenzene standards (with IR), and I can compare the peaks to pubished values if someone helps me find the patent or other places that have them.

liquid chromatography will tell me how many ingredients are in the sample, so I can catch flourobenze mixed with finasteride as a dutasteride imposter. I'm almost glad that lab does not have a DHT test, because it will save me $200, and this is free and will sharpen my chemistry skills and my connections in the chemistry department.

 

[CCS]

i found the UV spectrum for benzene. easy to find a common chemical like that. i also looked at the msds for trifluorobenzene. it is much less toxic than benzene, so at 0.25 mg/day, it would not affect people at all.

 

[CCS]

http://asrg.contactincontext.org/ASRG/p ... galley.pdf

i found a testosterone UV spectrum