I think androgenic hair loss is reversible (edited)

[CCS]

So CCS, if you were a 42 y/o chic desperate to hang on and regrow some hair doing the following:

Rogaine foam 5% 2x/day since last Nov
Fincar 2.5 mg since Aug
Yasmin
Oral spironolactone 200mg since Jan, started at 150 last Nov

What would you do when you see nothing seems to be helping and time is up? Mix in dutas to rotate with fincar like every other day or something?

*I read 2% rogain is just as effective as 5% on women. So save money and use the foam only 1x per day.
*there is a chance the dutasteride/finasteride rotation would help. I'd say that is not likely the issue, but in your bad case maybe it is.
*I'm actually wondering about the oral spironolactone. Have you had your testosterone levels checked before and after? I heard it reduces how much testosterone the testes make, but women don't have testes. They make their testosterone elsewhere, in glands that might act differently. I also am not sure if oral spironolactone is an androgen receptor blocker, since it is metabolized to something else so fast.
*I also wonder if Yasmin is just estradiol, or something else. Not an expert there, but check to make sure. Some birth control pills have Progesterone for health reasons, but I don't know how that affects hair.
*Finally, you are upping your serum estradiol, but by removing testosterone further, that means less to aromatize in the follicles. Local estrogen might matter more than serum.
----
*I'd consider dropping the oral spironolactone.
*I'm sure since women are diffuse, revivogen may be out of the quetion, though it is good for blocking 5ar1.
*But topical curcumin, EGCG, and licorice extract would be very cheap, reduce free radical damage, block androgen receptors, and inhibit more 5ar1 so that there would be less DHT and more testosterone to aromatize into estrogen. They'd be a great evidence backed, experimental addition to an otherwise proven regimen.
*And you can use nizoral and piroctone olamine shampoo (bodyshop ginger on amazon) too. Some women only shower once a week though, so maybe that is why you do not use that.

 

[Bryan]

This may or may not be relevant to the conversation:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entre ... stractPlus

Good finds.
Looking at the first one:
Very strange that estrogen grew hair on the back of mice.

Huh? Estrogen DIDN'T grow hair on the back of mice. An estrogen receptor BLOCKER grew hair on the back of mice!

BTW, it's also interesting that one of those mouse experiments did seem to conflict with the Kligman study on the use of topical estrogen, by finding that there WAS a "local" effect on hair follicles. Strange...

 

[Bryan]

Re: I think androgenic hair loss may be reversible

I personally believe estrogen plays a very big role in hairloss, one that has yet to be understood.

So far, the evidence is consistent with the new paradigm that estrogen generally suppresses the growth of most body hair, but stimulates the growth of balding human scalp hair.

 

[Bryan]

What about using phytoestrogens topically as well? Isoflavones from soy and clover, lignans from tree barks and flax seeds and pumpkin seeds.

Probably depends on to what extent the phytoestogens are agonistic or antagonistic to the estrogen receptor in question. That is by no means an easy thing to determine, and can even vary, depending on the specific tissue you're using it on. For example, even the well-established drug Tamoxifen has opposite effects, depending on body-site: it's estrogen antagonistic in breast tissue, but estrogen agonsitic in certain other female organs.

 

[Bryan]

How do we know finasteride doesnt help in part because because of the much higher estrogen and not the much lower dht? How can we seperate there effects?

I'm sure that the extra estrogen does play _some_ role in the beneficial effect of finasteride, but I doubt that it's a very significant part of the total package. Sometimes I worry a little when I find myself going on and on about the (apparent) beneficial effect of estrogen in balding...I really don't mean to make THAT big a deal out of it, because I DON'T think it's such a big deal. My main motivation is just to counter the comments from certain individuals in the hairloss community who are absolutely convinced that estrogen is a prime negative factor in human balding, and that we must do everything in our power to counter it at once! :mrgreen: I consider that belief to be unscientific and unsupported in the medical literature.

Do the hermaphradites have higher then normal estrogen or unusual estrogen patterns?

They have slightly elevated estrogen levels, just like finasteride users (presumably) do.

 

[Bryan]

Bryan - my current regimen - dutasteride, nizoral, and soon minoxidil with ret A.

Want more SCALP DHT suppressed do you suggest topical estrogen or spironolactone? Pick one. Or something else.

I'm assuming you're male, so the only form of estrogen it would be acceptable for you to use would be 17a-estradiol; if I were forced to pick between that and spironolactone, I'd probably go for the spironolactone.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the advice Bryan.

I will however wait...until I do more research for in vivo topical DHT inhibitors/receptor blockers. I want something that works proper on human heads. Like as effective as a guillotine, or a hat. Both work very well on human heads. But not very well on rats backs...or hamsters....I wouldn't want to see a beanie hat, on a hamster :nono:

 

[Jojje]

hmm didnt cassin put out a warning about spironolactone .... ?

 

[Georgie]

This is an old as sh*t thread but I wanted to chime In, because my body is a f*****g hormone thermometer. Basically when I first started losing hair, I had no estrogen left and my ratio of T was super high. I began to recede like a man, and had all over thinning. ALSO since my adrenals weren’t making enough androgens, but lashes and brows went kaput. Skip forward to using minoxidil and the pill (Diane), I regrew my hairline, lashes and brows. However the spironolactone I was taking wasn’t helping although I never noticed a shed. My overall hair was still thinning. Lately I have tried saw palmetto and dutas. They have both caused me to bleed even on the pill, and caused huge sheds with hairline recession. This means they effectively drop your estrogen levels way low. Moral of the story, you need estrogen for hair. You know how so many guys say finasteride or dutas wrecked or didn’t help their hairline? It’s not a coincidence my friends