Increased Hair Loss On Big 3. Should I Stop finasteride?

[J124973]

Hi guys. Need advice and support from anyone who's experienced in fighting with hair loss. I'm really depressed and scared right now. Here is my story. 32M, diffuse thinner, I think 60% of my top hair is gone, I can see through my scarp under direct light. I've been using minoxidil liquid for about 8 month once a day 1 ml and did notice very-very minor regrow. At that time I didn't notice that my hair was falling out that is I didn't experience the common shedding that occurs for many people on minoxidil. Then I stopped and didn't take any hair loss treatment for about 4 month. One month ago I started applying minoxidil liquid 2 times daily, then added generic finasteride 1.25mg daily and also decontrolling 0.5mm daily and recently Nizoral. My fears are related to the fact that my shedding increases since I started taking finasteride. I'm now loosing more and more hair including miniaturized as well as non-miniaturized. My hair density got worse. Most of the success stories I've read were telling that the shedding didn't occur at all, or wasn't intense, or it started in a few weeks after starting finasteride treatment and stopped in a few month. Whereas my shedding began at the same time when I started finasteride and then intensively increased which may be a bad sign. Now I'm confused what should I do next. The options I can think of are either drop finasteride and apply minoxidil only, or continue finasteride+min hoping for regrow.

PS. It may be important that I'm now loosing hair not only from the thinning top area, but also from sides. How common is it?

 

[Moosey]

Minoxidils hair growth is very very artificial. It sends alot of hairs on your head into the anagen phase which is why you experience denser hair.
But when alot of hairs go into the growing phase, it means they will all fall out at the same time too.
Thats why even people who had success with minoxidil, experience heavy shedding sooner or later. Sometimes after 6 months, sometimes after 12 months, whatever.
I think shedding from finasteride is a good thing. Its not artificially growing your hair. Its protecting your hair.

Do you have full hair? If not, its normal that finasteride makes you shed. I wouldnt stop using it honestly, unless its making you bald

 

[Obsessive]

Minoxidils hair growth is very very artificial. It sends alot of hairs on your head into the anagen phase which is why you experience denser hair.
But when alot of hairs go into the growing phase, it means they will all fall out at the same time too.
Thats why even people who had success with minoxidil, experience heavy shedding sooner or later. Sometimes after 6 months, sometimes after 12 months, whatever.
I think shedding from finasteride is a good thing. Its not artificially growing your hair. Its protecting your hair.

Do you have full hair? If not, its normal that finasteride makes you shed. I wouldnt stop using it honestly, unless its making you bald

I think OP is concerned that it could be accelerating the balding process. I'm in the same boat. How much loss should a finasteride user accept before quitting the drug and moving to another treatment?

 

[J124973]

Moosey, I'm not full hair at all. I'm not a Norwood expert, I think the pattern is close to Norwood 2 or 3, but the hair is extremely thin. This min+finasteride treatment made it even worse because accelerated the shedding. And that's not me noticed the difference, I know that my eyes are biased, that's actually people around me pointed that out. This hurts and actually pushed me to write the post.

Obsessive, right, that is a part of my question. I also feel like other people here that experienced shedding didn't lose much of the
density during treatment, unlike myself.

 

[Moosey]

As i said, if your hair is damaged and you add finasteride, its normal to experience shedding. Unless it becomes much much more worse, just wait it out. Finasteride is a much better drug than minoxidil.

Or it could be coincidence. You could just be experiencing the famous minoxidil rollercoaster. Got regrowth, now your hair is falling out again.