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Just drink topical. It's cheap and easy and you can convert ml's to mg's.
Is Oral Minoxidil really worth the hair it gives you?
- Thread starter Lost Boy
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Yeah-- low low dose Min feels like a no brainer? I feel like so of it would go systematic when used topically anyways? So why not use the most powerful/effective method
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The main reason has to do with something called sulfurtransferase which is lacking in perhaps half of our scalps. It is abundant in the liver and so when oral minoxidil is passed through the liver, it is in effect, potentiated several times. Some add sulfurtransferase to the scalp topically along with minoxidil but it seems that using oral minoxidil and then using topical with that is an easier way to go both financially and in terms of having to deal with different meds than is adding sulfurtransferase. @bridegeburn started off using sulfurtransferase and then switched to oral minoxidil if I recall correctly. Both ways should work much better than using only topical minoxidil without the sulfurtransferase booster.
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Yeah-- one of the main reasons I'm wanting to switch is im just sick of applying it every morning. It's just become such a pain in the ***
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The foam always worked better for me in terms of convenience and not having any sticky residue but I was a diffuse thinner so I just use it like mousse in the morning.
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I'm diffuse too. I used foam (liquid had PG, which irritated the f*** out of my scalp). I got a custom liquid RX compound now with no PG. It's 8% Min, with 0.25 finasteride, Retenoic acid, Hydrocortisone, and Aloe Vera. Its great! Just hate applying it every f*****g day
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Listen to you complain, lol, after we discussed people wanting and hoping for anything to rub into the scalp in the 80's! But yes, I know that applying meds can lose its charm especially when one is more or less at a maintenance stage.
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LOL. True. It's usually not that big of a deal. But when your trying to go somewhere in the morning, or get to bed early, or have a tight schedule, etc... it just throws such a wrench in everything
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I have seen you on a couple of threads and I am impressed with how you have gotten answers.
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Yeah. That's why so many cut back to minoxidil once a day if they are on finasteride plus minoxidil lasts like 22 hours so once a day is almost enough to begin with.
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I've been lurking for a while actually! Just finally decided to chime in and I'm having a blast connecting with everyone! It's just very nice and comforting find other people going through the same thing. There's a stigma around it, so it's not something I can really just open up to friends and family about. Or at least they wouldn't understand it like a lot of peeps on here would.
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Absolutely.
Both of my folks are in their 80's and have perfect hair. Even as I tell my mother about my hair loss recovery, she doesn't really get the importance of it to me, symbolic or otherwise, since I wasn't "bald" prior to HRT. @bridegeburn said similar things. You expect people not to recognize you or to say something where they just blurt out but other people are never as focused on us as we think that they are. Ultimately, @bridegeburn stated that even if he were the last person on earth, that he still would want his hair and people either get that or they don't. At least I look nice for myself during Covid19 and it will end someday.
My other thing is that DHT was making my life a living hell with painful dermatitis and I am touchy about people who think that endocrine issues lack importance if they primarily are external and considered "appearance" issues merely like rosacea, dermatitis and baldness often are. People openly make fun of people with rosacea and baldness, and less so with acne and dermatitis, since they are seen as temporary but still DHT is both necessary as so many of the anti-finasteride guys state but it is also the primary culprit in just about every single cosmetic issue above the neck caused by hormonal influences.
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The worst is being diffuse, because you can still hide it pretty well. You tell your friends and family about it, and they say "you aren't balding. don't worry." When you know in fact... you ARE loosing your hair. That sh*t drives me absolutely NUTS
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Yes. And strangely enough (or not), people with horse-shoe baldness but firm and unaffected side and back patterns of hair, can get amazing results from transplants that are out of reach to diffuse thinners or folks with less fringe area to work with.
Here's the other thing. Even if you or I weren't "balding" in those diffuse thinning scenarios according to others, that doesn't mean that others see us as still being as attractive as we were. As my hair comes back in, I can see how subtle some of the hair loss in front of the ears was. Most of my improvement comes from my body re-creating the canopy that women and children have in front of the ears and in front of their scalps. Guys often are scarcely aware such hair is even gone since virtually all men lose hair in front of the ears but the effect on others, even if they can't articulate it, is to make us look older at the very least.
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My sides are actually quite thick and solid! No DUPA at all. Just diffuse thinning in typical horse shoe pattern.
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That should comfort you as a back-up. I have seen some excellent transplants but the HRT way offers the possibility of hair that grows to female/juvenile lengths without looking mullety (and sometimes seen but rare lengths on lucky males like Brad Pitt and Oscar Wilde).
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I'd kill for Brad Pitt's hair. Lucky MF. Some dude's hit the genetic lottery. I actually can't complain. I got pretty good genes for the most part! I think I'm pretty handsome! It's just this f*****g hair, ugh!
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That's the thing where it comes off as bragging but juvenile hair loss can essentially destroy a young male's looks in as little as 24 months and it is harrowing to go from a state where you trade on your good looks but then lose that ability all but overnight. Boo hoo say the unfortunately unattractive out there but yes, it is far worse to lose one's looks than to never have them at all, at least when we are talking about guys 22 and younger and not even out of school. All the ironic and needling comments that women used to find enticing become tiresome to them and it is just a life-killer.
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Plato's allegory of a cave vibes 
tis' harder to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all
tis' harder to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all
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Yeah I was thinking about that to. Basically you mean that even with microneedling it isn’t going systemic enough to get to the liver. If it isn’t converted to minoxidil sulfate than no sides and no hair growth.
they say microneedling increases sulfotransferase but there is only one study with no abstract available.
Do you all think that microneedling primarily increases absorption, and growth factors? Maybe retinoic acid does a better job at increasing sulfotransferase.