I’ve been on dutasteride for about 6 years.. it wasn’t until I bought the powder and took it at 2.5mg that something changed in my hair.. and that change wasn’t stable, just better than .5mg. My hairline was the problem and why I got on AA’s originally and my hair is way worse than baseline.. inflammation never went down either. I recently went down again to .5mg and I’m shedding over 100 hairs just showering and shaking my head over the sink. The sides I got on 2.5mg were awful.. brain fog was insane, sex drive and quality of erections got really bad..
Wish there was another way
I'm back because I just can't seem to get away from this place, but I promise I will as things get more busy for me be around less until I have something significant to report.
You need corticosteroids and estrogen my friend.
Up until recently I was having rather serious problems with oily skin and scalp and even hairline acne, which is really really strange for somebody at 40 years old.
I found out I was taking a few things that have been interfering with my estrogen levels, one of which being magnesium, which increases excretion of estrogen.
There are still some other things that I need to resolve, but very recently I acquired some 17B estradiol gel, and I've been applying that to my scalp in a dilute solution with cetirizine and within days I wake up, my hair isn't a disgusting greasy mess, nor is my forehead, my nose which I had to pay extra care to make sure it did not get clogged with dirt and sebum is not a problem any more.
It's not a matter of is DHT or test worse, it's a matter of how effectively are you keeping both of them in balance in relation to estrogen.
When you have skin inflammation and acne and oily skin, that's your body's way of telling you that you have too much of a given hormone which is causing you problems, basically your body cannot handle that concentration of that hormone, it's too much for you. This could be a number of things not just test or DHT, it can also be insulin and DHEA. A lot of really insecure, retarded men will respond defensively to something like this "how could he say I'm not manly enough to handle a normal load of testosterone, or even higher levels".
To that I say, shut the f*** up, be a man, the one contribution and quintessential attribute of being a "man" historically is about looking at things in a way where you have to make difficult decisions and put aside certain illusions. So you're not f*****g Dan Bilzerian, grow the f*** up and accept that you can either have hair or you can have stupidly high testosterone and be a "macho man".
As long as you have oily, inflamed skin, your hair is not making any substantial gains, you must hormonally stop the cause of it, period. And if that means you apply estrogen, by god you will do it or enjoy having to pony up 25-30k for a f*****g hair transplant.
Some men who I believe are fundamentally androgen insensitive can tolerate way more testosterone and androgens than most normal people but they unless they are true freaks of nature also don't get the same benefits of testosterone.
I like to cite the example of bodybuilder Rich Piana, who took assloads of androgenic compounds and never lost his hair, but also admitted that what normal people would take to get gains, he got virtually nothing from. He went so far as to get PMMA injections into his arms (a permanent kind of synthol) to enhance areas of his body he thought weren't accentuated enough through exercise and the exceptionally high amounts of androgenic steroids he was using.
It wasn't until he started blasting GH and IGF-1 that his hair started falling out. So that gives you an idea of how hairloss works from a hormonal perspective, most men who don't lose their hair either have more estrogen on average or are androgen insensitive in general.
I do gain some level of sadistic pleasure from this, because I've been kind of harassed my whole life by "manly men" who criticized me (imo in jealousy in retrospect) for being "too pretty". I don't have a massive build but I'm not effeminate either, just... I've looked 16-17 until I was about 24 years old, slightly taller than average lean muscular body, but I didn't have coarse features. I couldn't grow a proper beard or moustache until I was past age 30.
Well, the motherfucking chickens have come home to roost, the cult of testosterone is having its day of reckoning. No amount of finasteride or dutasteride will save you if your estrogen is not high enough.
- Estrogen is anti-inflammatory
- Estrogen increases cellular hydration
- Estrogen decreases sebum production
- Estrogen softens your skin and makes it a better environment for your hair to grow
Watching men increase their dosage of antiandrogens is like watching a moth smash itself repeatedly to death against a hot lightbulb with the absence of necessary estrogen to fill the void.
If you want to be a "manly man(tm)" and have a full head of hair, and you're androgen sensitive, save up for a hair transplant.
Otherwise you're hacking your biochemistry to emulate a period of time in your youth when your estrogen to testosterone to dht levels were much different. That's how it works, reversing hairloss for androgen sensitive men is going through a hormonal time machine and the proper treatment for it is learning the appropriate time code to where you wish to go.
so TL/DR
You need to increase your estrogen and lower inflammation with some topical corticosteroids or enjoy getting nowhere with your hair.
Also, you may need to use minoxidil to offset PGD2, there is limited yet conflicting information that tretinoin does inhibit PGD2 synthase.
Also please be aware that if you already have standing issues with scalp inflammation that using any scalp lotion with propylene glycol is probably going to do more harm than good, thus if you use minoxidil you will probably have to use a formulation that does not contain that compound.