Jrthomas85
Member
- Reaction score
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I thought I would go ahead and post a 1-year update on my experience, treatments, and thoughts. I'm 27 and have had a receding hairline for about 5 years now. I decided to seek treatments beginning in early June of 2012. I began with 1.25mg finasteride per day, a custom Retin-A 5% minoxidil solution (liquid) from my hair-loss specialist (daily), Nizeral (2-3x per week). I'm very consistent with the finasteride. I've only missed one dose over the past year. I occasionally skip days with the minoxidil when traveling or if I'm waiting for more. I've been pretty consistent with Nizeral until very lately due to the extreme shortages in most stores.
Side effects: None. Finasteride never gave me any noticeable side effects, save for a bit of testicular ache during my first couple of days taking it, but this was very minor and did not persist. minoxidil *may* occasionally give me a pimple or two near my upper forehead, but this is not common and I can't verify that it is the minoxidil.
Shedding: This is hard to say with any real accuracy. I was never the kind of person to count hairs in the shower every day. I haven't really noticed any very visible shedding periods. There have been one or two days here and there where I seem to shed more hairs than usual (20+ in the shower). However, this is not common and most days I do not notice much in the way of shedding out of the ordinary. If I had to quantify my shedding, I would say that 9/10 days I see very little shedding that would cause me any second thoughts.
Results: I'll post some comparison pictures below. There definitely haven't been any dramatic results for me. I think that the treatments have mostly left me with the same head of hair that I had a year ago. I won't complain about that. I do believe that I am seeing a few more vellus hairs around my temples, which weren't there before. I think this is somewhat visible from the pictures I have. However, these have developed very slowly and I can't say that they are getting any thicker at this point. I am interested to hear what others think.
Here are some of my comparison pictures. Before anyone says anything, I know that these pictures weren't taken in the same lighting conditions/location. I move around relatively often for work, so taking pictures in the same lighting, etc. is impossible for me. I am also apparently a very ****ty photographer. Also, I just wear my hair shorter than I used to, so the length isn't exactly consistent. However, hopefully the pics still at least tell some kind of story.
Left Baseline
Left 1 year
Left front baseline
Left front 1 year
Right Baseline
Right 1 year
Top baseline
Top 1 year
Side effects: None. Finasteride never gave me any noticeable side effects, save for a bit of testicular ache during my first couple of days taking it, but this was very minor and did not persist. minoxidil *may* occasionally give me a pimple or two near my upper forehead, but this is not common and I can't verify that it is the minoxidil.
Shedding: This is hard to say with any real accuracy. I was never the kind of person to count hairs in the shower every day. I haven't really noticed any very visible shedding periods. There have been one or two days here and there where I seem to shed more hairs than usual (20+ in the shower). However, this is not common and most days I do not notice much in the way of shedding out of the ordinary. If I had to quantify my shedding, I would say that 9/10 days I see very little shedding that would cause me any second thoughts.
Results: I'll post some comparison pictures below. There definitely haven't been any dramatic results for me. I think that the treatments have mostly left me with the same head of hair that I had a year ago. I won't complain about that. I do believe that I am seeing a few more vellus hairs around my temples, which weren't there before. I think this is somewhat visible from the pictures I have. However, these have developed very slowly and I can't say that they are getting any thicker at this point. I am interested to hear what others think.
Here are some of my comparison pictures. Before anyone says anything, I know that these pictures weren't taken in the same lighting conditions/location. I move around relatively often for work, so taking pictures in the same lighting, etc. is impossible for me. I am also apparently a very ****ty photographer. Also, I just wear my hair shorter than I used to, so the length isn't exactly consistent. However, hopefully the pics still at least tell some kind of story.
Left Baseline
Left 1 year
Left front baseline
Left front 1 year
Right Baseline
Right 1 year
Top baseline
Top 1 year
unk:
