Diffuser44
Banned
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My propecia research continues and I found something a lot of you might find interesting.
Mickey Rapkin has written a few articles on the drug finasteride. I'm guessing a lot of you have read both of them without realizing that they were written by the same person.
The first one is the infamous men's journal magazine article: The not so hard truth about hair loss drugs.
http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/the-not-so-hard-truth-about-hair-loss-drugs-20121115
This article is about the Irwig study on the subset of men with lingering symptoms that caused Merck to change the label on the drug. The article also shines good light on the drug by mentioning the female doctor who prescribes the drug to her husband and patients.
Mickey Rapkin subsequently wrote another article explaining his finasteride story! The guy that wrote the article that so many propeciahelp users and forums refer to as evidence that the drug is bad news actually takes the drug himself!
http://www.details.com/health-fitness/diet/201205/propecia-hair-loss-balding-pill
Basically he explains he went through the fear mongering days of 2011-2012 that we all went through and got scared, but decided to continue taking the drug.
Another thing you should know about this guy. He wrote the script for Pitch Perfect. Which is a pretty successful movie. It got a 7.3 rating on IMDB.
Here is his IMDB profile : http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3015467/?ref_=tt_ov_wr
Other notes that I have found through my research on finasteride as that many of the articles and publications that shed a bad light on the drug or from the Irwig study and study on rats. First of all the Irwig study is on men who claimed to have these persisting side effects and it wasn't a true scientific study by any means. Plus a lot of those men were probably money grubby and wanted to collect cash from Merck through the use of skilled lawyers. Rat studies you can straight up throw out. Finasteride has a completely different effect on rats than it does on men. In rats it significantly reduces both type I and II of DHT. In humans it only reduces type II of DHT. Who cares what finasteride does to rats.
I say go with the most current FDA literature:
http://www.fda.gov/safety/medwatch/safetyinformation/ucm208701.htm
They even added a new side effect for angioedema in January of 2014. Probably because some person got it and blamed it on finasteride. The thing is FDA is a very regulatory organization. In even more regulating organization is Japan's version of the FDA. Japan approves finasteride for hair loss! People should not need to be worried about side effects from finasteride. They should be aware of them. If after a couple weeks to a couple of months they can be sure of side effects being related to finasteride, they should quit. If the side effects are tolerable, go ahead and keep taking the drug. If you intend to want to keep your hair, finasteride should be your first line of defense as it is the only drug that is going to stop the cause of the hair loss. Otherwise other options are available.
For me I've spent 7.5 years on finasteride and had made a decision to quit 2.5 years ago. I've lost hair but not as much as I was expecting to lose, and its still not very noticeable under normal lighting. I've since been trying rogaine with minimal benefit, not getting the results I am desiring. At the age of 18 I definitely needed to try saving my hair. I'm glad I did. As I get older, and am thinking about having kids some day, and is the money worth saving something like hair, I'm not sure how long I want to fight the battle. Finasteride is a big commitment that costs money, altering one's hormones and life, and one needs to take it for the rest of their life. Otherwise at some point they are just going to be bald and later on be identified as a bald man. I doubt there is anything on the horizon that is going to cure baldness. Even if there was a cure one still needs to stop the root cause which is the hormones. So in the end finasteride is the cure we've been looking for. I'm not sure I want to take finasteride a second time. In a way, I think i've done my time on the drug. It kept my hair for my 20's and I'm thankful for that. Even if I did decide to take it again it would only be for another 5 years or less. So what would be the point? Save my hair for the next 5 years just to let it fall out again?
Spencer Kobren once said that the people that truly win the hairloss battle are the ones that accept their hair loss and go bald. For most of us we can't accept it and that's why we are on these forums. In the wise words of Neil Young, it's not how you look but how you feel.
Here's a Larry David article I like as well:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hair loss=en#!msg/alt.baldspot/-67ritjHn_g/3BAWxgEeyyAJ
Mickey Rapkin has written a few articles on the drug finasteride. I'm guessing a lot of you have read both of them without realizing that they were written by the same person.
The first one is the infamous men's journal magazine article: The not so hard truth about hair loss drugs.
http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/the-not-so-hard-truth-about-hair-loss-drugs-20121115
This article is about the Irwig study on the subset of men with lingering symptoms that caused Merck to change the label on the drug. The article also shines good light on the drug by mentioning the female doctor who prescribes the drug to her husband and patients.
Mickey Rapkin subsequently wrote another article explaining his finasteride story! The guy that wrote the article that so many propeciahelp users and forums refer to as evidence that the drug is bad news actually takes the drug himself!
http://www.details.com/health-fitness/diet/201205/propecia-hair-loss-balding-pill
Basically he explains he went through the fear mongering days of 2011-2012 that we all went through and got scared, but decided to continue taking the drug.
Another thing you should know about this guy. He wrote the script for Pitch Perfect. Which is a pretty successful movie. It got a 7.3 rating on IMDB.
Here is his IMDB profile : http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3015467/?ref_=tt_ov_wr
Other notes that I have found through my research on finasteride as that many of the articles and publications that shed a bad light on the drug or from the Irwig study and study on rats. First of all the Irwig study is on men who claimed to have these persisting side effects and it wasn't a true scientific study by any means. Plus a lot of those men were probably money grubby and wanted to collect cash from Merck through the use of skilled lawyers. Rat studies you can straight up throw out. Finasteride has a completely different effect on rats than it does on men. In rats it significantly reduces both type I and II of DHT. In humans it only reduces type II of DHT. Who cares what finasteride does to rats.
I say go with the most current FDA literature:
http://www.fda.gov/safety/medwatch/safetyinformation/ucm208701.htm
They even added a new side effect for angioedema in January of 2014. Probably because some person got it and blamed it on finasteride. The thing is FDA is a very regulatory organization. In even more regulating organization is Japan's version of the FDA. Japan approves finasteride for hair loss! People should not need to be worried about side effects from finasteride. They should be aware of them. If after a couple weeks to a couple of months they can be sure of side effects being related to finasteride, they should quit. If the side effects are tolerable, go ahead and keep taking the drug. If you intend to want to keep your hair, finasteride should be your first line of defense as it is the only drug that is going to stop the cause of the hair loss. Otherwise other options are available.
For me I've spent 7.5 years on finasteride and had made a decision to quit 2.5 years ago. I've lost hair but not as much as I was expecting to lose, and its still not very noticeable under normal lighting. I've since been trying rogaine with minimal benefit, not getting the results I am desiring. At the age of 18 I definitely needed to try saving my hair. I'm glad I did. As I get older, and am thinking about having kids some day, and is the money worth saving something like hair, I'm not sure how long I want to fight the battle. Finasteride is a big commitment that costs money, altering one's hormones and life, and one needs to take it for the rest of their life. Otherwise at some point they are just going to be bald and later on be identified as a bald man. I doubt there is anything on the horizon that is going to cure baldness. Even if there was a cure one still needs to stop the root cause which is the hormones. So in the end finasteride is the cure we've been looking for. I'm not sure I want to take finasteride a second time. In a way, I think i've done my time on the drug. It kept my hair for my 20's and I'm thankful for that. Even if I did decide to take it again it would only be for another 5 years or less. So what would be the point? Save my hair for the next 5 years just to let it fall out again?
Spencer Kobren once said that the people that truly win the hairloss battle are the ones that accept their hair loss and go bald. For most of us we can't accept it and that's why we are on these forums. In the wise words of Neil Young, it's not how you look but how you feel.
Here's a Larry David article I like as well:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hair loss=en#!msg/alt.baldspot/-67ritjHn_g/3BAWxgEeyyAJ
daniel tosh 