My Big 3++ story...Month 11 update! Coming close to one year

[WillNotLetItHappen]

Forero thank you for the effort and time to post this. You're right it may take very long to improve and I firmly believe it will. I think we are both well off, could be much worse and I believe we have a few good years more to go with hair. Thanks for the pics, this is very interesting! Have you read the 10yr study on finasteride too? They also showed that in most cases it took a long time (at least 2-3 years) and that hair continued to get better for many years but the first year seems to be a good indicator. If it gets better after one year, finasteride will improve your hair more after more time on it.

I'm also trying to be reasonable. My hairline is so good right now, it will be back to my juvenile hairline by the time all that small hair grows in I'm guessing! I have a weird pattern of hairloss and it does not seem to go in a Norwood pattern because my front still stays so strong. When my hair is wet I see it being a little bit thinner in the front than on the sides but I guess that's normal. Other than that it is really from the middle of my head to the vertex where I'm thinning. And I've never seen anybody bald in the back only while keeping their complete front?! Well maybe Ted Danson.

What I'm trying to say is I don't think there is a reason to believe that all my hair will fall out in the back while my front stays intact. So as long as my front is still thick I will hold on to most of my hair in my vertex. Am I making sense here? I guess, only time will tell.

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Studies never seem to mention shedding so much but we know so many anecdotes from reading the forums. Really anything is possible and I truly believe that the 100 hairs a day rule doesn't matter too much anymore when you are on meds. I got minoxidil and finasteride interfering with the hair cycles, and who knows how many hairs are currently "out of balance" from where they normally would be.

Let's keep the faith. Also, in a few years there'll be some exciting treatments available and there is a lot of hype going on (Replicel, Aderant, HTC, cloning, Bimatoprost, that PG2 or whatever ****, Equol and what not). Good luck all...

Damn, it can really take a looong time to improve!

Oh yeah, and only so few have really good progress within 6 months or something. Most people are too impatient IMHO...

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

Ok, just to keep this complete: Month 13 completed. Not much new, I keep repeating myself. Shedding goes on, hardly a day under 100 hairs, most of the time I would guess 120-150. This must have been going on since at least June, before it must have been less hair. I'm unsure if my status is deteriorating on the vertex. The big picture is, I have maintained for a year, I guess that's good. My hairline keeps getting better. Amazing. I have tiny hair all over. We'll see. Fighting male pattern baldness is exhausting, reading these forums is exhausting, obsessing over hairloss is exhausting. But - life goes on. There are a few good years with hair in front of me, I'm sure. There are new ways to treat hairloss, and some will hit the market soon. I'm excited about Folexen as well. Currently I don't want to add anything to my regimen but maybe in the future if all goes down the drain.
So long...

 

[mak123]

Just read through whole of the thread. Thanks for sharing your experiences & it is appreciated.

I'm presently thinking of starting on finasteride after years of avoiding it through fears of sides etc. Main trouble is thinned crown area & its really being a bummer in my confidence especially when i had such great hair most of my life. Barber always had to use the thinning scissors to lighten the load. oh the good old days.. Took my first photo yesterday of top of my head & it was rather depressing.

Now I have reached an age & a point with my hair its now or never. Up till now i have been doing a regime of regular exercise (cardio & strength), clean controlled diet & supplements which have left me feeling better than i have in many years but the hair is still the same. I'm hopping to keep what i have in the least & possible gain if possible. Consensus is telling me to leave off the minix to start with & give finasteride alone a go for 8 months & than add minix if no progress & this is what i intend to do. The shedding related to Minix is not encouraging at all so i feel its best left as an after thought.

 

[Benjamin36]

And I've never seen anybody bald in the back only while keeping their complete front?! Well maybe Ted Danson.

Kevin Smith?

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

Just read through whole of the thread. Thanks for sharing your experiences & it is appreciated.

I'm glad this is of any use, thank you. It is always a compromise. It is not perfect for me with finasteride, but it I couldn't live without hair. I just have to put up a fight, I would never forgive myself if I hadn't fought. The most important thing is to keep living your life and not waste too much time on these forums like we all do. We have to force us to move on. While we whine here on forums and pity ourselves, life goes on. There is a girl to be loved, a family to be fed and a life to be lived. I sometimes forgot that in the last years.

I wish you good luck, this sounds like a good plan. Be reasonable, do not let anyone discourage you. Update us on your journey.

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Kevin Smith?

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Thanks Benjamin, that's a great outlook 8O I would go for a partial hairpiece. This doesn't feel right.

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

Wow. Under 80 hairs under the shower for the first time in at least two months. Libido sucks.

 

[oldmpber]

2 things:
There are variations of the male pattern baldness process according to some of the dr's who have published articles on finasteride. One by Sinclair mentions that one type is where men bald faster in the vertex than in the front. I know this was true on my mom's side of the family and that is what has happened to me so far. So you probably have this type as well.

Also just know that while it may seem aggressive now, that doesn't mean it will always be that way. Again, I saw this happen to my uncle and now myself. His vertex started thinning fast around his mid to late 30's only to slow down in his early 40's. It remained slow until his late 40's and then started up fast again. Some hair docs say one variation of male pattern baldness is that it comes in spurts every decade. Pretty sure this is the case for me as well. My vertex started around the same time as my uncle but I got on finasteride and it started to reverse. After 4 years or so I started getting sides. Now not sure if this is a coincidence or not, but after getting off finasteride and going through the sheding, I got some of my hair back and noticed my male pattern baldness had greatly slowed. minoxidil alone was enough. Now that I am hitting my late 40's it has started again. So the decade thing seems to be true for some of us.
So hopefully you will get a break soon and that might be what your latest post indicates.
good luck!

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

Thank you for the post. I assume you were talking about this article. Great read! Contains a wealth of information!
http://www.baldness-treatment.net/androgenetic_alopecia.pdf

It remains to be seen what type of loss I will further develop but it sure looks like it is aggressive now. Had another 180 hairs in the shower today, no further signs of abating. Makes me really wonder if I'm doing the right thing. I'm sorry if I keep repeating myself but it is a frustrating fight. While I kind of enjoy the look of my hair now and it is quite ok in general, I wonder how much longer it will be like that. While the 100 hairs per day rule surely doesn't apply to people on treatments, how much hair can and should you lose after 14 months on Propecia? I know for a fact that I'm losing less hair than a year ago where I had a ton in my hand when shampooing, the hair I lose now still adds up to over 100 every damn day. And the hair in the back generally seems to be looser than the rest of the head. So most likely the 150+ hairs I'm losing are not evenly from all over my head but from my most affected area - the vertex.

Amazing how much hair I really must have had, that it is still not easily visible. It is on my mind way too much. I wonder if I should change my regimen to something stronger. I have come up with a plan:

1) I will get my hormone status in 2 weeks' time. I'm quite anxious to get the results. This also has to do with my libido which is really too low. Based on the results I will amend my regimen...
2) I will add azelaic acid to my minoxidil (like Xandrox). It seems to reduce DHT in the scalp.
I found this site and ordered flakes: http://www.qdbd.com/hair_formulas_18.htm This should be a straightforward addition to my protocol without too much hassle.
3) Maybe I will need to add an aromatase inhibitor to lower estrogen or something for prolactin. I'll speak to my doctor about it. I put my hair over a relationship at the moment. This is not the way it's supposed to be. I want both.
4) I'm also thinking of trying out a 3 weeks on, 1 week off routine with everything to avoid an upregulation of the Androgen Receptors and maybe help my libido. Alternatively I could lower the dose again. Both is worrying me, because I still lose so much hair even though I'm on 1.25mg of finasteride currently.
5) Folexen. I like the idea of Equol binding to DHT. Maybe you can get away with using less finasteride while using Equol. It seems very promising.
6) Maybe add dutasteride once a week? Never thought I would go that far, I remember when I first read this I thought the guys were completely crazy. Will most likely not help my libido.

Sorry for the whining again. I can't help it. I'm struggling with accepting the fact that I'm going bald and I'm not on the success forum yet...
Good luck fellas.

 

[Beingbaldsucksass]

Your name really represent your motivation

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

I will post an update in a few days when my 14th month is completed. I have read a few interesting things. One is the well known 5y finasteride study. It is worth reading.
http://www.jle.com/fr/revues/medecine/ejd/e-docs/00/01/88/FE/article.md
It contains many things that are often said on these forums, but it is also often hard to overlook them:

1) ".....peak efficacy was observed at one to two years of treatment with finasteride." To me it seems that the second year is also more interesting in my case, I'm seeing my hair change for real now. It really takes a long time, but this looks promising. 90% of men in this study had success with finasteride, albeit to a different extent. While on Finasteride we should just enjoy life and forget baldness. The key is to jump on DHT-altering treatments as soon as you start losing it because you can keep what you have for at least a prolonged time.

2) This excerpt is a good explanation why I seem to be seeing so much shedding:
"In that study, initiation of finasteride treatment was shown to increase the number of anagen-phase hairs and to increase the anagen to telogen ratio, consistent with normalization of the growth cycles of previously miniaturized hairs due to the release of hair follicles from the inhibitory effects of DHT [26]. Consistent with these results, finasteride treatment was also shown to increase the growth rate and/or thickness of hairs, based on analysis of serial hair weight measurements [27]. Because these beneficial changes in the hair growth cycle are dependent on when therapy with finasteride is initiated and occur rapidly, the affected hairs are driven to cycle in a synchronous manner. If these hairs have somewhat similar anagen phase durations, they would enter telogen phase as the anagen (and catagen) phase ended, followed by subsequent shedding, in a partially synchronized fashion. This would be expected to produce a gradual decline from peak hair count after a period of time equal to the average anagen phase duration. Eventually, as subsequent growth cycles recurred, these hairs would be expected to become increasingly independent, thereby losing their synchronous character as their growth cycles further normalized over time, leading to a sustained increase in hair count at a plateau above baseline, as suggested by the 5-year data presented here."
I'm now convinced that the 100 hairs a day-rule does not apply to people on Finasteride, at least not initially before the growth cycle of the animated hairs becomes independent.

3) There is an interesting hairloss success story without Finasteride on a bodybuilding forum.
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=142250361&page=1
Even more interesting is page 3 where a guy describes how he dealt with finasteride sides, basically going from 1.25mg ED to EOD and every three days to get back 80% of his libido. May be worth a try, further down the line.
http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=142250361&page=3

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

Month 14 completed a few days ago. Hair is good. I feel like the shedding has finally decreased and it almost seems to me like I have halted my hairloss for the time being. We will see about that, but it feels very good for now.

I'm now willing to try things to restore my libido to a normal point. Although chances from all the reports on the internet are that finasteride is the culprit, I suspect that in my case Minoxidil has something to do as well. I've always noted that even a year before finasteride it was really low and there are reports on the web that indicate that Minoxidil may be responsible for that too. This is a delicate problem, I don't want to lose any of the gains I got from Minoxidil, so dropping it cold Turkey to try is not an option. I stopped for three days, which didn't tell me much. Now I started again out of fear of losing anything. But I will look for a way to cope with this situation. Some people seem to dilute it with Vodka and slowly wean off.

For now I will try to go off finasteride for two weeks and see what happens and then maybe reduce the dose. This shouldn't do much harm if any and may help. It will be a long-term project because these changes take some time to note in any case.

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

To all you shedders out there. There is hope!
I'm in my 15th month of finasteride and minoxidil. Shedding is way down. I don't remember ever to have lost so little hair. It is below 40 hairs and occasionally 10 hairs during shower. Never in the last months have I ever experienced this from what I know. For months and months and months I have shed 100 hairs or way above it seems. Now it seems to be over for the first time. I have continued to improve in the crown and now for the first time have no doubt that it is working towards a lot of density. I know that there will be times when I will shed again, but it is after all not the enemy.

Maybe this gives some of you hope out there. I just have to remind me how many times I counted the hair I caught in the shower and how many times I've been depressed about hairloss on this forum. Not now. For all I know it has stopped for the time being. It is a great feeling. I haven't changed my regime yet and I'm glad I didn't. It just takes a long time, a very long time. I just had to post this. Will take pics soon, my temples continue to fill in. Good luck to you all.

 

[wellwellwell]

Hi, thanks for the great log/story. Can you post some recent pics?

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

Hi, thanks for the great log/story. Can you post some recent pics?

Sure...here you go:

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As always I took these pics under my harshest bathroom neonlight. First two pics is wet hair. Making it as visible as possible. In the second pic I spiked the hair up to make the varying density visible. I don't lose hair in the front part of my head, yet skin is showing. There is a difference to the vertex where my bald spot is developing. Or was . It took me a long time to understand that the skin I'm seeing is actually balding that is developing. The dry hair pics are combed normally without styling product. I got full coverage and thick hair but have lost probably about 30% or so densitiy in the back maybe more. My temples got small black hairs. Some of them actually went terminal but it is an incredibly slow process. I will post some styled pics too.

 

[oldmpber]

Yes that is one of the articles. Sinclair talks about it in at least 2 other articles as well but basically saying the same thing. The other point I was trying to get accross is that you may just be going through a spurt. Oh I wish I could find the article about that. It is one of the dr's on baldtruth that starts with a B I think. If I find it I will send it. I also ran across another site where other guys were talking about it. One guy said he starting losing alot of hair in his late 30's then it mostly stopped in his 40's and now he just turned 50 and it is starting up again. So you may just ride out the spurt and then be ok for another 10 years.

Oh and I think it was you asking about getting off Rogaine. If that was you, be very very careful as I did it last nov or dec for about 3 months and around the 3rd month crown started growing like crazy. OTHO, I did wean off of it about 6 years ago and got away with it, BUT it was probably due to the fact that my hormones were screwed up and my male pattern baldness had stopped on its own (or it could have been male pattern baldness would have stopped on it's own hormone problems or not as I was out of the "spurt" phase if that makes sense.)

So if you are going to do it, do it VERY slowly.
p.s sorry for slow reply but new board does not notify me of replies anymore.

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

Yes that is one of the articles. Sinclair talks about it in at least 2 other articles as well but basically saying the same thing. The other point I was trying to get accross is that you may just be going through a spurt. Oh I wish I could find the article about that. It is one of the dr's on baldtruth that starts with a B I think. If I find it I will send it. I also ran across another site where other guys were talking about it. One guy said he starting losing alot of hair in his late 30's then it mostly stopped in his 40's and now he just turned 50 and it is starting up again. So you may just ride out the spurt and then be ok for another 10 years.

Oh and I think it was you asking about getting off Rogaine. If that was you, be very very careful as I did it last nov or dec for about 3 months and around the 3rd month crown started growing like crazy. OTHO, I did wean off of it about 6 years ago and got away with it, BUT it was probably due to the fact that my hormones were screwed up and my male pattern baldness had stopped on its own (or it could have been male pattern baldness would have stopped on it's own hormone problems or not as I was out of the "spurt" phase if that makes sense.)

So if you are going to do it, do it VERY slowly.
p.s sorry for slow reply but new board does not notify me of replies anymore.

Thanks for the note, my friend. See my last post. It seems to have stopped actually for the time being! I'm really excited. If I got to keep that I'd be more than fine. We'll see.
Yes it was me who talked about getting off minoxidil. I've actually already reduced the dosage. But it will be very very slow. I want to find out if it causes my problems, but I don't know how? All I know is weaning off is the only way to go, if at all. I have not made a final decision yet, I just hope my goddamn libido comes back. I will also play around with the finasteride dose, now that it seems to have stabilized. I will do both very carefully and not at the same time.

I've read a lot of recommendations, like 1.25mg every other day. 3 weeks on, 1 week off. 5 months half dose, 1 month full dose. etc. Takes a lot of time to try them all but I want to find the optimum for me while keeping my hair...

 

[oldmpber]

Thanks for the note, my friend. See my last post. It seems to have stopped actually for the time being! I'm really excited. If I got to keep that I'd be more than fine. We'll see.
Yes it was me who talked about getting off minoxidil. I've actually already reduced the dosage. But it will be very very slow. I want to find out if it causes my problems, but I don't know how? All I know is weaning off is the only way to go, if at all. I have not made a final decision yet, I just hope my goddamn libido comes back. I will also play around with the finasteride dose, now that it seems to have stabilized. I will do both very carefully and not at the same time.

I've read a lot of recommendations, like 1.25mg every other day. 3 weeks on, 1 week off. 5 months half dose, 1 month full dose. etc. Takes a lot of time to try them all but I want to find the optimum for me while keeping my hair...

I have heard a few people blame minoxidil for lose of sex drive but I am not sure about that. Now I do agree that it can muck up your skin over time.
I was on finasteride for about 4 years before I had sides. I think it was also when my male pattern baldness slowed down as well.
Taper very slowly. I was just starting finasteride .25 every 2 weeks but had to take a psa exam so got off. Long story short I am going to a new dr in 2 months and will be put on a stronger form of med. Once that is done, I will probably restart .25 and cross my fingers. minoxidil is working now but probably wont be enough long term.

Good luck!!

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

Went to 1.25mg of finasteride EOD. minoxidil about .8ml on the vertex. Will try how this works for a few months.

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

It's been a little over a week now at EOD. I used to have really dry eyes the last couple of months. That's gone. We'll see if it stays like that. Great. I lose very little hair. I have the feeling that it is filling in more, but I could be wrong. In any case, it's been over 15 months now and it is really starting to show its efficiency. Just thought I'd document that for myself and whoever is interested. I find it important to remember your state of mind and how you felt on the drug, because for some it is not a walk in the park.

 

[WillNotLetItHappen]

Month 16 completed recently. Just thought I'd keep this complete. I've been taking 1.25mg of finasteride EOD on four days a week since the beginning of October. The things I've noticed are: my eyes are much better, but still quite dry sometimes and red. I've lost belly fat. That's interesting, I'm relatively slim so I never had a weight problem. I definitely gained weight when I started finasteride. Recently I changed my training regimen and started to work out very regularly (not because of the weight). In any case I did lose belly fat, which may or may not be due to the reduced finasteride dosage. I don't care, I just noticed. Libido and sensitivity do fluctuate but are quite ok I would say. Not as easily arousable but I am fully functional and always have been.

I've noticed that I lose more hair again, in the 100 a day area. No idea if it's the reduced dosage. I doubt it, I don't pay too much attention anymore. My hair keeps improving. It almost, almost looks acceptable to me when it's wet. It has definitely filled in and I believe it continues to get better. My hairline too. Very hard to capture in photos but that's ok. I wear my hair the shortest I've ever worn it and it is thick. I got a undercut style and I like it. I hope it will continue to improve and I think that's likely. I will continue to observe how I do with my dosage but I'm scared to reduce further. Also, I will keep using the minoxidil, I'm too scared to get rid of that.

Good luck to you guys.

P.S. I found this by accident:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpoFmqSzgls

Very interesting, check the first few seconds. Jon at 34 years old. Clear signs of balding. He's still holding on to a good mane at close to 50 now. That is very comforting. My status is somewhat better than his at now 35+.