Possible Cheap And Effective Delivery Of Cetirizine Into The Scalp

[G33k]

Hello everyone, I've been lurking here for months but never joined until now because I felt I had nothing to add.

Though I believe I may possibly (with heavy emphasize on the possibly) have found a way of using cetirizine that's easier and more convenient than most of the methods I've read here and elsewhere.

I've found that combining 2.5-5mg of children's liquid cetirizine and Alpecin shampoo leaving it on for around 5 minutes and then rinsing. The results so far have been rather suprising. It seems to have greatly reduced my shedding to the point it's almost non-existent. I started doing this 2 weeks ago after a month prior of trying different methods of cetirizine delivery without much effect. And while I'll admit the Alpecin shampoo is crappy snake oil but it appears to be an effective vehicle for the cetirizine.

After a week of the Alpecin+cetirizine mix I found my shed rate went from what seem liked several dozen hairs every-time I ran my hand across my scalp to almost none.

Right now It's too early to say anything in the way of regrowth but the shedding was hitting me hard. I hated running my hand or the comb through my hair and seeing what looked like a small forest attached to it. I'll try and keep everyone posted with results and possible take pictures if I start to notice any new growth. But if anyone wants to try this combination please let me know if you find similar results. So far I have not noticed any side effects other than sometimes if I leave the mixture on my scalp for longer than 5 minutes I feel a warmth in my scalp for several hours afterwards as well as increased dryness. Anyhow best of luck to everyone.

 

[MakeItSo]

Any update?

 

[tomJ]

This sounds interesting. Any more feedback? Thank you

 

[G33k]

Sorry for the late reply on this. The good news is my barber has remarked that he is seeing new hairs along my hairline. I'm playing around the with the application methods a bit. I've added liquid saw palmetto extract into shampoo mix. Wetting my hair and applying the mix 30 minutes before I add the shampoo for the 5 minute application. I can't say it helps but it doesn't appear to be hurting. I did find that a blood test for cetirizine and it's metabolites exists. Since I need to have yearly blood work done soon anyway. Depending on cost I'm entertaining the idea of having it done. If it shows up it would be proof that it is getting into my scalp since I don't use it internally.

 

[lostandfind]

Sorry for the late reply on this. The good news is my barber has remarked that he is seeing new hairs along my hairline. I'm playing around the with the application methods a bit. I've added liquid saw palmetto extract into shampoo mix. Wetting my hair and applying the mix 30 minutes before I add the shampoo for the 5 minute application. I can't say it helps but it doesn't appear to be hurting. I did find that a blood test for cetirizine and it's metabolites exists. Since I need to have yearly blood work done soon anyway. Depending on cost I'm entertaining the idea of having it done. If it shows up it would be proof that it is getting into my scalp since I don't use it internally.

Interesting combination. What's the concentration of your liquid cetirizine and your current Norwood level? Are you on other treatments?

 

[cloudsanrain]

Are you combining 2.5-5mg of children's liquid cetirizine to the bottle of Alpecin shampoo are for each application ?

 

[Murkey Thumb]

Interesting. I take it you are mixing 2.5-5 mg of cet with 5mg of Alpecin or are you just dumping 5mg it into the full bottle of Alpecin? From memory i believe you will get the burning feeling from just leaving the Alpecin on too long.

 

[Arrade]

Alpecin @Bitless !!!

 

[Arrade]

Sorry for the late reply on this. The good news is my barber has remarked that he is seeing new hairs along my hairline. I'm playing around the with the application methods a bit. I've added liquid saw palmetto extract into shampoo mix. Wetting my hair and applying the mix 30 minutes before I add the shampoo for the 5 minute application. I can't say it helps but it doesn't appear to be hurting. I did find that a blood test for cetirizine and it's metabolites exists. Since I need to have yearly blood work done soon anyway. Depending on cost I'm entertaining the idea of having it done. If it shows up it would be proof that it is getting into my scalp since I don't use it internally.

IMO saw palmetto would act like finasteride, shouldn't be a big deal you could stop anytime but head's up

 

[G33k]

Sorry for the late reply on this work's been crazy.
I take 5ml which is 5mg add a few drops liquid saw palmetto I then rub it into my hair I then rub water to get my hair as wet as it would be before you add shampoo. I then add the normal amount of shampoo lather up and leave it in for about 5 minutes. before rinsing out as normal.
What else I'm doing is pretty simple.
I take 2x1000mg pumpkin seed oils twice daily on average.
I also use an oil mixture at night. Which is 70% liquid coconut oil 25% castor oil and 5% peppermint oil.
0.5mm derma roller twice monthly which I just started this month.
I was using Ketzo shampoo twice a week. I'm cutting it out to see if I still need it. It dried my scalp out severely which is partly the reason I used the coconut oil mixture it
I know people knock Pumpkin seed oil but it has an effect on me. I tried stopping it and noticed a shedding increase. I think I would say If finasteride is a brick wall then Pumpkin seed oil would be a speed bump.
As you can tell i'm trying to avoid harsher chemicals unless I have too. So far what I'm doing is at least maintaining my hairline which I'd estimate would be a close to a norwood 2.
An interesting note about Alpecian is shampoo that it has a patent https://patents.google.com/patent/US20120199152A1/en
but if you look at the bottle none of the ingredients listed in the patent except caffeine appear on the bottle. I wonder why they don't add these in?
"about 0.01 to about 0.19 mg/ml of caffeine, which is about 0.001% to about 0.019% weight of caffeine/final volume;
about 0.01 to about 0.2 mg/ml of a saw palmetto berry derivative, which is about 0.001% to about 0.02% weight of saw palmetto berry derivative/final volume; and
about 0.5 to about 50 mg/ml of an epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) derivative, which is about 0.05% to about 5% weight of EGCG/final volume."

 

[G33k]

Update: It seems to be working somewhat.
After my last post I decided to add a small amount of green tea to the mix. Which I dreaded the first time because I didn't know if was going to give me a Joker dye job.
While I have not seen the regrowth of my hairline that I'd like. My hair feels coarser and slightly thicker than it used to be and maybe it's my imagination but my salt and pepper hair seems to be getting less salty. I've noticed a few new vellus hairs along the hairline not anything spectacular but being that it's only been two months who knows as they say good things come to those who wait. We'll see what we end up with at the 6 month mark. But thinking about what I'm doing it would make sense that I would not see a lot of regrowth. Since if I understand the literature DHT and PDG2 cause hair-loss so it would seem reasonable that blocking/inhibiting them would help slow and stop hair-loss but not necessarily cause a regrowth in already lost areas. I think for that I'm going to need something to raise PGE2.

While I figure out the answer to the PGE2 question for the next few weeks I am going to try and start washing my hair twice a day to see if maybe that will spark some of the hairline regrowth. I'll try and keep posted

 

[persistentone]

Sorry for the late reply on this work's been crazy.
I take 5ml which is 5mg add a few drops liquid saw palmetto I then rub it into my hair I then rub water to get my hair as wet as it would be before you add shampoo. I then add the normal amount of shampoo lather up and leave it in for about 5 minutes. before rinsing out as normal.

This study on cetirizine claims that the study subjects applied 1 ml of 1% cetirizine solution daily. Does anyone know how many milligrams (mg) of cetirizine that would deliver daily, versus the 5 mg in G33K's regimen?

 

[persistentone]

I want to establish dosing and protocol for using cetirizine.

As best I can tell, the study I pointed to in my last post is using 10 mg of cetirizine daily, concentrated into 1 ml of a 1% solution. Can anyone confirm that?

So to get 10 mg from the children's cetirizine solution - which is concentrated 5 mg into 5 ml - you would need to dose with 10 ml of the children's cetirizine liquid daily. Is this correct?

Now the question on protocol: the study never clarifies how the solution was applied, but the strong implication is that the topical solution was placed on the scalp and then left to dry. There is no indication that cetirizine was added to a shampoo that was used and then washed out of the hair. So I would propose to mix the 10 ml of children's cetirizine solution with minoxidil and apply that after a shower and leave it to dry. Is there a flaw with that proposal? Is there a potential adverse chemical reaction there?

Is there a potential systemic absorption of cetirizine allowing such a high dose to dry on the scalp?

It is worth noting that G33K's protocol appears to use half the dose in the study, and further he is only applying it briefly to the scalp and then washing it out. The study may have left the solution there to dry into the scalp over an extended time period. Those are both significant deviations from the study protocol, and he may, therefore, be greatly understating the potential results from using cetirizine topically.

 

[tomJ]

I want to establish dosing and protocol for using cetirizine.

As best I can tell, the study I pointed to in my last post is using 10 mg of cetirizine daily, concentrated into 1 ml of a 1% solution. Can anyone confirm that?

So to get 10 mg from the children's cetirizine solution - which is concentrated 5 mg into 5 ml - you would need to dose with 10 ml of the children's cetirizine liquid daily. Is this correct?

Now the question on protocol: the study never clarifies how the solution was applied, but the strong implication is that the topical solution was placed on the scalp and then left to dry. There is no indication that cetirizine was added to a shampoo that was used and then washed out of the hair. So I would propose to mix the 10 ml of children's cetirizine solution with minoxidil and apply that after a shower and leave it to dry. Is there a flaw with that proposal? Is there a potential adverse chemical reaction there?

Is there a potential systemic absorption of cetirizine allowing such a high dose to dry on the scalp?

It is worth noting that G33K's protocol appears to use half the dose in the study, and further he is only applying it briefly to the scalp and then washing it out. The study may have left the solution there to dry into the scalp over an extended time period. Those are both significant deviations from the study protocol, and he may, therefore, be greatly understating the potential results from using cetirizine topically.

I dont have any answers to your questions but I wanted to say I appreciate your efforts and determination. Please keep us posted on what you end up doing and the results. I wish you success!

 

[persistentone]

I want to establish dosing and protocol for using cetirizine.

As best I can tell, the study I pointed to in my last post is using 10 mg of cetirizine daily, concentrated into 1 ml of a 1% solution. Can anyone confirm that?

So to get 10 mg from the children's cetirizine solution - which is concentrated 5 mg into 5 ml - you would need to dose with 10 ml of the children's cetirizine liquid daily. Is this correct?

So right away I see the children's cetirizine solution I picked, from "Basic Care", is totally unsuitable as a topical solution. It tries like a sticky glue. It's horrible.

Can someone either recommend a different solution that dries well on the scalp, or alternately propose a method to make our own topical solution?

 

[furrydome]

Desloratidine. It's a metabolite of Loratidine (same class as Cetirizine) and is more stable in solutions.

There were some great posts about this by IdealForehead who did some fantastic research, but it looks like he deleted most of it. I made some personal copies and can paste some of the info.

TL;DR cetirizine is a waste of effort. better to get bulk desloratidine and mix it in your topical.

 

[persistentone]

Desloratidine. It's a metabolite of Loratidine (same class as Cetirizine) and is more stable in solutions.

There were some great posts about this by IdealForehead who did some fantastic research, but it looks like he deleted most of it. I made some personal copies and can paste some of the info.

TL;DR cetirizine is a waste of effort. better to get bulk desloratidine and mix it in your topical.

Is there any research published that you could link for desloratidine? Cetirizine has a published human study with some pretty impressive before and after photos.

 

[furrydome]

Is there any research published that you could link for desloratidine? Cetirizine has a published human study with some pretty impressive before and after photos.

I don't know of any offhand, but it's mechanism of action should be similar. They're in the same class of antihistamines.

 

[persistentone]

I don't know of any offhand, but it's mechanism of action should be similar. They're in the same class of antihistamines.

So your point is that if we mix our own Cetirizine it is probably not going to be homogenous in the solution and we will have problems mixing it?

Do you know of any commercial Desloratidine based solutions that are suitable for topical application out of the box?

 

[furrydome]

So your point is that if we mix our own Cetirizine it is probably not going to be homogenous in the solution and we will have problems mixing it?

I'm not exactly a cetirizine expert, but IIRC the discussion was focused on how unstable it is in solutions.

Do you know of any commercial Desloratidine based solutions that are suitable for topical application out of the box?

There was a guy buying it in bulk powder from a supplier on Alibaba.