Someone explain to me how dutasteride doesn't cause frontal thinning...*PIC INCLUDED

[paulsteel0]

Someone explain to me how dutasteride doesn't cause frontal thinning...*UPDATED PIC*

Okay so this is just horrible. After being a good responder to finasteride and stable for three years on 1.25mg Proscar, I decided to add 0.5mg of Avodart once a week to my regimen. Why, because I waited to do anything about my hairloss at first and in the time I waited I lost a little patch up front that I never did grow back on finasteride. I wondered if maybe one capsule of dutasteride a week could help me out with that. And, if nothing else, maybe it could act as a little bit of insurance for the long run. A little extra DHT suppression. I also read the Australian study about the man who added one capsule a week of Avodart to his regimen and had great results. I'm sure many are familiar with it. I added one 0.5mg capsule of Avodart a week for 7 weeks. I took 1.25mg of Proscar everyday during this time period, including the days I took the Avodart. I started shedding right away, and it became noticeable at week three. I decided to tough it out. Then it began to dawn on me it wasn't realistic to grow all the hair I'm losing back. This isn't hair being pushed into a growth phase. There is no way a shed this serious is a precursor to growth. I've simply lost too much hair for that. This is crazy. When that point was reached I decided my Avodart experiment was a failed one and I stopped taking it. I am beginning my second week off the medicine this week. So after taking the medicine for 7 weeks, one pidly Avodart capsule a week, I have now ceased for a week and a half now. But I shed badly up front. And unfortunately I am still thinning even after being off the medicine. I did a ton of research on Avodart before I started. Read both success and horror stories. Thought about it a lot. And decided to try a low-dose thinking if my experiment went awry it was such a low-dose it wouldn't be a big deal. Well amazingly even a low-dose of Avodart can be this devastating. I have attached a picture I took today. I have a bald spot at the front of my head. It used to be a little patch that had been maintained for the past three years. Now it is about a centimeter wider and goes back about two inches farther. It really sucks. I can't hide my hairloss anymore :

( If anyone has any thoughts for me I'd appreciate them. If anyone wants to tell me I'm an idiot feel free I deserve it and maybe some other twit under the spell of hair greed will read it and be deterred fro doing what I did. If anyone has any hope for me I'd like to hear it. I've read about people growing back Avodart sheds, and I've read about people not growing them back. I don't know what will happen. I've been trying to calculate the half-life of 1 capsule of Avodart a week so I can get an idea when the drug should be mostly out of my system and my situation should stabilize. If anyone has any ideas I'd like to hear them. At such a low dose I figure it should be for the most part out of my system in couple weeks. Well here is the horror. I think it's obvious which one is the Avodart terror. The other one is the small patch I was trying to fill in. Talk about GREED. I hate myself. I would add though that that second picture was taken three years ago. It's just the best one I have. My small patch had gotten a -bit- larger in that time span so take that into consideration, but hardly by much. It was stable in every sense of the word. The shed as I said made my spot widen by a centimeter or more and go back a couple inches. And thin brutally. Nice big happy thick brown hairs I don't understand why.

***1 MONTH UPDATE*** It's been a little over one month but I took this picture exactly at one month. (It's the third picture on the far right.) I hadn't cut my hair so it's a little longer in this new pic but all I can say is the shedding definitely stopped. I took like 50 pics to make sure I wasn't kidding myself but for some reason this picture does look better than the one a month ago. I'm not sure why because it's not long enough of a span of time for any hair to regrow but it seems like possibly some that were suffocating and wilting away got some of their natural life and health back. But I don't know for sure about that. All I can say is that 1 month in the shedding has stopped. I'll update again in about two weeks for the 2 month update.

***2 MONTH UPDATE*** Added anther picture ate two months after I got a haircut. Not a lot better I don't think but def. not getting worse at least. I was hoping for some quick regrowth which meant the hair wasn't too terribly damaged by dutasteride. I guess that may not be happening though. My hope is that maybe it is somewhat a case of Telogen Effluvium and some of the hair just went into a coma and may come back at month 4 or so. We'll see.

***3 Month UPDATE*** Well it hasn't gotten exponentially better, but I think I can say after 3 months that my hair has gotten a little better each month. This month is not massively better and it's hard to get a good consistent picture because I have differing waves and cowlicks in my hair depending on my hair length so it changes from picture to picture but I think my situation is a little better. I can tell a small fragment of hairs have un-miniaturized. I just hope my hair is stable from this point on. That the aggressive lost is all knocked out and it should slow down from here. I've only been on propecia 3 years 3 months.

***4 Month UPDATE*** Man it looks good. Month 4 was magic. I noticed all month it was easier to style. I could cut it short and not be scared the wind would blow. Something just seemed thicker. And when it was time to take the 4 month update picture I was pleasantly surprised it looks pretty good. I think all hair look thinner when you part it in half then take a flash photograph over the bathroom sink, but I'm pretty sure a lot of the density is somewhat close to average. It definitely looks better and I'm not quite here I was when I experimented with Avodart but I'm pretty happy. Also 2 weeks ago or so I started on 1.66mg of finasteride. Proscar cut into thirds. No side effects except for a really mild nut ache that lasts a couple seconds ever 4 or 5 days. I don't know if going from 1.25 to 1.66 will do anything but someone who posted on this board once said that they took a blood test and going up from 1.25 to 1.66 did in fact lower their dht levels. I figured it can't hurt.

 

[balding89]

Hi Paul,

I'm really sorry you had such a bad reaction on dutasteride :s

All I can say is that I was losing much more hair all year long while using finasteride. In the beginning it seemed like it was working but after 2 weeks I only shedded NON STOP.

when i started avodart my hair loss immediately stopped. My guess why some people react better to a type of drug than an other is due to the fact of body composition. I heard some genotypes react better to finasteride than avodart, and the other way around...

Then there is the fact that Avodart can cause Testosterone to rise a lot (for some people)! Which results in much higher scalp test, and this can cause frontal thinning!
That is why in my case I think Avodart is working well, bc I haven't had a big rise in testosterone. Only a decline in DHT. Or my follicles aren't as susceptible to test.

In your pics you hairloss isn't the typical male pattern baldness, receding of the temples first? maybe that has something to do with not reacting well to dutasteride.

Man, if I were you I would QUIT avodart immediately. You seem to be having the bad reaction to dutasteride, as I had to finasteride !!

I am 100% sure that i would not have lost any hair if I had used Avodart from the beginning. finasteride really ****ed things up for me, and just like you made me shed from the very beginning !!!

It seems you have the exact same reaction, but yours is with dutasteride !

 

[WarLord]

Okay so this is just horrible.


After being a good responder to finasteride and stable for three years on 1.25mg Proscar, I decided to add 0.5mg of Avodart once a week to my regimen. Why, because I waited to do anything about my hairloss at first and in the time I waited I lost a little patch up front that I never did grow back on finasteride. I wondered if maybe one capsule of dutasteride a week could help me out with that. And, if nothing else, maybe it could act as a little bit of insurance for the long run. A little extra DHT suppression. I also read the Australian study about the man who added one capsule a week of Avodart to his regimen and had great results. I'm sure many are familiar with it.

I added one 0.5mg capsule of Avodart a week for 7 weeks. I took 1.25mg of Proscar everyday during this time period, including the days I took the Avodart. I started shedding right away, and it became noticeable at week three. I decided to tough it out. Then it began to dawn on me it wasn't realistic to grow all the hair I'm losing back. This isn't hair being pushed into a growth phase. There is no way a shed this serious is a precursor to growth. I've simply lost too much hair for that. This is crazy. When that point was reached I decided my Avodart experiment was a failed one and I stopped taking it. I am beginning my second week off the medicine this week.

So after taking the medicine for 7 weeks, one pidly Avodart capsule a week, I have now ceased for a week and a half now. But I shed badly up front. And unfortunately I am still thinning even after being off the medicine.

I did a ton of research on Avodart before I started. Read both success and horror stories. Thought about it a lot. And decided to try a low-dose thinking if my experiment went awry it was such a low-dose it wouldn't be a big deal. Well amazingly even a low-dose of Avodart can be this devastating. I have attached a picture I took today. I have a bald spot at the front of my head. It used to be a little patch that had been maintained for the past three years. Now it is about a centimeter wider and goes back about two inches farther. It really sucks. I can't hide my hairloss anymore : (

If anyone has any thoughts for me I'd appreciate them. If anyone wants to tell me I'm an idiot feel free I deserve it and maybe some other twit under the spell of hair greed will read it and be deterred fro doing what I did. If anyone has any hope for me I'd like to hear it. I've read about people growing back Avodart sheds, and I've read about people not growing them back. I don't know what will happen. I've been trying to calculate the half-life of 1 capsule of Avodart a week so I can get an idea when the drug should be mostly out of my system and my situation should stabilize. If anyone has any ideas I'd like to hear them. At such a low dose I figure it should be for the most part out of my system in couple weeks. Well here is the horror.

I think it's obvious which one is the Avodart terror. The other one is the small patch I was trying to fill in. Talk about GREED. I hate myself. I would add though that that second picture was taken three years ago. It's just the best one I have. My small patch had gotten a -bit- larger in that time span so take that into consideration, but hardly by much. It was stable in every sense of the word. The shed as I said made my spot widen by a centimeter or more and go back a couple inches. And thin brutally. Nice big happy thick brown hairs I don't understand why.

First of all, your hairloss patern is weird. Second, you should measure your DHT and testosterone levels before jumping on dutasteride. Third, I wouldn't expect such a rapid loss after mere 3 weeks on the drug. It takes some time before dutasteride builds up in the system, especially at such a low dose. Fourth, 7 weeks are too little time to evaluate, what's happening.

Look, I just went through 6 months of hell on finasteride, when I was continuously losing hair in my temples. It started all of a sudden, like a thunderbolt from the sky, after 4 months of finasteride use. I couldn't handle it and in early February, I added dutasteride. I started at 0.5 mg every 4 days (=0.125 mg/day), currently I am at 0.33 mg/day. All I can say is that my hair is now stabilized. Interestingly, some parts of my hairline already regrew almost overnight, others are as thin as before and they are so thinned that I can hardly imagine that they would grow back. I don't know, what to say to it and what will happen in the following months. This is something that you must reckon with, when you start with 5-AR blockers. They will mess up your hormones and your hair cycles get crazy.

 

[Korean Wave]

That hair loss looks very uncommon. The best step to take is to see a doctor and request a blood test checking your hormonal levels. Dutasteride may have whizzed your hormones about resulting in your unusual hair loss. But then there could be several other reasons. See advice from a doctor, if they don't seem helpful I'd start looking into get an appointment with a dermatologist. Why were you taking dutasteride anyway? You look like you don't need it.

 

[SuprisedGuy]

I have a similar kind of hair loss, yes it's uncommon but diffuse thinning all over without recession is a variant of male pattern baldness. You can also have just spots miniaturizing near the hairline before it spreads which probably mean those areas of the head are especially sensitive to dht.

I'm going to be start dutasteride EOD very soon, I hope my hair doesn't get worse. Sorry OP, buzz your head for now and maybe get back on finasteride. I've read other people getting terrible sheds on dutasteride then getting back on finasteride and their hair got better.

 

[SDK]

Why on Earth would you pump yourself full of all that **** for?

That's just destroying your body, man.

 

[abcdefg]

If you think we have all the answers about what this kind of drug does or what removing DHT long term does you were sadly mistaken. I wouldnt be at all surprised if plenty of cases they never found in trials where in younger men or something it ended up making the hair loss much worse. I dont know why that would happen, but there are plenty of things we dont know about hair so if it gets messed up its not really fixable.

 

[boldmun]

I read the same study about adding Avodart. Definately get advice from a professional as they can do the necessary tests. Please keep us informed what happens in the next few months. I hope it grows back.

 

[spanish]

Im suprised dutasteride did that to your hairline but if youre hair was stable on finasteride and you wanted just to fill in the front then minoxidil will be your best bet.

 

[resu]

Maybe it will grow back, are the hairs totally miniaturized in that patch? Looks like you used a clipper at the front very weird.

 

[WarLord]

If you think we have all the answers about what this kind of drug does or what removing DHT long term does you were sadly mistaken. I wouldnt be at all surprised if plenty of cases they never found in trials where in younger men or something it ended up making the hair loss much worse. I dont know why that would happen, but there are plenty of things we dont know about hair so if it gets messed up its not really fixable.

He didn't post any blood tests. How can we give any advice, when we don't know, what's happening in his body?

 

[paulsteel0]

Hi Paul,

I'm really sorry you had such a bad reaction on dutasteride :s

All I can say is that I was losing much more hair all year long while using finasteride. In the beginning it seemed like it was working but after 2 weeks I only shedded NON STOP.

when i started avodart my hair loss immediately stopped. My guess why some people react better to a type of drug than an other is due to the fact of body composition. I heard some genotypes react better to finasteride than avodart, and the other way around...

Then there is the fact that Avodart can cause Testosterone to rise a lot (for some people)! Which results in much higher scalp test, and this can cause frontal thinning!
That is why in my case I think Avodart is working well, bc I haven't had a big rise in testosterone. Only a decline in DHT. Or my follicles aren't as susceptible to test.

In your pics you hairloss isn't the typical male pattern baldness, receding of the temples first? maybe that has something to do with not reacting well to dutasteride.

Man, if I were you I would QUIT avodart immediately. You seem to be having the bad reaction to dutasteride, as I had to finasteride !!

I am 100% sure that i would not have lost any hair if I had used Avodart from the beginning. finasteride really ****ed things up for me, and just like you made me shed from the very beginning !!!

It seems you have the exact same reaction, but yours is with dutasteride !

That's awesome you had a good response to finasteride. It's possible my dutasteride shed was paving the way for amazing regrowth. I'll never know. But more likely yeah I think it's a genetic thing some people just respond better to the different medicines. I wouldn't advise against using dutasteride I just think too many people say it can't possibly cause frontal shedding in people and it def. can! In my case I lost more hair than I felt I could realistically expect to grow back so I dropped it. finasteride has worked okay for me I'm hoping that what I knocked out was what I was going to lose over the next two years or so anyway so I should at least be stable for now. I don't know if it works that way but that's the theory I'm embracing.

- - - Updated - - -

First of all, your hairloss patern is weird. Second, you should measure your DHT and testosterone levels before jumping on dutasteride. Third, I wouldn't expect such a rapid loss after mere 3 weeks on the drug. It takes some time before dutasteride builds up in the system, especially at such a low dose. Fourth, 7 weeks are too little time to evaluate, what's happening.

Look, I just went through 6 months of hell on finasteride, when I was continuously losing hair in my temples. It started all of a sudden, like a thunderbolt from the sky, after 4 months of finasteride use. I couldn't handle it and in early February, I added dutasteride. I started at 0.5 mg every 4 days (=0.125 mg/day), currently I am at 0.33 mg/day. All I can say is that my hair is now stabilized. Interestingly, some parts of my hairline already regrew almost overnight, others are as thin as before and they are so thinned that I can hardly imagine that they would grow back. I don't know, what to say to it and what will happen in the following months. This is something that you must reckon with, when you start with 5-AR blockers. They will mess up your hormones and your hair cycles get crazy.

Yeah it's super weird. When I first started losing hair and came to the forums it took me a long time to figure out I had different loss than anyone else. I didn't know what people were talking about with 'receding temples' and what not.

I know for a fact I started losing hair at 3 weeks. It's probably too early for the med to build up significantly in the blood but it's not like it's having no effect on my body. I honestly think it was shocking my hair because of the 'saw tooth' effect one capsule of Avodart a week has on hormone levels. And you are right 7 weeks isn't very long it's possible amazing regrowth could have been ahead...but I doubt it. I stopped when I got to the point where I realized I was losing more hair than I could realistically expect to regrow. Especially at the rate I was losing it. Where would I be in another month or two? Twice as bad? And do I seriously expect to regrow all that back and then some? Maybe I could have but it seemed unlikely and I didn't want to risk it.

Thunderbolt out of the sky eh? lol. Yeah I couldn't agree more it's all about what it does to hormone levels. I don't doubt Avodart helped you either I don't think it's a bad drug it's just not for me and I think it needs to be acknowledged that even though it is a DHT inhibitor for some strange reason it DOES cause frontal shedding for some people. I've read about the 'raising testosterone levels' theory I don't know how valid it is. But yeah I'm sure it has something to do with hormone levels. In my case I wonder if some of my hairs didn't go into "shock" for some reason because of how potent Avodart is. And I'm not willing to stick around on dutasteride any longer to find out hah.

- - - Updated - - -

That hair loss looks very uncommon. The best step to take is to see a doctor and request a blood test checking your hormonal levels. Dutasteride may have whizzed your hormones about resulting in your unusual hair loss. But then there could be several other reasons. See advice from a doctor, if they don't seem helpful I'd start looking into get an appointment with a dermatologist. Why were you taking dutasteride anyway? You look like you don't need it.

It is uncommon. Dr. Bernstein on his website says that about 91% of all male pattern baldness cases are on the Norwood Scale. The remaining 9% or so have other types of loss, namely diffuse. Which is what I have. So yes it is rare but it is not unhealthy or necessarily strange.

I don't feel like I need tests honestly when my hair grows it means the medicine is working when it all falls out it isn't working I don't care what the tests say. But I do see your point. I'm not disagreeing it would be a good idea I am just lazy and arrogant.

I do think it is a hormonal issue but my style of hairloss again is not cause for concern it does happen in the hairloss universe. I've talked to others who have the same thing I do. Diffuse all over and then aggressively balding at the front. finasteride has kept the diffuse thinning under control but not so much the aggressive balding at the front so three years in that's all you see today.

And I don't know why I took dutasteride. Hair Greed? I wanted to regrow a patch at the front and possibly add a little insurance to my regimen by giving it a little kick. Unfortunately now I am just kicking myself.

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I have a similar kind of hair loss, yes it's uncommon but diffuse thinning all over without recession is a variant of male pattern baldness. You can also have just spots miniaturizing near the hairline before it spreads which probably mean those areas of the head are especially sensitive to dht.

I'm going to be start dutasteride EOD very soon, I hope my hair doesn't get worse. Sorry OP, buzz your head for now and maybe get back on finasteride. I've read other people getting terrible sheds on dutasteride then getting back on finasteride and their hair got better.

Yeah I've heard about people coming back from dutasteride sheds too so I'm hoping for the best. Good luck with dutasteride I know for some people it's awesome and who knows had I not backed out maybe I would have had regrowth in my case I doubt it but I guess I'll never know. As I said though for me I seriously doubt it got to the point it was unrealistic to somehow grow all this hair I shed back. It was too heavy duty of a shed. And happening to rapidly. Especially to regrow all that hair in the front! A notoriously difficult hair loss area most people only hope for maintenance there.

- - - Updated - - -

Why on Earth would you pump yourself full of all that **** for?

That's just destroying your body, man.

I'm fine.

- - - Updated - - -

If you think we have all the answers about what this kind of drug does or what removing DHT long term does you were sadly mistaken. I wouldnt be at all surprised if plenty of cases they never found in trials where in younger men or something it ended up making the hair loss much worse. I dont know why that would happen, but there are plenty of things we dont know about hair so if it gets messed up its not really fixable.

I agree with you 100% "there are plenty of things we don't know about hair." The only specific question I asked about was the half-life and I figured it out on my own. 1 Avodart a week never really builds up in your blood or reaches steady state because your body eliminates it in just a few days when you take that small of a dose at a time. That's one reason possibly 0.5mg Avodart per week may not be ideal. By the time you take your next dose the first dose a week earlier is already been processed and metabolized. The 5 week half life rule for Avodart doesn't apply to such small doses. Brian once wrote this insightful nuggest to an inquiring forum member:

"It has to do with the fact that there are two different metabolic pathways by which the drug is eliminated from the bloodstream. The first one eliminates it fairly rapidly, but it's saturable, meaning that once it eliminates a certain relatively small amount of the drug, that's it. It can't eliminate any more for a while. But the second pathway ISN'T saturable. It keeps eliminating the drug at the same relatively slow rate, regardless of how much of it is floating around the bloodstream.

So basically what happens is that at low levels of the drug, the saturable pathway eliminates it rapidly, and keeps the half-life of the drug pretty short. At higher levels of the drug, the saturable pathway is used up quickly, and the slower non-saturable pathway takes a longer period of time to eliminate the drug at a slower rate, with a resulting half-life that's much longer."

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I read the same study about adding Avodart. Definately get advice from a professional as they can do the necessary tests. Please keep us informed what happens in the next few months. I hope it grows back.

Thanks for the encouragement. I will indeed keep everyone informed. In the past weeks I've kept in touch via private message with a few people who have tried this experiment (and kept at it much longer than me) and no one has really had any success. Some have even had a shed. Though I don't think quite as bad as mine. It looks like this response to Avodart was pretty rare. And probably has nothing to do with any kind of combo of the drugs but simply the man's superior genetic response to Avodart over finasteride.

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Im suprised dutasteride did that to your hairline but if youre hair was stable on finasteride and you wanted just to fill in the front then minoxidil will be your best bet.

I am surprised too I was stable and I never even got off finasteride at all just added a little dutasteride and got this disaster. I'm glad it happened so fast so I could get it over with. I'm also glad actually I did this failed experiment now when I can afford some hair loss rather than in a few years when finasteride stops working and the experiment would probably be more devastating since more of my hairs would be more sensitive to DHT and I had less hair overall making the failed experiment more obvious.

I've been on minoxidil for 3 years foam in the mornings Kirkland's liquid at night and remain on it to this day. I also use nizoral twice a week.

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Maybe it will grow back, are the hairs totally miniaturized in that patch? Looks like you used a clipper at the front very weird.

I know right? Looks like I lost a bet or something.

I'm hoping some grows back. The stuff in the front is all miniaturized and as you go farther back some is miniaturized but less and less so. It definitely seemed dutasteride knocked out a lot of good hairs. Maybe they would have come back thicker I don't know. Just the sheer volume of good hairs it knocked out deterred me from continuing surely all these hairs were not bad dutasteride is just knocking out hair for fun.

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He didn't post any blood tests. How can we give any advice, when we don't know, what's happening in his body?

I can get blood work done for free through my insurance I guess I think I will get tested just to see what 1.25mg of finasteride is doing to my system but I don't see why that is hugely necessary? I'm sure it would show lowered DHT levels I don't doubt dutasteride is effective but clearly my scalp wasn't happy.

 

[paulsteel0]

*bump*

(I just updated a 2 month hair loss status in my opening post but it didn't bump the thread for some reason.)

 

[squeegee]

dutasteride is ****. finasteride is way better in any ways.

 

[Quantum Cat]

dutasteride is ****. finasteride is way better in any ways.

but if finasteride doesn't work for you, or stops working after a time, dutasteride is pretty much your only option other than going bald.

 

[paulsteel0]

but if finasteride doesn't work for you, or stops working after a time, dutasteride is pretty much your only option other than going bald.

It's true. But for some the maintenance (if any) is the crown is not worth the loss in the front and mid. A.K.A. some of us are just out of luck. Nothing left you can do. Except maybe up finasteride? I'm on 1.25 Proscar. Nizoral 1% twice a week. And Kirkland's minoxidil twice a day. Given Avodart isn't doing me any favors. And neither did upping Nizoral to every other day. (Got nut aches and massive shedding in the front not to mention thin "straw" hair.) I'm thinking upping Proscar to 2.5 is all I can do. And I don't even know if that works.

 

[Quantum Cat]

no, upping Finasteride dose won't make it work any better I'm afraid

there is spironolactone cream

 

[paulsteel0]

Have you tried upping dose? I heard Sprio wasn't safe. And isn't clinically proven to work anyway.

 

[squeegee]

but if finasteride doesn't work for you, or stops working after a time, dutasteride is pretty much your only option other than going bald.

I've done both. Dunno why retards on here think that dutasteride is a step up? dutasteride is poison & rarely do better. finasteride is a better choice of the 2. dutasteride should be forgotten and not seen as an option. Stop drinking the kool-aid. minoxidil is a stronger option and beat any internals.

 

[Quantum Cat]

I've done both. Dunno why retards on here think that dutasteride is a step up? dutasteride is poison & rarely do better. finasteride is a better choice of the 2. dutasteride should be forgotten and not seen as an option. Stop drinking the kool-aid. minoxidil is a stronger option and beat any internals.

I don't know. You say dutasteride is poison, others here say it's helped them keep their hair without any side effects. I definitely think you should always start off with finasteride. In theory dutasteride should work better as it blocks nearly all of Type II 5ar.

also how can you say minoxidil is better than internal DHT-blockers? You can use as much rogaine as you want, it won't stop you balding...