Hi guys!
Lately I digged into topic of topical finasteride. My stance about finasteride is straightforward – I dont want to wipe out one of most potent male hormones from my body; beside common sense, there is growing evidence than finasteride is not as safe as advertised. However Im not hypocrite and I know that finasteride and dutasteride are most effective things that we have today, and probably we wont see anything better in our lifteime (and almost certain in lifetime of our remaining hair follicles).
For people who use finasteride or dutasteride with success, this thread will be simply boring, so you can skip it. My english is poor, so I post only basics without to much speculations. Im also not scientist so I might be wrong, feel free to chime in and correct / add some insights
The question I asked myself is: can I use finasteride as powerful part of hairloss therapy without unwanted side effects?
Few facts:
1) Oral microdosing:
Thanks to
Drake study we know few important things:
Dose as small as 0,01 mg is comparable to placebo both in DHT inhibition and hair count.
Dose as small as 0,05 mg blocks DHT in scalp almost like 1 mg dose, but reduce little less DHT in body (~50%).
Dose as smal as 0,2 mg have therapeutic effect, unfortunately after enough applications reduce systemic DHT just like 1 mg and 5 mg dose (60-70%).
View attachment 56523
Conclusion – unfortunately I havent found information about hair count with dosages ranging from 0.02 mg-0.04 mg. But I assume that if you want to avoid side effects (loss of serum DHT) and same time save your hairs, oral microdosing is useless. With microdosing >0.05 mg soon or later serum DHT will be inhibited to "max" point (50-70% = possible sides)
2) Topical microdosing:
We got recent weak studies made by Polichem.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25074865
Dose as huge as 2,2 mg finasteride in 1 ml of P-3074 vehicle reduced DHT in body 20% after 1 day, while 7 days later reduction was identical to 1mg pill.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26636418
To avoid systemic effects, they tried microdosing with ED application for 7 days:
- 0,1 ml (0,22 mg finasteride) and 0,2 ml (0,45 mg) reduced skin DHT -47/-52% (almost same values as 0,2 mg oral which was proved as effective treatment), serum reduction was "only" -24/-26%
- 0,3 ml (0,62 mg) 0,4 ml (0,91 mg) reduced skin DHT -37/-54%, serum -44/-48%
0,1 ml and 0,2 ml looks quite good, but studies was short term and unfortunately... it matters a lot.
I encourage everybody to read
log of user joestes from HLH. Years before Polichem he tried similiar treatment. Basically he tried to copy
Mazzarella study (supposedly no systemic effects) by using 0,066 mg finasteride on scalp dailly (2 mg finasteride solved in 60ml of minoxidil, used 2 ml ED). After 21 days he checked his DHT levels and found that serum levels was reduced just like with pill. He was shocked and frustrated.
But if we look at chart from
Gormley study its becoming obvious what happened:
View attachment 56524
White circle is dose of 0,04 mg administered orally. After one dosage DHT changed slightly, after 8 days of constant use we have 50% serum reduction and after 14 days we have DHT almost wiped out from body just like with "normal" oral dose.
I may be wrong, but this is my broscientist understanding: no matter if we swallow pill or put topical, we have point of saturation in different organs. For example: after few topical dosages finasteride is blocking reductase in scalp to some extent (about 60-70% inhibition, look at Drake graph or other studies). Less work with DHT in scalp means that applied finasteride is wandering through blood looking for other organs, like testicles or liver to act there. DHT rebuilds slowly (few days / weeks depending on dose and body type) so with enough small dosages we will achieve cumulated effect of one huge dose. Joestes used super small dose, but if we assume 10% of systemic absorption we have cumulation of 0,13 mg finasteride traveling through his body during 21 days of his experiment.
Conclusion – looks like topical microdosing WONT prevent systemic absorption IF we use finasteride continously for long enough time.
Knowing that, what we can do?
Last posts of Joestes thread are written by guy named defenderofcrown (love his name BTW
. He came with idea of microdosing but only
once every few days. He wanted to achieve max DHT suppresion in scalp, while leaving internal organs untouched.
For example, lets look at 0,2mg dose applied topically once every 5 days. Assuming 10% absorption we have 0,02mg finasteride circulating in bloodstream.
View attachment 56525
Based on graph we see above, after single oral dose of 0,04 mg serum DHT was supressed about 10-20% and backs to "status quo" after 4 days.
I havent found any research on intermittent therapy like this, but I can assume that it wont work effectively as standalone treatment, bacuse a)DHT is slowly rebuilding in scalp and b) DHT from other organs attack follicle. BUT on paper it SHOULD have some efficiancy and it may be potent addition to any reputable androgen blocker. Most of guys here are using some blocker – from light weight like keto to heavywieght like RU. Moreover, topical route might be wortha a shot, heres link to old post of
bryan (kudos to dench for link) where he writes about purpose of attacking DHT not inside body but directly at follicle zone.
One of unknown is dose and interval between dosages to get max saturation in scalp, while leaving serum levels in safe zone. It might be 0,2 mg every 5 days or 0,05mg every 3 days, or 0,01mg EOD etc... Its open topic. The higher frequency the bigger risk of serum inhibition. The higher dose, the bigger risk of unwanted absorption. Im currently searching for more info, there is lot of data, not only controlled research but also single cases.
Also, knowing cumulative effect of finasteride, its obvious why topical finasteride threads are mostly fail (sides etc):
- some guys use huge doses like in Polichem first trial, so after few dosages blood serum is reduced just like with single small oral dose
- there are guys using more or less "correct" microdoses, but EVERY day. DHT rebuilds long time, so with every subsequent dosage more and more finasteride is circulating in bloodstream reducing DHT in other organs (joestes case), up to full "saturation" point.
What you guys think?
PS. For those interested, heres additional link to old but gold thread:
http://www.hairlosstalk.com/interac...benifits-of-propecia-without-the-side-effects
