Topical finasteride: Sides, microdose, and some experiences

[Kaz]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post, after being reading the forum from almost the start of my treatment, 5 years ago, with topical finasteride and minoxidil.

I'm writing this in case someone could come to a conclusion about topics like topical finasteride vs oral, sides, and minimum effective doses.

To summarize:

I started 1mg propecia, minoxidil 3% and topical finasteride 0.5%.Dropped the pills soon after, and kept on with topicals. It worked very well. Until I started suffering symptoms of gyno, 2 months in.

Took flaxseed oil and dropped the treatment. Pain and swell resolved.

Resumed the treatment while I was recovering, and the gyno symptoms didn't came back this time.

I kept on, with some stops, until July 2021, when I had to quit due to severe sexual sides. Im 25, 21 when I started.

I took a break of 2/3 months, and resumed the finasteride, but the chest burn, puffy nipples... came back. And this time it wasn't resolving with comtinuation, or flaxseed oil or ground flax.

I tried microdosing, 0,0016%, wondering if reducing the dht slower could be a way of bypassing the problem, but even with those tiny doses, i noticed puffy nipples, swollen lumps under the skin, not only under the nipple.

So I was wondering, could this proof that the minimum effectve dosage, it's not the same oral and topically? Maybe topically it's effective even at doses that it isnt orally.

Anyway, some important notes/questions on all of this:

-How can we explain the difference in effectivity of finasteride depending on the dose, if the inhibition is almost the same for every dose, at least orally.

- Being sensitive to it, was prety usefull to adress that even at super low doses, finasteride GOES SYSTEMIC TOO.

-I ('d like to) think that topically, the curve of effectiveness on low doses is different from the oral one, where a jump from 0 to 100 happens, and that we could find a dose topically where we inhibit dht by 20% or so. Maybe with the oral, at such low quantities, your organism can purge it, or can't reach levels on blood at which it could affect scalp. I think it's not that theres no in between, is that the oral path doesn't allow you to be on it.

-If what i've just write is not correct, and 50 or more dht is inhibited on my serum dht, even at this doses, causing the gyno, and it's not just (as I think it is) that the fact that I had gyno for years on puberty created sensible tissue to estrogens that can reactivate even with subtle changes, then we know that doses as low as 0.01 mg reduce, at least topically, serum dht that much, which is something that is not proven, I think.

Any thoughts on how this gyno thing is possible, or any other thing, will be apreciated, as this is my last bullet, and if the gyno doesn't resolve by continuing the treatment, I'll have to give up.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and sorry for the possible mistakes on my english, as it's not my mother language.

*Updte: I tried to synthetize the idea, so the post could be readable. I was panicing while writing it first time and couldn't deliver the message properly.

By the way, had some blood check and th Prolactin came like x16 my normal levels, it was 36, can't remember units. Estradiol was 30. Fsh low, too. I was taking flaxseed.

 

[debyne]

I'm sorry but you need to condense your post to what's important. Most won't read it, including me.

 

[Renovation]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post, after being reading the forum from almost the start of my treatment, 5 years ago, with topical finasteride and minoxidil.

This post will be long, but I'm writing it so someone could use it to maybe come to a conclusion about topics like topical finasteride vs oral, sides, microdose.

I started noticing receeding temples, top crown and frontal thinning , with a lot of shedding and swollen, red scalp, itchiness, at age 20. Long story short, I freaked out, went to a private derma, who put me on propecia, topical finasteride 0.5% and Minoxidil3%.

Started the treatment, and dropped the pills after 3 days or so, because they were messing with my mood, brain fog,. .. It's important to note at this point, that I've dealt with anxiety, and depression, since 17, so I'm kind of aware of this changes, and it was like super obvious.

Anyway, I went on with the Finas 0.5% and Minoxidil 3%. And the sides just dissapeared, or at least, I couldn't notice them, because I think that whatever you experience sides or not, that doesn't mean that the drug isn't messing things up, but that you're body is capable of moving on those altered values of hormones without entering a crisis state in any of its functions, or that simply, eveb if it's hurting you somehow, your body is not giving you hints... The fire is there, the alarm isn't ringing.

Well, I continued for 2 months or so, and it worked really well. I started when the loss was minimal, so I just wanted to mantain and any regrowth was just a gift. After those 2 months, I started noticing a burning sensation on nipples, just on the right one, if I remember well. Another particular thing about my case, is that I developed ginecomastia from 12 to 15 or so, naturally, as a result of puberty, with the same feeling. I had that burning, sore sensation for 2 years, so i Inmediately knew what was happening.

Back then, by the way, the dr told me that it would dissapear with time, and it certainly did, almost completely, during the years. The lumps under the nipple became really small, the fat didn't settle, and even if some tissue existed, it atrophied, I suppose, so it wasn't noticeable.

Back to the treatment, this time, I didn't quit, as I thought, or hoped, that my body could compensate if I continued, and that, after suffering gyno during 2 years before, it couldn't get so bad in just days or weeks. But after 2 days or so, it started to be hard to keep up with the pain. But most important, when I started touching the area, searching for any palpable source of pain, weren't only the lumps under the nipple hurting and swollen, but at diferent point of the chest, some diferent kind of glands or lumps or whatever, were growing, or swollen to the point I could feel them under the skin, like trends of tissue.

That scared me, but I was determined to not drop it, so I reduced the frecuency of 0.5% fina from twice to once a day. The other nipple went the same way, and after that I quitted for some days and started taking Flaxed Oil. The gyno dissapeared after 3 or 4 days, and the lumps went kind of atrophied again. The chest apparently normal. I'm skinny (I think this saves me in a way) , body hair, thick beard.

So I started the topical again, this time 0.1%, after visiting my dr, while I continued with the flaxseed oil.

And it was different this time. The nipple burn wasn't nearly the same, and it went away after continuation. The lumps stopped hurting, the soreness dissapeared, and the inflamation reduced. All of this while continuing the treatment, at a dose that goes systemic on large amounts.

So I continued with the oil capsules for awhile, until i felt normal (sexually I had some mild sides, but they resolved to a large degree) , and the finas,for more than a year, almost two, before the sexual sides came back (it was a gradual thing).

After trying different things, Ru, seti, pge2, needling, without dropping minoxidil, and triying topical dutasteride, came back to finasteride on january 2021.

By May, I was meeting a girl, and lets just say that the sexual sides were more than obvious. So I quitted, for 2 months this time, on July.

This is what hapenned:

- Normal sexual function, sensibility, erection quality, and libido, came back in under a month.

- My anxiety went down, and for first time in 5 years, I didn't feel deppressed. I felt like I was born again. The tiredness, the bad mood, the obsesive thinking I deal with... Improved a lot.

After that, I started thinking, trying to understand how this drug works sides-wise. So this are some of my thoughts, that I think could be interesting someone in this forum with enough understanding could answer or refute:

- I think finasteride can worsen an already depressive state, like, 100%. The pace at which it does I think is slow, very very subtle, but it settles in, and KEEPS YOU THERE. I've been on psychologycal therapy for 7 years, and even on the best moments, never felt like really anxiety free. Being well was for the most part not being deppressed, but my base state was anxious, always. I had HUGE brain fog, and had it for long time, like literally being disconnected from my own self. I bet some of you felt that too. I did everything I had to do to improve mentally, but I never quite improve significantly. I felt like anchored. Once I dropped the finasteride, I finally improved greatly, like, in 2 months. Now I don't feel that inherent anxiety, that was there before.

-Sexually, the sides were intermitent, and time made them slowly worse, until having to quit. Watery sperm/less volume, less libido, softer erections.

I continued with minoxidil, and in october I decided to come back to topical finasteride 0.1%.

For 2 weeks, everything went well, until the GYNO CAME BACK. The pain, soreness... It scared me, tried lowering the dose to half, and it didnt work.

That was only 2 months ago. Right when I was losing all hope, I found the microdose threads, mazzarella study... And decided to try it.

After a lot of read, I came to a conclusion. As finasteride goes systemic always, with a constant, daily dose of it, even that low, the serum dht will go down.So looking at the graphs from different studies, I thought that maybe if I changed the dose every 2 days, taking something like 0.005% once, then 4 days on 0.001/0.002%, then again 0.005%...so that I could avoid most of the systemic, while mantaining, to some degree, a scalp dht inhibition more constant.

I was encouraged by this ideas:

-The only study that shows that the serum dht reduction on finasteride is about 5% is on ORAL finasteride. If a molecule, in such low dose, is capable of binding to 5ar enzymes so efficiently once on the blood, why wouldn't bind to those enzymes on the scalp (follicular units)? Maybe, topically, was possible to inhibit dht with infimal dose, even if orally that dose was? If the finasteride binded efficiently on scalp, then there would be a dose that could only affect the scalp. That what I thought at least.

-What if, the rate at which you induce the hormonal change, plays a big role in the severity of the sides? What if I could lower the dht, but very slowly, so that the dht didn't drop so drastically and fast, making the conversion T-> E very abrupt and causing the gyno. Maybe I could do it slowly, with a dose so low, that the estrogen receptors on the breast didn't overtimulate, and so the gyno wasn't triggered.

-Particularly with gyno, my previous experience ( resolving without stopping finasteride), knowing that gyno activates when a SPIKE of estrogen appears because of aromatization, and the fact that I used finasteride for more than 3 years in total and I don't have tits by now, even being so sensitive, could prove that the aromatization that finasteride causes could be a temporal thing too. Maybe the body notices that there is in fact too much testosterone, and so, it lowers the levels by itself. Is there any other factor that could have stopped gyno otherwise? If someone knows, that could be interesting talk. .

After two weeks, feeling well on different microdose, I made the stupid decision of trying 0.25% just one day, and see what happens.

I went from the best erections since the puberty, to numb dick. No gyno. I continued microdose, and slowly for two weeks i've been recovering, till now. I feel nobrain fog, and for the last 2 days, the gyno came back, right after a total dose of 0.05 mg on a single day. With it, has come a greater libido, and greater erections, which seems absolutely absurd, but maybe it could be explained, as the testosterone raised, but not too much, cause probably the dht inhibition is not 60% or so, is lower, so the aromatase didn't overreact, causing a smaller spike in estrogen. Now i'm back to microdosing. Gyno symptoms on left side of the chest, soreness, lumps.

Now, I'm questioning myself, if continuing the treatnent could make the gyno resolve by itself, like happened the first time.

Pretty crazy story, haha.

Anyway, some important notes/questions on all of this:

-How can we explain the difference in effectivity of finasteride depending on the dose, if the inhibition is almost the same for every dose, at least orally.

-I'm pretty sure, that in my case most of the lumps, tissue around the nipple and chest, were there before, just atrophied, and finasteride SOMETIMES causes the inflamation to come back. I don't have enlarged breast, no fat, just glandular tissue here and there between pecs and skin.

- Being sensitive to it, was prety usefull to adress that even at super low doses, finasteride GOES SYSTEMIC TOO, as I basically have an estrogenic alarm on my nipples.

Ñ
-I think that topically, the curve of effectiveness on low doses is different from the oral one, where a jump from 0 to 100 happens, and that we could find a dose topically where we inhibit dht by 20% or so. Maybe with the oral, at such low quantities, your organism can purge it, or can't reach levels on blood at which it could affect scalp. I think it's not that theres no in between, is that the oral path doesn't allow you to be on it.

-If what i've just write is not correct, and 50 or more dht is inhibited on my serum dht, even at this doses, causing the gyno, and it's not just (as I think it is) that the fact that I had gyno for years on puberty created sensible tissue to estrogens that can reactivate even with subtle changes, then we know that doses as low as 0.01 mg reduce, at least topically, serum dht that much, which is something that is not proven, I think.

-As I mentioned before, having this aparent and random sensitivity on breast tissue, that suddenly dissapears, makes no sense to me, except if a) The body in fact adjusts the levels of testosterone and so the conversion ceases, or almost ceases (THIS IS A GREAT QUESTION, as knowing this could give some hope to those that suffered gyno, and quit thinking it wouldn't resolve) , or b) theres other hormone that could counteract this estrogenic effects. What seems clear is that, for me, the pain or tenderness is an indicator, and even if the nipples weren't absolutely normal while on finasteride, they weren't burning, nor painful, swollen (maybe a bit, but not sensible to touch) for 80% the time I was on the medication. So, what could be the explanation for that?

Any thoughts on how this gyno thing is possible, or any other thing, will be apreciated, as this is my last bullet, and if the gyno doesn't resolve by continuing the treatment, I'll have to give up.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and sorry for the possible mistakes on my english, as it's not my mother language.

I can't comment on topical finasteride but had similar issues on oral finasteride years ago (brain fog crap sperm etc) so didn't touch it again.

I even had similar issues on saw palmetto years ago until I lowered the dose, now taking micro dose daily. Even when I consume loads of pumpkin seeds I feel pretty crap.

Messing with DHT is brutal for most people. It's just so important in the function of being a male, the fact that it causes hairloss for some people does not negate this importance.

 

[badnewsbearer]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post, after being reading the forum from almost the start of my treatment, 5 years ago, with topical finasteride and minoxidil.

I'm writing this in case someone could come to a conclusion about topics like topical finasteride vs oral, sides, and minimum effective doses.

To summarize:

I started 1mg propecia, minoxidil 3% and topical finasteride 0.5%.Dropped the pills soon after, and kept on with topicals. It worked very well. Until I started suffering symptoms of gyno, 2 months in.

Took flaxseed oil and dropped the treatment. Pain and swell resolved.

Resumed the treatment while I was recovering, and the gyno symptoms didn't came back this time.

I kept on, with some stops, until July 2021, when I had to quit due to severe sexual sides. Im 25, 21 when I started.

I took a break of 2/3 months, and resumed the finasteride, but the chest burn, puffy nipples... came back. And this time it wasn't resolving with comtinuation, or flaxseed oil or ground flax.

I tried microdosing, 0,0016%, wondering if reducing the dht slower could be a way of bypassing the problem, but even with those tiny doses, i noticed puffy nipples, swollen lumps under the skin, not only under the nipple.

So I was wondering, could this proof that the minimum effectve dosage, it's not the same oral and topically? Maybe topically it's effective even at doses that it isnt orally.

Anyway, some important notes/questions on all of this:

-How can we explain the difference in effectivity of finasteride depending on the dose, if the inhibition is almost the same for every dose, at least orally.

- Being sensitive to it, was prety usefull to adress that even at super low doses, finasteride GOES SYSTEMIC TOO.

-I ('d like to) think that topically, the curve of effectiveness on low doses is different from the oral one, where a jump from 0 to 100 happens, and that we could find a dose topically where we inhibit dht by 20% or so. Maybe with the oral, at such low quantities, your organism can purge it, or can't reach levels on blood at which it could affect scalp. I think it's not that theres no in between, is that the oral path doesn't allow you to be on it.

-If what i've just write is not correct, and 50 or more dht is inhibited on my serum dht, even at this doses, causing the gyno, and it's not just (as I think it is) that the fact that I had gyno for years on puberty created sensible tissue to estrogens that can reactivate even with subtle changes, then we know that doses as low as 0.01 mg reduce, at least topically, serum dht that much, which is something that is not proven, I think.

Any thoughts on how this gyno thing is possible, or any other thing, will be apreciated, as this is my last bullet, and if the gyno doesn't resolve by continuing the treatment, I'll have to give up.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and sorry for the possible mistakes on my english, as it's not my mother language.

*Updte: I tried to synthetize the idea, so the post could be readable. I was panicing while writing it first time and couldn't deliver the message properly.

By the way, had some blood check and th Prolactin came like x16 my normal levels, it was 36, can't remember units. Estradiol was 30. Fsh low, too. I was taking flaxseed.

so you took 1/7th of the marazarella dose which did not affect serum DHT and got gyno on it? how would that even work?

 

[Kaz]

so you took 1/7th of the marazarella dose which did not affect serum DHT and got gyno on it? how would that even work?

I know. It sounds impossible. Imagine the frustration on which I wrote this thread.

Really sorry for the original too long explanation hahaha

I have the Doctor's papers where it is confirmed. I had a mamography done. I had indeed tissue growing all over the chest.

There wasn't too much talk about how that happened with such low dosses. The most plausible theory was that some of the tissue grown in my adolescence, was kind of reactivated. Maybe it didn't affect me consistently and the estrogen/T change wasn't enough in my early 20s to trigger it absolutely, but at some point, the T wasn't enough to fight the estrogen on that tissue, and it started growing. So I dropped it. Just min and microneedling for months. The tissue is shrinking slowly. I will try restarting next year maybe.

They simply told me "bad luck, you are the 1%" basically.

I understand if you don't believe me, anyway. And if anyone is going through the same and is reading this post, I'm sorry, but yes. This can happen. Don't lose hope, your life is not finished, don't drop minoxidil, try microneedling, and if you are like NW4 or 5, go for hair transplant, if you can afford it.