Will rogaine + nizoral work without propecia?

[Rawtashk]

I wouldn't doubt that, but it's not that simple.

For one, there's no static number of blood flow that's restricted to the follicles. Now, if we knew that every case of male pattern baldness caused 50% less blood flow to the scalp, and Rogain added 50% bloodflow, then you could say that it will always work. However, that's not the case.

Also, growing hair has more to it than just bloodflow. It's a growing thing, so it needs nutrients. The DHT chokes off the follicle's ability to get these, which results in a smaller and smaller hair...until there's basically no hair at all.

finasteride+ Rogaine will always, ALWAYS get you a better result that either one of them alone. And, let's be honest, when it comes to hairloss we want the BEST regrowth that we can get. Right?

 

[jd_uk]

Also, growing hair has more to it than just bloodflow. It's a growing thing, so it needs nutrients. The DHT chokes off the follicle's ability to get these, which results in a smaller and smaller hair...until there's basically no hair at all.

finasteride+ Rogaine will always, ALWAYS get you a better result that either one of them alone. And, let's be honest, when it comes to hairloss we want the BEST regrowth that we can get. Right?

I'm no scientist but I would have thought those nutrients are all delivered in the blood too and the sole reason that DHT kills hair is by restricting blood flow.

Yes, I've no doubt that a combination of minoxidil and finasteride works better but this is about people who want to keep hair or slow the loss without the risks associated with finasteride.

I WISH that finasteride worked as well as it does without blocking internal hormones but sadly it does and I'm not prepared to take that risk at this moment in time.

 

[Rawtashk]

Fair enough. Just keep in mind that it's about 100x easier to MAINTAIN hair than it is to regrow it.

Sure, you can shock someone back to life if their heart stops...but it's a hell of a lot easier for their heart to keep beating if they stay alive.

200 out of 10,000 people will get sides from finasteride.
199 of those will go back to normal within a a few weeks of stopping.
You have about a 1-in-10,000 chance of developing long lasting sides.
You have a 1-in-536 chance of dying in a car wreck in your lifetime, yet you probably get in a car every day of your life

Just trying to put it into perspective

 

[jd_uk]

200 out of 10,000 people will get sides from finasteride.
199 of those will go back to normal within a a few weeks of stopping.
You have about a 1-in-10,000 chance of developing long lasting sides.
You have a 1-in-536 chance of dying in a car wreck in your lifetime, yet you probably get in a car every day of your life

Just trying to put it into perspective

I simply don't believe the stats. Blocking the most powerful sex hormone in the body must have some genuine effects (I don't even like to call them 'sides'). I've read so many accounts on other body building boards even where guys have either had sides (ball ache, lower libido, watery semen etc) straight away or developed them years later and had to stop using the drug. These weren't guys who were hugely anxious about hair loss like people here but guys who were just prepared to try the drug to see if it worked without sides.

What's more is that once you go on finasteride then you are psychologically dependant on it - if you ever do need to stop taking it then all that hair gained is just going to fall out. ('Catch up' hair loss)

It's the same with minoxidil but it's less likely that minoxidil is going to do serious and potentially irreversible damage to my body because it's not changing my hormones.

 

[Tom1985]

It is pretty much common knowledge that a lot more than 2% of men suffer sides from finasteride.

The reason finasteride users on this board are so touchy about it is that they fear eventual side effects and so they constantly come on here and argue as a way to try and reassure themselves the drug works and is completely safe. (Wuffer and Rawtashk do this all the time).

You just gotta try min and nizoral for yourself jd_uk. No one here can give a definate answer as to how effective they will be for you or for how long they will work for.

If you do make the decision to use finasteride, whatever you do, speak to your doctor first.

 

[Rawtashk]

There you go again Tom, putting words in my mouth. I would like to see where I argued that finasteride was perfectly safe? You won't find it, because I know and am fully aware that people can suffer long lasting side effects.

"Proscar has been thoroughly studied in clinical trials, with many people having been evaluated. In these studies, side effects occurring in the group of people taking the drug are always documented and compared to the side effects that occur in a similar group of people not taking the medicine.

Based on these studies, the most common side effects seen with finasteride 1 mg tablets include:

Decreased libido (sex drive) -- in up to 1.8 percent of people
Erectile dysfunction (impotence or ED) -- up to 1.3 percent
Decreased ejaculate amount -- up to 1.2 percent."

Now, you may say "Whatever. They'll say whatever the want to say so that they can sell more drugs." I say, "It's a fully controlled study that shows us side effects and their percentages." You are going to find about a 2-1 ratio of Side Effects-to-Success Stories on finasteride if you just read postings on the internet...but there's a very easy explanation for that....

Example 1:
Man is balding. Doctor gives man finasteride. finasteride works. Man has no sides. Man is happy. Man goes about his day, happy with his hair.

Example 2:
Man is balding. Doctor gives man finasteride. finasteride causes sides, man has problems getting it up. Man REALLY wants to fix this. Man does everything he can to find out more information. Man makes posts on web forums when he finds that others have had the same problem.

As you can see, in Example 1 man was happy, so man felt no need to report on his success to anyone. This success story has gone unreported.
In Example 2 man was now happy, so man felt the need to go online and report his story in hopes of finding help.

THAT is why sides seem like a greater % than they are in reality
(and by "sides" I mean sexual sides. I'm not counting "I feel a little more tired than usual" or something small like that)


As for the DHT and "most powerful sex hormone" comment...that's a pretty large overstatement. I agree that DHT isn't an overall "bad" thing, as far as your overall body (not including hair) is concerned, but the most important time for DHT in a male's body is during embryogenesis and puberty, but not even so much during puberty.

"An example illustrating the significance of DHT for the development of secondary sex characteristics is congenital 5-?-reductase (5-AR) deficiency. This gene lesion can result in pseudohermaphroditism. This condition typically presents with underdeveloped male genitalia and prostate. These individuals are often raised as girls due to their lack of conspicuous male genitalia. In the onset of puberty, although their DHT levels remain very low, their testosterone levels elevate normally. Their musculature develops like that of other adults. After puberty, men with this condition have a large deficiency of pubic and body hair, and no incidence of male pattern baldness."

To recap: Males with small amounts of DHT in their bodies during puberty still developed like a normal male.

So, are those guys in the world with less DHT in their bodies than us "baldies" somehow less men? Should they be doing something to add DHT into their system?

 

[Hate2LoseIt]

All PEOPLE WHO TAKE finasteride WILL GET SIDES...

Sides come with the territory.

If your lower DHT in the body you will have other changes internally...you just may not see them as significant enough to call them "sides"...but yea, they're there buddy.

Go ahead and Keep f*****g with your body's natural chemistry. :shakehead:

I guess 5 years down the line it will be me satisfying all your wives with my 100% filled testosterone, Throbbing, pulsating PENiS.

 

[Hate2LoseIt]

jd-uk....man just get on minoxidil, nizoral....and why not try RU.

Seriously.

Ive had good results with minoxidil so far. Im going to add RU in december so i can tackle the androgens in the safest way possible. I think that is the best we can do without finasteride. minoxidil, tricomin, RU, and nizoral(if ya want)..

Really though, when you take a seat back and really think about...finasteride just aint right man. Thats not something you play with just for hair, and im saying this only because it saddens me when I read what other people are going through because they decided to just jump on the pill as a last ditch impulse effort for some extra hair.

Now if finasteride could restore all of my hair to pre balding days, then i would have to consider....but for what it currently does...hell no.

 

[Primo]

Now if finasteride could restore all of my hair to pre balding days, then i would have to consider....but for what it currently does...hell no.

:agree:

It's all well and good for finasteride users who start very early and manage to maintain a full head of hair/NW2 but if you start at say NW3/4 and then suffer side effects, you're paying a very heavy price for what will only be half a head of hair.

 

[Technical]

Now if finasteride could restore all of my hair to pre balding days, then i would have to consider....but for what it currently does...hell no.

:agree:

It's all well and good for finasteride users who start very early and manage to maintain a full head of hair/NW2 but if you start at say NW3/4 and then suffer side effects, you're paying a very heavy price for what will only be half a head of hair.

I dunno, I'm 19 years old and I've been balding for about 8 months now. General thinning down the sides of frontal hair loss, still none in the middle. A little in the crown. If I started finasteride right now, nobody would even know I have hair loss for the next 5+ years, in fact the big 3 with my tricomin-like shampoo could easily replace all hair I've lost and probably fill out my head for the next 5 years. In 5-7 years there will probably be a better treatment than finasteride, essentially I could probably prevent ever balding for the rest of my life.

But.

Permanent impotence is worse. I know because I've developed a pelvic floor dysfunction that lead me down the route of research in hormones. Luckily it turned out to be the pelvic floor (I'm now going to physiotherapy for it) but I was staring down the barrel of being impotent from 18 years old for the rest of my life. I don't think anyone understands just how ridiculously scary secondary hypogonadism effects are until you experience them.

People may think "I'll just deal with it if it comes" but you won't. You can't bounce back from that stuff, I've visited the forums with guys who have spent 10+ years of research trying to fix their hormones. It's incredibly stressful and one of the worst things that can ever happen to you. I'd rather be bald any day. I mean think about it. If you're bald you may not be able to get women as attractive as you can when you have a full head of hair (I don't think that's always true, but for some men sure.) However what's the use if you can't even keep them? You can't do anything with that slightly more attractive girl because your hormones are screwed. In fact if your bald the worst comes to worst and you could even hire a decent call girl, not only do you get an attractive woman, but you can pay for her with the money you didn't spend on finasteride, and you can actually have sex with her.

Food for thought.

 

[jd_uk]

Now if finasteride could restore all of my hair to pre balding days, then i would have to consider....but for what it currently does...hell no.

:agree:

It's all well and good for finasteride users who start very early and manage to maintain a full head of hair/NW2 but if you start at say NW3/4 and then suffer side effects, you're paying a very heavy price for what will only be half a head of hair.

I dunno, I'm 19 years old and I've been balding for about 8 months now. General thinning down the sides of frontal hair loss, still none in the middle. A little in the crown. If I started finasteride right now, nobody would even know I have hair loss for the next 5+ years, in fact the big 3 with my tricomin-like shampoo could easily replace all hair I've lost and probably fill out my head for the next 5 years. In 5-7 years there will probably be a better treatment than finasteride, essentially I could probably prevent ever balding for the rest of my life.

But.

Permanent impotence is worse. I know because I've developed a pelvic floor dysfunction that lead me down the route of research in hormones. Luckily it turned out to be the pelvic floor (I'm now going to physiotherapy for it) but I was staring down the barrel of being impotent from 18 years old for the rest of my life. I don't think anyone understands just how ridiculously scary secondary hypogonadism effects are until you experience them.

People may think "I'll just deal with it if it comes" but you won't. You can't bounce back from that stuff, I've visited the forums with guys who have spent 10+ years of research trying to fix their hormones. It's incredibly stressful and one of the worst things that can ever happen to you. I'd rather be bald any day. I mean think about it. If you're bald you may not be able to get women as attractive as you can when you have a full head of hair (I don't think that's always true, but for some men sure.) However what's the use if you can't even keep them? You can't do anything with that slightly more attractive girl because your hormones are screwed. In fact if your bald the worst comes to worst and you could even hire a decent call girl, not only do you get an attractive woman, but you can pay for her with the money you didn't spend on finasteride, and you can actually have sex with her.

Food for thought.

well said.

Hope your physio works out. Some things are way more important than hair. I hope that I never give in to the temptation of taking finasteride.

 

[Rawtashk]

I don't disagree that it would be hard to deal with permanent sides...but the odds are so small that I'm easily willing to take that risk. I'm fairly certain that the odds of me dying in a car crash are more likely...but it doesn't mean I'm going to start taking the bus any time soon.

To each their own.

 

[jd_uk]

I don't disagree that it would be hard to deal with permanent sides...but the odds are so small that I'm easily willing to take that risk. I'm fairly certain that the odds of me dying in a car crash are more likely...but it doesn't mean I'm going to start taking the bus any time soon.

To each their own.

But as discussed - when you tend to push the people who say they have 'no sides' a bit further then they usually experience a change in some way other than with their hair. I simply don't see how reducing what is commonly called the strongest sex hormone in the body won't have any effects other than on the hair. If it works for you then great but personally I can't take that risk and i think the 2% stat is very misleading.

Aside from all this, treating hair loss so closely becomes an obsession...are guys who've just gone left it untreated and gone bald really any less happy than those who are fighting it? I doubt it. I know I'm less happy when I think about this stuff and read these boards.

 

[Technical]

I don't disagree that it would be hard to deal with permanent sides...but the odds are so small that I'm easily willing to take that risk. I'm fairly certain that the odds of me dying in a car crash are more likely...but it doesn't mean I'm going to start taking the bus any time soon.

To each their own.

You've pushed the 2% number over and over and that's already been shot down.

 

[Rawtashk]

It's been shot down by people on the boards that think it's a higher than 2% chance. I personally know 12 other people (13, if you count me) that are on finasteride, and none of them have sides. Now, if it was a greater than 2% chance, then at least 3 of us should have the sides.

No one here has conducted a clinical double-blind extended trial to see exactly how high the % of sides are. In light of that, I will reference the numbers that are attached to the clinical trials.