I am in my late 40s and have receding hair and a slight thin spot at the crown. I’ve been taking Propecia for about 2 years now and while I haven’t noticed any hair growth, my hair seems to stay consistent. I am, however, unhappy with the decreased libido side effect. I would like to stop taking Propecia and try Rogaine or saw palmetto.
Would you advise this and if you would, should I stop the Propecia cold turkey or gradually stop it?
I can’t advise someone that isn’t my patient to start or stop a prescription medication, which is what Propecia is. I can just give general advice. There’s no weaning process when stopping the medication, but please talk to your prescribing physician about the best way to change your dosing. There’s a couple points you might be aware of, but I feel I should highlight for you just in case:
1. Any benefits you’ve seen from Propecia will start to disappear within months of stopping it, so if you want to try to maintain the consistency you’ve seen you might wish to ask your doctor about taking a lower dosage (some Propecia is better than none) to see if that helps with the side effects.
2. It’s also possible that the drug itself isn’t the cause of your lower libido and there’s another issue coincidentally going on. Stress, anxiety, and age can also be reasons for a lower libido. People seem quick to point the finger at medication first, but in reality people that don’t take medications still have these same issues every day.
Propecia is entirely elective medication for a cosmetic issue (you’re not going to suffer health risks by stopping it), so ultimately it’s up to you whether you want to take it or not.
I’m not sure what to think of Renokin. It’s a new product that consists of three steps (shampoo, conditioner, spray) and claims to regrow hair. I’ve seen so many that follow this same structure of outlandish claims, little evidence, and nobody taking these to task. Whether it works or not, I couldn’t say. I’ve got no experience with it and it is apparently quite new to market. The product is being sold as a cosmetic, not a medication, so there are less legal boundaries that the company needs to deal with when selling it. In other words, they aren’t under the strict guidelines that a drug company must fall under to prove the product does what it says.
I honestly don’t understand the prescription drug patent process in Canada. I assumed it was similar to the US law, but a quick Google search shows that the generic Propecia (1mg finasteride) is being sold online in Canada. Buying these medications in the US from an online Canadian pharmacy isn’t legal, but that hasn’t seemed to stop these pharmacies for quite some time. I don’t condone it, in case anyone was going to ask.
I can not really advise you. The impact of minoxidil is as you describe, but the Spectral DNC product has other ingredients that may change the impact when combined with it. You might switch to just minoxidil and see what happens over the next couple of months.
There are hundreds if not thousands of new products for treating hair loss all with the promise of growing follicles. Some include wound healing claims as well. I really do not know anything about this Cutasil product as it hasn’t been made available for testing or review and the link you sent has the only info I can find about it.