Author: Dr. William Rassman

I am male age 27, I am a amateur football player too, I have no hair loss in head and no diseases at all and i am perfectly alright , But since years i could see that i have less hair in my legs (only tiny pores) and arms and not at all growing. How to increase the leg hair and arms too, Shall i use Rogaine on my legs and arms will it give any results. would you recommend this. please reply me. thanks lot

Rogaine (minoxidil) is reasonably worth trying on your legs and arms. Give it at least 6 months of twice daily use.

Dear Doctor,

I want to start using minoxidil to help with hairloss. I was reading as much as I could about it, including every entry on your site.

While reading about minoxidil on the web, I came across companies utilizing a different form of minoxidil in their formulas called “minoxidil sulfate” which is supposed to be much better than regular minoxidil.

A search for minoxidil sulfate pulled up the following study on PubMed apparently from research done by UpJohn:

“An important step in understanding minoxidil’s mechanism of action on hair follicles was to determine the drug’s active form. We used organ-cultured vibrissa follicles to test whether it is minoxidil or its sulfated metabolite, minoxidil sulfate, that stimulates hair growth. Follicles from neonatal mice were cultured with or without drugs and effects were assessed by measuring incorporation of radiolabeled cysteine in hair shafts of the treated follicles. Assays of minoxidil sulfotransferase activity indicated that vibrissae follicles metabolize minoxidil to minoxidil sulfate. Dose-response studies showed that minoxidil sulfate is 14 times more potent than minoxidil in stimulating cysteine incorporation in cultured follicles. Three drugs that block production of intrafollicular minoxidil sulfate were tested for their effects on drug-induced hair growth. Diethylcarbamazine proved to be a noncompetitive inhibitor of sulfotransferase and prevented hair growth stimulation by minoxidil but not by minoxidil sulfate. Inhibiting the formation of intracellular PAPS with chlorate also blocked the action of minoxidil but not of minoxidil sulfate. Acetaminophen, a potent sulfate scavenger blocked cysteine incorporation by minoxidil. It also blocked follicular stimulation by minoxidil sulfate apparently by directly removing the sulfate from the drug. Experiments with U-51,607, a potent minoxidil analog that also forms a sulfated metabolite, showed that its activity was inhibited by both chlorate and diethylcarbamazine. These studies show that sulfation is a critical step for hair-growth effects of minoxidil and that it is the sulfated metabolite that directly affects hair follicles.”

I found a few companies such as Sinere that use this form in their Nanominox and DS Labs which uses it in their Spectral DNC.

My question is….if this form of minoxidil is “14 times more effective” than regular, according to UpJohn’s own studies, do you have any idea why they don’t use it in their own Rogaine products? Also, do you think I would be better off using this form myself?

I cannot find anything impartial written about this compound, so anything from you, hopefully detailed, would be greatly appreciated.

I do not have a good answer to your question, but the study (which is nearly 2 decades old) that you are referring to was done on neonatal mice, not humans. I would think there are some differences between mice hair and human hair. Being that the studies are from the late 80s/early 90s, I’d make the leap and assume that if the minoxidil sulfate were to be that much better than regular minoxidil (and with no greater side effect potential), that there would be a new product out by now using it. The FDA has approved standard minoxidil in 2% and 5% concentration, and both are available for over the counter sales (no prescription required).

If you know of a product that uses minoxidil sulfate, I suppose you can give it a shot — I’m not by any means recommending it (I like to stick with the medications proven safe and effective), but if you don’t mind being a guinea pig, I’m sure visitors to this site would love to hear about the results.

Ok this is really upsetting me. I’m 27, male, in great physical shape. There was a period during march of 2007 where i was under alot of emotional stress. (girlfriend cheated on me, work was really stressful (Sales job), and I noticed my hair wasn’t the same. Then November 2007, I decided to take rogaine foam. Shedding ocured initally and it looked like something was growing back. Fast forward to October 2008. My hair is falling out alot. not at the temples or front part, nor the crown area. Its literraly on top of my head. Rub my hair and like 25 strands of about 2.5 inches come out. I called Pfizer about the situation and they never heard anything like it. So my question is? Any idea what’s happening? and also if it is the rogaine that tirggered this, is it permanent? Any suggestions?

You have a progressive process of hair loss as 50% of men do. It sounds like you are heavily stressed and we know that stress accelerates the genetic hair loss problem. Assuming that you are genetically balding, the better drug would have been Propecia (finasteride), but with aggressive hair loss even that may not have worked. Do the right thing by getting a diagnosis from a competent doctor and use the appropriate medication to try to hold what you have left.

Just wondering if you could comment on the effectiveness of Propecia. The official website for the drug states that 99% of men who took it did not lose any hair after 2 years. If this is true, then why have I read in other places that propecia doesn’t work for 10-15% of men?

I verified the 99% on the Propecia site — 5 out of 535 lost hair, which is 1% of the study. I would tend to believe Merck, who is under scrutiny from shareholders and the FDA, before I’d believe the various sensationalist writers on various forums that state “facts” as they see it, not like it is. I don’t know where you got the 10-15% figure from.