Author: Dr. William Rassman

I have been using Minoxidil AND Finasteride, and I developed pericarditis. The VA did not warn me of these possibilities. Today, I am aware of the Minoxidil connection but not about a Finasteride connection. Is there a clear Finasteride connection I can get data on?

There are reports that this drug (Finasteride) can cause pericarditis (a swelling and inflammation in the sack around the heart).tc

They say a picture is worth a 1000 words. He is one of the best surgeons in Brazil and he learned SMP here at our office. In addition to learning, he was one of our patients and we repaired some very old work of the plug era hair transplants. The SMP he had done wiped out all of the scars he had from the old surgeries.

 

 

 

This man was on finasteride for 5 years, then added topical minoxidil 1 year ago when the before picture was taken. He switched to oral minoxidil 6 months ago. The addition of the oral minoxidil took a stable but receded hairline and corrected the recession in just one year.

Hey Doc- I had a quick question. Have you seen any patients have hair loss worsened by Fin? I took fin from roman for maybe a week and had such extreme shedding immediately that I stopped. Shedding continued for 8 weeks or so and stopped but I went from a NW2 to a NW4 in that time. Do you think this will grow back? I tried Min, but the sides were bad for me and made it extremely uncomfortable. Thanks!

I have heard about shedding, but I haven’t seen it myself in my patient population so it must be rare. I gather that those who have it should stay on the medication as their is a delayed response but the response usually does happen in a couple of months.

If you are getting any of these side effects discussed in this article, you should sit down with your doctor and determine if taking the drug is worth the negative value discussed in this article.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4064044/

My hairline has receded at what I’d call an accelerated rate since I began finasteride. Would that be a bad sign or considered natural?

It should stop shortly, but that is assuming that the shed is the result of the medication and not your balding process itself.

I started using a higher dose of topical finasteride about a month ago and ever since then I have been noticing more hairloss. I do know the so-called “finasteride shed” (initial period where hairloss temporarily increases) but I am surprised that it started literally the day after my first application (I thought it should take some time to start working). I have been monitoring the amount of my hairloss (after washing my hair) for months and nowadays I see about twice as much hair in the bathtub than before. I know that this is probably happening due to finasteride and that it should be a good sign but a part of me still worries that it might be just my hairloss getting more aggressive.

Could you please advise me on how long the increased shedding period should approximately last

I have seen the sexual side effects appear after a man has been on the drug for months or years. The incidence reported of 2-4% was reported over a 5-year period of time, but I agree with you, that it may be more than the reported numbers. Most people, when they get off the drug, will find that the sexual side effects disappear in a month or two.

11 months of finasteride use, but side effects are becoming increasingly real from tressless

How long after stopping finasteride did it take to recover from sides?

Everyone seems to take a different amount of time to reverse finasteride side effects when stopping the drug. The range in my experience relates to how long you have been on the drug. The range is between 2 – 16 weeks.

I started fin 13 months ago 1mg /daily. At first I had sides, loss of sex drive, runny ejac, and shitty boners. I’m a vain man, I work in sales and I figured this was all worth keeping my head of hair. Fast forward 3 months and they went away. I was hesitant to celebrate but it’s been 9 months and they haven’t come back. Fin not only stopped my balding dead in its tracks, also got some regrowth. I’m 31 so hair loss is pretty normal at this age but I still get the “you lucky bastard” comments from the less hairy lol. This might sound dramatic but good looks are an insane advantage in our society and finasteride saved my life lol.

This is a positive story, something about side effects one doesn’t hear often