Category: Drugs

Hello Doctor,

With all of the terrible things happening in the world, I would like to give blood. However, I have been told that finasteride is not allowed in blood transfusions.

Are there any organizations for whom I can donate blood or plasma or platelets that can be used? It seems an awful shame that I can’t give blood while on proscar.

It seems as though I could stop taking it for a few days, give blood and then start up again, right? Or would it be possible to tag the blood as having finasteride and only transfuse it into male patients?

If you’re taking finasteride, blood donation is bad for recipient women who are pregnant due to the risk of birth defects… and that is why it is banned for blood donors. I don’t know about tagging the blood in the donation process. Finasteride users are supposed to wait at least a month after the last dose and dutasteride users should wait at least 6 months before donating blood.

There are other medications that take even longer, such as severe psoriasis treatment acitretin, which has a 3 year wait before you should give blood… and etretinate, which eliminates you from giving blood entirely.

Is it okay to use 15% minoxidil, or is it too much for a good thing?

5% minoxidil is the recommended dose and I’d suspect that 15% would be a bit much, possibly causing more side effects (fainting from drops in blood pressure, more skin reactions, etc).

Paid advertisements (not an endorsement):

Doc,

I read that Rogaine has a half-life of about 22 hours in skin. Assuming you have no side effects from applying it all at once, could you apply double the recommended amount once per day and have the same effect?

Minoxidil was originally a not-that-great oral high blood pressure medication called Loniten. The results varied in the treatment of high blood pressure and eventually the medication was turned into a topical after the hair growth side effect was noticed. The drug stays in the plasma for about a 4 hour half life, but on the skin it stays much longer with slow absorption suggesting that once a day application may be satisfactory.

I can not comment on the official use of twice a day application to the scalp, but clearly more of it will be used and sold with twice a day applications. If you double the dose and apply it once a day, the drop in blood pressure side effect becomes more prevalent.

I am 21 years old and noticed the hair on top of my head is thinning and is very easy to see the scalp when wet. Also have a little bit of a receding hairline and very small bald spot on the crown (can only really see when hair is wet). I am just wondering if I should wait a few years before starting propecia because i heard it loses its effects after a while? Also if I do start since it is not that bad yet should I take propecia everyday or every other day or any other sort of amount?

The dosing should be 1mg a day, but this is a prescription medication and I can’t give alternate dosing advice as I’m not your doctor. Talk to your physician about it.

If you’ve got male pattern baldness, Propecia (finasteride) works best when started early in the thinning process. You should not want to wait until you’ve lost a ton of hair before you start it as it might be less effective. If you start the medication earlier, it has a greater chance to halt the hair loss. As a 21 year old, the frequency of reversing the thinning and loss is some areas is much higher than if you wait 5 more years.

Paid advertisements (not an endorsement):

I am 26 years old male and i’ve applied minoxidil once a day since age 21, but only in the two sides of my hairline where i had a problem, not in the rest of my hair. My father is totally bald. My treatment was taking place with some breaks, like 8-9 months treatment, 2 months stopping treatment. When i was stopping the treatment, the hair that was grown from minoxidil were falling out, and then after re-starting the treatment they were starting to grow again.

i have no sign of baldness in my crown, where i’ve never applied minoxidil. i want to ask you that if i stop using it at all, what kind of hairloss should i expect?

If you’re going to keep starting and stopping the medication, I don’t see the point in using it. If you stop using the medication completely, I’d expect any benefits that the minoxidil gave you will soon disappear. I don’t know what your hair loss pattern is or how much the medication was helping, so I have no way of knowing what kind of hair loss you’ll see. But if minoxidil regrew hair, that hair will fall out when you stop using it. Why are you playing Russian Roulette with your hair?

Paid advertisements (not an endorsement):

If Testosterone levels do go up by about 15% by taking finasteride could this drug increase muscle mass?

Doubtful. The slight increase in testosterone is very minor and only temporary.

Paid advertisements (not an endorsement):