Hi,
I have been losing hair on my scalp right at the centre. My doctor says its fungal infection and has advised me to use anti-dandruff shampoos. Is this ok? Can my hair be restored?
How do you know that you have a fungal infection? If you have a fungal infection, then you need to treat it with anti-fungal medications, not over-the-counter shampoos. You might want to get a 2nd opinion.
2006-09-14 08:35:552006-09-13 09:45:49Doctor Recommended Dandruff Shampoo for My Fungal Infection
I’m wanting to start taking fin but I have a couple of questions on my mind if you don’t mind answering. I have an inconsistent sleep schedule. Would there be much of an issue if my pill taking is not spot on 24 hours? If for example I take 1mg at 12pm and then the next day 1mg at 10am and the following day 1mg at 11am, would that be fine?
My other question is if side effects are obvious or do I need to be searching for them? I’m thinking a lot of the sides i’ve read about would be obvious so I don’t need to stress about looking for anything bad.
Finasteride can be taken anytime during the day. Just so you don’t forget to take it, I generally recommend that patients take it in the morning when they wake up. If you get the sexual side effects, you will know in many ways. First, you might lose interest in women, won’t get an erection in the morning if that is your usual routine or the erection you do get is not hard as it usually is. You will know if you have the side effects because men focus on their penis, often too much (according to some women) but that is our hormones telling us to procreate.
In my material, I give to EVERY patient who gets a prescription, material that contains all of the risks of finasteride, from mental illness claims to sexual side effect claims. I NEVER push finasteride on patients. I do not own Merck stock. I always do what is best for the patient in conjunction with a consultation understanding their goals and when I make recommendations, whatever they be, I always have a consultation with the patient and NEVER prescribe finasteride over the internet not understanding the people I consult with. I am not sure why you are angry, but if you experienced side effects and did not educate yourself, then you are to blame if you had problems with the drug. If you look on Baldingblog.com and search finasteride, you will see article and information galore on both the benefit and the liabilities of this drug.
2020-08-17 03:27:212020-08-14 09:56:17Doctors like you push finasteride on unknowing patients like me
The following is the introduction of the article titled: Pericardial, pleural effusion and anasarca: A rare complication of low-dose oral minoxidil for hair loss
Authors: Ncoza C. Dlova, MBChB, PhD, Tarryn Jacobs, MBChB, and Satish Singh, MBChB
“INTRODUCTION
Topical minoxidil has been used for many years in the treatment of androgenic alopecia and other hair disorders. Although the mechanism of action of topical minoxidil is poorly understood, animal studies have shown that it affects the hair growth cycle by shortening the telogen phase and prolonging the anagen phase.1,2 Lately, there has been growing evidence to support successful use of low-dose oral minoxidil (LDOM) in the treatment of various types of alopecia. The dosing regimens range from 0.25 to 5 mg daily to twice daily, with side effects reported to be dose dependent.”
The presented Pericardial Effusion occurred 3 weeks after starting the low-dose oral minoxidil. The woman presented with significant swelling in her feet and eventually elsewhere. A Pericardial Effusion is a condition where fluid accumulates around the heart, inside the sac (pericardium) that surrounds the heart. Fluid in this space will restrict blood flow to the heart and fluid back up in the body. Significant swelling of the feet and anasarca (a generalized swelling of many body parts) was clearly a warning that brought this woman to a doctor. She was admitted to the hospital, treated with diuretics, and stopped the oral minoxidil, all of which normalized her state of health, so she was discharged from the hospital on the 5th day.
WARNING: People taking oral minoxidil or even high-dose topical minoxidil might develop the symptoms described above. Always seek medical attention when a change in your health to this magnitude appears, especially if you are taking oral minoxidil.
Ref: JAAD Case Reports 2022;28:94-6., 2352-5126, 2022 by the American Academy of Dermatology, Inc. Published, by Elsevier, Inc. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-
NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdcr.2022.07.044
It doesn’t. If you only lose “some” of your hair, doesn’t mean you won’t lose anymore. Just means your hair loss hasn’t advanced to that point yet.
Of course it exists. I have a mature hairline and had balding in my crown which I treated with a hair transplant so now I am just a normal hairy guy.
2021-03-04 02:26:162020-11-02 12:27:05Does a mature hairline really exist?
This is a comment left by a reader in response to Propecia being under patent protection…
And that is exactly why we need to see the end of Patent laws as we know them today, companies are given way too much time to bleed us. Its evil. Especially when medication has been Government funded or approved.
The real issue is that patents stop other companies from innovating. In fact while I’m thinking about, we should all be lobbying against the company that tried to sue Histogen. Because that company only cares about your money not your hair. There is nothing more criminal then these companies slowing down the discovery process – its anti human and we want our hair back
Maybe you are right, but we live in a capitalist society. I’m not going to make excuses for it. These are for-profit companies and they spend millions (if not billions) of dollars on research and tests to develop new products and new drugs. Some drugs fail, some succeed. When one succeeds, it makes up for all the R&D and failures that still had to be paid for.
Do you think they should just give that away for essentially nothing? Patents form the backbone of what built our country into an industrial giant. In time though, the patents on these drugs will expire and generic versions will be legally available in the US… so there’s no stranglehold forever.
We all have the right to our own opinions, but hair loss is seen as a cosmetic issue. I have a hard time believing that the government would fund hair loss issues when its hard enough to have HIV or diabetes or heart medicines funded. But hey, maybe you can lobby the government and try!
Does cutting Proscar a month’s in advance really reduce its effectiveness?
Cutting a month of Proscar pills (5mg finasteride) in advance could reduce the effectiveness like any pill would if exposed to air and humidity for a prolonged period of time. I don’t know what the exact point is that the medication starts to degrade, but that’s why I suggest splitting one pill at a time. The protective coating on the outside is what extends the life of the medication, and a cut pill obviously loses some of that.
2010-10-07 10:49:152010-10-05 08:51:18Does Cutting a Month of Proscar Really Lose Effectiveness?
Does everyone’s hair (people with zero balding) go back a little at the temples?
95% of Caucasian men develop a mature hairline. changing the shape from a rounded juvenile hairline to a V shaped hairline which usually moves up about 3/4″ from the original juvenile position. In many other races (Arab, From India) the juvenile hairline may remain.
2020-06-16 11:15:062020-06-16 11:16:24Does everyone’s hair go back a little at the temples?
You mentioned that you were confused by the Reuters article so I thought it would be worthwhile to send you some of the highlights to break it down. These are all based on objective facts that can be verified in the documents.
When you look at the current Propecia label, Merck discusses the sexual side effects from their original clinical trials and reports that “Resolution occurred in men who discontinued therapy with Propecia”. Seems simple enough. You’d think from reading this text that Merck found no evidence of PFS in their clinical trials. This language has been in Merck’s label from 2002 onward.
However, if you go all the way back to their 2001 label, the label says “Resolution occurred in all men who discontinued therapy with Propecia”. If you read this one, you’d also assume that Merck did not have subjects develop PFS during the trials.
But why is this interesting? If you look closely, you’ll see Merck took the word ALL out of the label all the way back in 2002. But why did they change the language?
Fortunately, we have an accidentally unsealed deposition with Charlotte Merritt, the Merck woman who oversaw regulatory activity related to Propecia so we can see what her answer is on page 52.
Some paraphrasing to get to the point…
Q: So the word “all” has been removed in this label… why is that? A: Well, as you saw, there were some men in whom after some period of time the AEs did not resolve so this is — so the word “all” was no longer factual as it relates to the longer term data beyond the initial period of the trial.
Q: There was nothing that prevented Merck, which as we agreed is responsible at all times for its label, from putting into this 2002 label that it now had information for over a year, at least as early as November 2000, about the lack of resolution upon discontinuation in some patients in the clinical data, right? A: Merck didn’t feel at the time that that was something that needed to be put in the label. FDA apparently agreed. This is the label that was, you know, the results of that submission and we can’t comment any further.
Later on there is a reference to the “Ruane memo” that was sent to top Merck executives that discussed the details about what they knew about persisting adverse events and what they were going to do about it. This memo still remains under seal but Reuters has done some great investigative work and has filed to have it unsealed for the sake of public safety. The law says that these documents should never be filed under seal except for very narrow exceptions and public embarrassment to a company does not fall into that category.
If you look more deeply in the documents which I suggest you do, you’ll see they had gathered internal market research that showed 50% of potential customers who were aware of REVERSIBLE side effects, would be unwilling to take the drug due to that risk. One can only imagine how high that number would go if Merck properly warned about the data they found about irreversible side effects. There are also more detailed descriptions about the test subjects who developed persistent side effects and how they were excluded from what was reported.
I saw you refer to this as “speculative” on your blog today but this is all fact based and verifiable, much of it confirmed by Merck employees. It’s undeniable that Merck had clinical trial subjects that developed persisting sexual AEs since 2000 and never reported this to the public.
I have the link to the full court document below. Merck tried to file this under seal away from the public eye and this is very common feataure of how the legal system operates even though it isn’t supposed to be that way. The Reuters article says that this document was accidentally filed publicly so that is the only reason the public gets to see this information that would have been otherwise buried.
A Second Reader posted this:
https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2019/09/12/merck-side-effects-opioids/
I just saw that StatNews reported on the same story last week too. Ed Silverman is another very credible journalist and in fact was a finalist for the Pulitzer for his work on explanatory reporting in the pharmaceutical industry.
If you still are confused, I suggest that you read the two primary source documents from the Reuters article which you may have missed. In fact I believe it is your moral responsibility to do so given many people look to your blog for medical advice about Propecia. The links are below.
The document in the first link was meant to be filed under seal which would have made it hidden from the public. You will see why Merck wanted it sealed after you read it.
The document in the second link was filed publicly but with redactions. You can remove the redactions by copy and pasting those sections into word.
Happy reading 🙂
A Third Reader posted this:
Thomson Reuters is as authoritative and respected as they come. It is one of the two major global news agencies along with AP. They report on the facts and the facts support PFS. You can review the underlying documents that are publicly available on the article.
You can do a quick internet search to see how people rank Reuters and it is always among the most objective, often above agencies like NYTimes, WSJ, CNN, Fox which have some editorializing.
2019-09-20 03:05:042019-09-19 21:16:16Reddit readers post his views on the action of Merck in hiding information about post Finasteride Syndrome
