If finasteride can not cause thinning, why am I continuing to thin while on finasteride? I’m definitely not imagining this. Could it be that the dosage 0.5mg is not enough and the miniaturization is too aggressive?
Yes, it is possible that you need a proper dose of finasteride (1mg), or your thinning process is more active than the finasteride can manage.
This is continued from my response an hour ago about finasteride and the Swedish Medical Products Agency (MPA). The question was:
What is your opinion about the Swedish Medical Products Agency 2008 study that supports permanent side effects from the use of finasteride?
As I said in my earlier response, “If you believe in the study, do not use Propecia. Many of the reports that I read are on bulletin boards which are suspicious.”
What that boils down to is that I’m not going to try to convince people to use a medication if they’re already so convinced it’ll do them harm. I’m not a sales rep and it isn’t my job to make guarantees about medications or provide incentives for you to take it. It’s an elective medication. You don’t have to take it if you don’t want to. If you’d rather believe message boards than published reports in medical journals, then by all means that is your choice to make.
But I’ll elaborate more with some interesting tidbits from the Swedish Medical Products Agency (sources: here and here). Some key points I found:
I’ve read time and time again from your responses that finasteride does not work well on the frontal hairlines. Does that mean frontal hairline recession will occur regardless of using finasteride? or are you saying no regrowth would occur with finasteride?
Thanks
Take 100 people with a Norwood class 3 or 3A hairline and put them on finasteride 1mg daily. If they are under 25 years old, there is a small chance that some hair will grow in this area (I would guess less than 5%). The older the patient, the less likely that we will see significant hair growth.
There is a more important second scenario with those people in the Norwood class 3-5 pattern who are losing frontal hair. Again, in men under 25, there is a good chance (I would estimate at a better than 40% chance) that the hair loss will stop progressing or at least slow down the progression.
From the two observations, I think that the consumer has decisions to make. One of my sons with early frontal loss reversed it completely on the drug and started when he was 28 years old (he is now 40 and stable with regard to no hair loss). That says that all hope is not lost with the use of finasteride for treating frontal loss. It would take a full 2 years to know if it works. A bulk assessment in our office prior to starting the medication will have value for comparing before and after the 2 year treatment period.
Dr. Robert Bernstein has collected a large number of frontal hairline medication reversals, as have many other doctors, but cases like these are few and far between, despite this large collection.
2013-01-04 14:10:412013-01-03 10:08:07Finasteride and the Frontal Hairline
If finasteride doesn’t reverse frontal hair loss, will is slow it down or stop it?
I have seen some patients get good results in the frontal area (not common), more are younger (closer to 20 rather than 30 y/o). Yes it often slows or stops the recession.
A recent article here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/article-abstract/2772818 suggests that men under 45 who take finasteride, have a higher risk of suicide than control groups.
We have known that there are some complaints of Central Nervous System problems in a few young me who take finasteride. We need a lot more information than is supplied in this article but I have no doubt that if a man is suicidal, then should stop taking finasteride if they are on the drug. It is interesting to note that suicide is the second most common cause of death in men under 45 and that does not include finasteride. How does this information alter the finding in this paper?
2020-11-13 02:12:422020-11-12 17:08:43Finasteride and suicide
I’ve been on generic finasteride 0.5mg for 6 weeks now and have experienced a week of low libido which went away within the first few weeks. I have not experienced any noticeable amount shedding so far. I’ve been considering upping the dose to 1mg. If I were, will I experience a shed within the next 3 months as if I were only just starting the medication or would it continue alongside the last 6 weeks of 0.5mg? Will there be a noticeable effect? The only reason I am taking 0.5 is for financial reasons, so if it’s best to stay on that then I might do so.
I doubt that you will experience shedding at the 1 mg dose considering that you are on it now. The libido is another story. If you should see an impact on libido on the 1 mg dose, go back to the half dose as it is 80% as effective. A recent study shows that there is far less sexual side effects than the public believes, see here: https://baldingblog.com/new-report-that-finasteride-does-not-cause-sexual-side-effects/
So I’ve been on fin for about a week and a half now. For the first week I noticed that the only side effect I experienced was a lack of morning wood. I was slightly concerned about this but I still used fin because it wasn’t a big deal to me. I think it’s subsided, because now I get morning wood again but there’s a few sides I didn’t expect. I feel like my libido has exponentially increased and the morning wood I experience is much more intense than it used to be. Is this normal? Will it subside eventually?
I have seen men who claimed a reduced sex drive in the first few weeks and found that this symptom disappeared within a month.
I am using finasteride and me and my partner had unprotected sex whilst she was in her infertile stage of the menstrual cycle. This may sound stupid but I am worried that having unprotected sex whilst on finasteride will cause damage to the female’s reproductive ability / any egg cells. Is use of a condom specifically recommended if your partner is pregnant or could get pregnant? We are not looking to have children for another few years at which point I will quit using finasteride but just worrying myself that there will be damage caused by unprotected sex in the present
If you are using any birth control, not a problem. The use of a condom is recommended if she it tying to get pregnant. Timing fertility (the actual point of ovulation by taking body temperatures) is not always accurate unless she is regular on her periods.
if you had to guess (rough estimate) what percent of your patients in early 20s experience regrowth in crown/vertex/midscalp when hairloss is very early. Assuming the mpb is caught very early in the young patient, does the finasteride generally regrow the crown/vertex/midscalp so that the hairloss is not-visible or aesthetically insignificant so as to make the balding undetectable to the average naked eye? Sorry for the long-winded questions. I really appreciate all of the time and effort you put into the community. Thanks again.
There is no study that I know of that will answer your basic questions; however, from my experience reversal is more likely in men under 25 with recent hair loss than men over 30
Basically I was about to start taking finasteride 0.5mg but I recently found out my girlfriend was pregnant. Will I be fine to take it or would I be best waiting for the child to be born?
