Minoxidil is the only thing that ever "worked" for me, but I got tired of the routine very quickly and it wasn't nearly as effective as desired. The real cure is to stop worrying about it and to buzz off whatever remaining hair. You will look and feel 10x better than if you try to patchwork your way through it.
Think about the end game - hair loss is probably only going to escalate over time. This is an uphill battle. Focus on other parts of your body. Things you can fundamentally improve without drugs and other fake crap. I am sure everyone on this board can quickly identify certain popular figures who have gone all-in on the "save my hair at all costs" angle and should look to this as a cautionary tale, not an inspirational one.
Hair transplants are a thing and work pretty well if the person in question has the money available. Several streamers have covered their transplant phase, giving you an insight to their experience over the months.
I personally don't value my hairline to that degree, but it does exist and works well.
This whole thing is weird to me. I have the genetics for good hair but ended up bizzing it off because it was annoying every few months. I only get haircuts now because my 3 year old son wamts haircuts and needs an example.the whole thing seems so dumb.
I also shaved it completely with a double edge razor (and sometimes my straight edge, although rarely) for several years. I only stopped because that was more of a pain in the arse than shaving it close with clippers.I've done it all from completely razor shorn bald to a nice hairstyle, none of it makes any sense to me. Women don't care about your hair, they care about your ability to earn income to support their desires, that you don't have any off putting aromas (translates to not too fat, and regularly cleaned) and that you have an ok personality so it's not like conversing with a board of wood, literally in that order
Yeah, can't fix what isn't broken. I just shrugged and moved on. Never worried about it for a minute. I would definitely try something easy with zero side effects, though. Just curious if we can crack this nut. It would be way more impactful for women if it works for them.
A Hobson's choice is a free choice in which only one thing is actually offered. The term is often used to describe an illusion that multiple choices are available
Yeah, I spend a lot less on shampoos and barber shops now, and save time too. Hair is vestigial - there is a reason homo sapiens have less hair than gorillas.
> Findings from the study show that the deoxy ribose sugar is as effective at regrowing hair as Minoxidil - an existing drug used to treat hair loss
Minoxidil is barely effective, especially for something that became widely available. It got approved in the 80s as a topical version of a hypertension drug, and IIRC the McStudy that supported it was funded by the original patent holder.
I don't think anyone had much of a problem with it, as the market was previously 100% snake oil, and this sort of thing happens even with drugs for serious diseases. If you benefit from the placebo effect and stop stressing out about it, then maybe the drug really "works"?
Since the discovery in the article is pretty much a mirror of the story of Minoxidil, I would default to being skeptical of the claims.
The 5-alpha-reductase (5ar) inhibitors [1] like finasteride and dutasteride do work. The 5ar enzyme converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT.) Over time, DHT causes sensitive follicles to shrink further and further and the hair growth phase to get shorter and shorter, until it reaches zero. People whose skin is genetically less DHT-sensitive go bald later in life or not at all.
However, the inhibitors have systemic reach, and their long-term consequences are hard to study. It is (was?) believed that DHT is not practically useful in adults, but this was partly based on research on people who are 5ar-deficient due to a genetic mutation. They also have a less-than-pretty clinical picture [2] because they had no DHT when it mattered (in the womb) so the safety argument has always been rather tentative.
If you're balding, you should ask yourself how much it really matters to you. Are you willing to take a serious drug for decades, with less-than-well-understood systemic consequences? No one will really be able to answer your what-ifs.
Some people really stress out about it, and I'd say they are good candidates. But if you don't really care all that much, you're much better off letting Darwin take the wheel on this one.
As someone who started to loose his hair in the mid 20s and thinning until I buzzed it in my mid 30s. I will say that being bald sucks especially considering meeting people, sexual attraction and possibly your own perception of yourself.
Having said that I don't think about it at all normally, but I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't matter.
Loads of people take the 'high road' and say it doesn't matter but having hair is such an level up that its ridiculous. Maybe more now in a digital age with Snapchat, tiktok, youtube, tinder than before - looks have become way more important.
Yea ppl saying "just accept it" don't know how much of a challenge it is to be bald. I started blading in my teens and considering getting hair transplant in my 40s since balding has mostly stabilized in the last decade.
I am tired of being bald.
same thing happened to me. However, there are at least two advantages: #1 it's easier to stay cool with no/barely-any hair. #2 I can get good haircut anywhere in 10 minutes by saying "#1 buzz please" :)
> I will say that being bald sucks especially considering meeting people, sexual attraction and possibly your own perception of yourself. Having said that I don't think about it at all normally, but I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't matter.
There’s tonnes of research that show that bald men are considered more attractive but less good looking.
Anecdotally, I’d say it doesn’t really affect your dating life. 90% of women have “has good hair” very low on their priority list, 5% won’t ever date a bald guy and 5% consider it extra attractive.
Your example link is of a guy balding. Balding is a terrible look. I always say that balding is an affliction, and going bald is you taking back the initiative from nature. Bald can look great, especially with facial hair. Basically this: https://ibb.co/Jz16LN4
So yeah, any other balding guys reading: don’t let him talk you into a pit. You’re fine.
Bald guy who shaves his head here. Some women love it. Others don’t. But it’s the same as any other physical quality. Really no point in stressing over it.
I was looking at pictures of young me who had a lot of hair, and it never looked as good as these wigs because I couldn't put the effort to do take care of a pro-level haircut like the one in your video. Part of the appeal in these videos is the professional hair style.
But still it would be nice to have a hirsute mane again, I can't lie.
I mean, even male lions have hair and it gives them such a masculine vibe. I think the female attraction to male hair is hard-wired in most animals (that have hair), including humans. Exceptions exist of course.
It’s because oral minoxidil requires a ramp period and some people can become symptomatic. If you browse Reddit or other forum threads about it, look for a discussion on “sides”.
There are several papers in the dermatology literature suggesting low dose oral minoxidil for hair loss. I think dermatologists or hair surgeons who do this every day will know the literature. The average pcp likely won’t unless asked.
Completely ancedotal, but I've taken minoxidil and finasteride for a little over a year. I took a break from minoxidil only for a few months and found my hair grew considerably slower than when I was on both. I think this makes sense given what minoxidil is supposed to do, which is not "save the hair" but, as I understand it, accelerate the hair growth cycle
True, I started as I began thinning and luckily caught it early enough. It hasn't solved the pre-existing thinning completely, but it's prevented any further loss and resurrected enough follicles that were on the verge of death that if you were to look at me on the street, you wouldn't say I'm thinning/balding.
The problem with doing anything after "full" balding has progressed is that the follicles have just completely died off, which is way more difficult to solve than preserving or stimulating existing growth
Nonsense. It's extremely effective taken orally (to increase scalp, body and beard hair count and thickness) as proven by many studies and countless anecdotes.
Yeah, that finding unfortunately killed any excitement I may have had for this lol
I feel like saying Minoxidip is barely effective is almost even giving it too much credit.
My hairline started receding somewhere in my 30's, but on the one side of my forehead there is this one single remaining hair that refuses to give up, no matter what.
The poor guy looks kind of sad out there by himself, but I'm sure if we science him we can discover how to apply his chutzpah to all hair everywhere.
And you let him grow. I started balding around 26 or so and have this tuft in the front that actually doesn't look ridiculous and from.the front makes it look like maybe I'm a little less bald.
I've yet to be able to let that tuft go lol they are trying their damnedest and far be it from me to squash that effort.
A cure for baldness is one of those holy grail drugs like a drug to treat obesity, or a drug to de-age your skin. The profit on this is potentially vast and Im assuming the 10 year patent limit wont apply to it.
And like others noted, it's not an absolute miracle (there are side effects, it's hard to get right now, somewhat contentious) but it's definitely miraculous in effects so far.
Given how Bezos otherwise completely transformed his look, I definitely wouldn't say it was for lack of vanity. He just went on enough anabolics/hgh/etc. that he probably felt the Jason Statham look worked for him.
Elon has good donor area, area from which he had hair transplant. Not everyone have a good donor area and if you are NW7 (north wood scale) then hair transplant will not help you.
A transplant isn't any more a hat than having natural untransplanted hair is like wearing a hat. A hair piece could be argued to be something akin to a pricey hat, but a transplant is naturally growing hair that has simply been moved from a donor area.
It only works for some people. You need to have a good donor area and a lot of hair. And even then transplant can be rejected. Doesn't work for majority of bald people in their 30s/40s.
You are also most likely going to stay on Minoxidil and Finasteride just to stay safe and not lose your "investment". A botched hair transplant can look pretty terrible once you lose the original hair around it.
Those encouraging folks to "just shave it off" fail to realize that it's so much more than a vanity issue. From an evolutionary standpoint, baldness is perceived in the female brain as a sign of poor sperm quality [0].
True, but they are also encouraging to instead invest in other parts of your body which can more than compensate for this negative effect on female humans. Muscles…
That's weird, because women these days seem to really love dogs. There's a stereotype about women loving cats (which do not normally have a strong body smell at all), but these days women seem to greatly prefer dogs over cats. I think it has something to do with the fact that dogs require far more maintenance than cats, so they basically act as surrogate children. Cats are independent and don't need to be bathed (you do have to clean their litter box, but that's about it) or walked 3x a day so you can pick up their fresh poop in your hand, so they don't take any time out of your day, or force you to adapt your schedule to theirs, the way dogs do.
I meant that a specific strong body smell in men has been shown to be attractive to a lot of women, it doesn’t specifically smell like dog, but the study also showed that men dislike this odour – unless it’s exactly theirs ;) hence me calling it “dog smell”, but it’s inaccurate.
Well it was one specific smell, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. “Old sweat that closes your throat because it’s so unbearable” is definitely not that =)
Cats are far more maintenance than dogs. I went over a decade just buying food and toys for my dog. I got a cat (a very laid back cuddle monkey) and he eats more than the dog, loads our HVAC filter with fur, requires daily cat box maintenance, and has been to the vet more times than I can remember and now has a prescription.
"Because all of the included participants were from infertile couples, this appears to be a limitation of the study..."
Pretty big limitation, and their discussion really is just there to justify publishing anyway. Both groups, bald and shaggy, may as well have been shooting blanks.
I don’t find any mention of this on the study. But even if there was you realize how insignificant that signal is compared to everything else right? From personal anecdotes to any married bald man it’s trivial to show it’s irrelevant. Like others have said work on what you can improve, like getting fit, and obviously confidence and empathy first by getting female friends and in the process realizing they are not cavewomen. If you are seriously looking at studies for what is attractive then that’s 100% the problem, not your hair.
It's totally possible to both acknowledge its something that can be surmounted or is only a single factor in attraction while also acknowledging it's almost always a negative, the same way being short, being stupid, being poor, having bad style, being fat, being awkward etc. would be.
> Over the past eight years, scientists from Sheffield and COMSATS University Pakistan have been studying how the sugar can help to heal wounds by promoting the formation of new blood vessels. During the research, the team also noticed that hair around the healing wounds appeared to grow more quickly compared to those that hadn’t been treated.
My reaction here was, "How good was it at helping wounds heal? Why is the article talking about the seemingly less important application?". But it seems like it's a little less effective than already available angiogenic factors -- if cheaper and easier to store.
I took cyclosporin for a while in my youth. One side effect is increased hair growth. Every where. I looked like a Wookie. I was even shaving my ears. Us patients would lose all our hair (chemo, radiation) and then a few months latter look like plush toys. Pretty wild.
Surely someone has looked into harnessing cyclosporin for baldness.
Agreed, I find it amazing it's even called a "cure", as if baldness is an illness.
Sure, it can cause psychological issues, but so can short height or big nose or what-have-you, and we don't talk about "curing" those (except in some hormonal imbalance cases).
We do surgeries but I've never heard the term "curing your big nose" used. Perhaps those in the industry do, or maybe it simply does not translate between languages.
Maybe, but I’m not 100% sold on this, given that fashion in hairstyle changes almost as fast as clothing fashion. Shaving various parts (or all) of the head is done in both men and women.
Hmm the article says it is believed to be "as effective as Minoxidil" - which really doesn't cure baldness, more like prevents its onset. So if you're already bald - tough luck.
So far I think the reality of it is:
- to slow down baldness - drugs like minoxidil
- to stop baldness - PRP sessions once every few years
- to reverse it - hair transplants
I wonder if they would be able to not only get into "slow down" territory but to "stop" with a drug based on this sugar.
I was balding from 25 years onward and had made peace with it by just shaving my head. But recently I had an extended sabbatical and thought to myself - what the hell, let me try the "Elon Musk" way and just did some hair implants. It was rather painful, and took almost a month to fully recover, but it was soo worth it. Had forgotten how satisfying it was to have hair through your fingers plus walking out in the sun is much simpler now, no hats required.
> Hmm the article says it is believed to be "as effective as Minoxidil" - which really doesn't cure baldness, more like prevents its onset. So if you're already bald - tough luck.
Minoxidil can reverse _some_ baldness. Apparently by stimulating blood vessels and waking the dormant hair follicles. Once you stop taking it, they revert back to the dormant state, and you lose the hair that you gained.
For reducing hair loss, you theoretically only need to lower DHT levels in the scalp. But finasteride lowers it systemically (as well as inhibiting a bunch of other metabolic pathways systemically).
> Some of these are just the effects of having low DHT, which is in reality not a negative,
Sexual disfunction, depression, and gynecomastia are not desired effects for most people.
There is a huge amount of FUD about finasteride online. The adverse effects most guys worry about with finasteride are the same sorts of issues that can caused by anxiety. Finasteride can actually increase free testosterone by 10-15%. Additionally, it's possible to capture most of the therapeutic benefit at a lower dosage than 1mg/day, further reducing the side effect potential.
There is also a recent study [0] that found efficacy of essential rosmary oil to be as effective as minoxidil with less side effects when used topicaly as a shampoo additive.
I've had them for seven years now and they seem OK. I also think they were super worth it, best purchase I made after my 3D printer. I look younger now than I did ten years ago, and it only cost $5k.
I’ve been told by the doctor that if I do nothing, they should last for a couple of years and start balding up again.
If I do a few PRP sessions, and then continue with PRP every few years, should keep indefinitely - and honestly I’m pretty ok with that - kinda like going to the dentist ever so often to be proactive.
Thanks. This is the most believable info on this so far.
If you don’t mind me asking, how much was the implant. And how much was the PRP. Obviously, prices will vary, but all the existing info I find from googling is so far all over the place I struggle finding a realistic projection of my cost.
I hope there's a cure for hair loss but it's too late for me.
My doctor doesn't want to prescribe me finasteride or deuteroxide because of the negative health side effects, even though I was persistent. I was told by my doctor to "come to terms with it" because he's bald.
Guess what, you're a doctor buddy, you'll be attractive to anybody you talk to.
I'm just a lonely IT guy with no life and no social prospects, so any leg up to keep my sanity would have been appreciated - oh well, hope the next life bears fruit
It's either go through a doctor, get a prescription and have it covered in some capacity by insurance, or I go order from a third-party/online solution and pay hundreds of dollars for something I desperately want, but won't be able to sustain financially because insurance won't cover treatments without a prescription.
I've already depressedly resigned myself to going bald - my hair is too far gone to have any medication or treatment give any meaningful amount of restoration.
Let’s say there’s a magical pill that gives you amazing hair. You’ll still be a lonely IT guy with no life and no social prospects.
I don’t mean to offend you, but don’t you think that you could work on these things for guaranteed massive benefits instead of hoping for a pill that might work somewhat?
Whenever I hear people this desperate about their hair loss I notice how it just exposes a psychological problem that was always there.
>Let’s say there’s a magical pill that gives you amazing hair. You’ll still be a lonely IT guy with no life and no social prospects.
>I don’t mean to offend you, but don’t you think that you could work on these things for guaranteed massive benefits
Let's look at an extreme example: suppose there's a lonely IT guy who looks like Quasimodo or worse. Someone that unattractive is not likely to have a great social life or much success in dating, for obvious reasons. Would you also tell him "you just need to work on your self esteem for massive benefits!!"? Sorry, but society doesn't work that way. Attractive people have a much easier time in life and dating.
Rightly or wrongly, OP thinks having a full head of hair would improve his attractiveness, which if he's correct, would probably improve his life to some extent.
Would you also tell him "you just need to work on your self esteem for massive benefits!!"? Sorry, but society doesn't work that way.
which if he's correct, would probably improve his life to some extent.
I would tell him to work on himself physically, mentally, and socially. Just like I said in my previous post: even if you give a loser good hair, he will still be a loser. I don’t think his life would improve at all.
He may get some fake self-confidence (take away the hair and the confidence is gone again). But women would not find him attractive because of the hair but because of the confidence, but they’d snuff out that it’s fake very quickly. He can have confidence without hair as well, and have the same benefits. In fact bald men exhume vast amounts of confidence for saying “fuck it, I don’t care, I will shave it”. Meanwhile balding men look like they can’t come to terms with what’s gone being gone, desperately holding on to the last sickly strands of hair because they think that’s their ticket to getting a partner.
Even women who make bald jokes will find a man sexy and manly for reacting to it confidently.
You speak about baldness as if it was some festering disease that’s always negative, but it’s not. Physical attractiveness is based on looking healthy. If you’re Quasimodo: fat or scrawny, have no muscle and a zombie face (no energy), a woman might ask herself how a cancer patient is going to have a healthy baby with her and provide for the family. But if you have some muscle, some tan and look rested, they will assume it’s natural.
And like there are hairstyles some people can or can’t pull off, a bald head or buzzcut are the same. Some people genuinely look the best without hair, because of their head shape. I don’t think The Rock would take a hair pill, because he looked silly with hair. And even if you look bad without hair, it will always beat the balding look by far.
What I mean by psychological issue is that it’s rather evident that the parent loves to focus on things he can’t control rather than what he can. This a common pattern. People will blame their erectile dysfunction on age, genes, and microplastics, rather than not doing any exercise at all since they became adults, stress, bad sleep and garbage nutrition So they take a pill, have surgery or buy devices like pumps to fix the problem, like we also see for balding.
Just in case there are people who
didn't have this thought but would want to know: a Google Shopping search for "2-deoxy-D-ribose" finds results (though do be careful to ignore any non-explicitly-2-deoxy- supplements).
Quick google brings a bunch of articles clearly establishing that 2dDR stimulates angiogenesis (through increased production of VEGF), ie. the angiogenesis effect seems to be real. Whether angiogenesis will always produce hairgrowth effect and to what extent is not clear, yet it seems that in many cases it should. Anyway, i don't see how better vascularization of the head skin can be anything but a good thing (i'm not a doctor, just speculating), especially say after hair transplant, and wonder whether it may be also used for some face skin issues or like in my case - for cold hands :)
> Anyway, i don't see how better vascularization of the head skin can be anything but a good thing (i'm not a doctor, just speculating)
It's always important to test and measure carefully. It could be a net positive, but angiogenesis factors also promote tumor growth (and the head is a common, and less survivable skin cancer spot in balding people).
Yep, take a look at the side effects. There are a lot related to chest pain, and believe me when I say I got all of them. A few minutes after I put even a single drop on my scalp it was doubled over clutching my chest. It was the Kirkland signature 5%. I stopped taking it after a few months (I really wanted it to work) and even after I kept getting chest pain episodes until about a year later.
Unbelievable how even a pr piece posted by their own university doesn’t bother to link the actual damn paper. What a joke the whole academic industry has become, since those corporate aspects have been grafted onto it. Anyway, thanks.
I thought a condition was like a disease, but then again, English is not my first language. Baldness would not be the equivalent of a condition in Norwegian.
Yeah. Anything being done to solve man’s issue is evil. No matter how much we gear the world towards favoring woman in school, academia, politics and work place, we have to insist we still are basically Saudi Arabia.
Well, I am not bald, but I surely can empathize with men (and there are bald women too) whose self-esteem suffered because of baldness.
Despite that, any product that cured baldness would command a sizable market and probably help to subsidize other lines of business not so promising while paying for itself.
I'm sick of these people telling others people just accept it and shave it up.
Most people look better with hair, losing your hair is a drastic change, for most people it takes years to cope with it and if someone want to go to treatment it's ok.
This, especially if it is early onset. I had a friend who lost most of his hair by the time he was 20 and it absolutely destroyed his confidence for many years
I've always held the position that the further back my hair recedes the shorter i will cut it.
what I discovered was, this means I spend MORE on haircuts. because shorter haircuts require more frequent haircuts to maintain their neat look.
I'm pretty much at a point now that I'm just going to buy one of those head shavers to run over my head every morning. If it can work for Picard i can make it work for me.
Totally agree. Most people DO look better with hair, not bald. Any tool that can visualize a non-bald person bald reveals how the person look may change from good to bad, and a lot of such persons are not that masculine or attractive when they're bald as they or anybody else might think. I could not cope with being bald, and the only thing that really helped me was FUE, nothing else. I'm really lucky to look younger than I might look in my 38, and I still have my hair on top of my head, not underneath being more attractive than having premature balding issues in 25-33.
Image is really a lot more important than conventional wisdom would say it is (and people would hope, since judging people subconsciously on appearance isn't very fair), and a lot of people get a long way based mostly on image. People who are perceived as more attractive really are treated better for no real reason apart from that, and there are negative stereotypes associated with baldness.
In fiction there are tons of evil bald villains, but not that many bald heroes - you've got The Rock, Jason Statham, who else? And when the heroic character is bald, it's almost always combined with being jacked and tough - whereas being fat or skinny and bald is almost always a negative. Think Baron Harkonnen or Blofeld.
> “not that many bald heroes - you've got The Rock, Jason Statham, who else?”
Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Patrick Stewart (Picard, X-Men), Bruce Willis (Unbreakable), Tilda Swinton in character as the Ancient One, James Avery (Uncle Phil), David Suchet (detective Poirot), Thing (Fantastic Four), Draxx (Guardians of the Galaxy), Dr Manhattan (Watchmen), Lawrence Fishburne (Morpheus, The Matrix), Vin Diesel (Riddick, Fast and Furious), Kratos (game God of War),
> when the heroic character is bald, it's almost always combined with being jacked and tough
When a heroic character has hair they’re also often jacked and tough; that’s part of the hero type not the hairy type; plenty of characters are haired and wimpy losers.
Well, that also limits you to basically one style of looks. And that style is kind of hard to sustain, so if you don't really like it, it's a major PITA. Kinda surprised that Captain Picard wasn't mentioned though. He actually is a hero who is bald and not steroid-levels of jacked.
At a press conference about Star Trek: The Next Generation, a reporter asked Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry about casting Patrick Stewart, commenting that "Surely by the 24th century, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness." Gene Roddenberry had the perfect response.
Which is absolutely bullshit.
You’re not going to change millions of years of evolution by going to star fleet academy.
I’m bald and although I’m blessed with a great skull shape, and being blonde haired also works to my advantage, I would lie if I said I wouldn’t be more attractive with hair.
It's left a little ambiguous because obviously they don't know what would really work, but the timeline was roughly: WWIII -> Post-Atomic Horror -> First contact with the Vulcans, then the whole push into space getting humanity to pull together over the following couple of centuries would be when this happened. It wasn't just cultural stuff like caring about baldness, during that later period all sorts of things were solved, like hunger and various diseases.
Basically we had to hit our lowest point before we could get better.
There is. Dad-bod guy is attractive to some people; hunky guy has more universal appeal. Bald guys can be hot, but they've gotta work on themselves (just like the rest of us) if they wanna get there. But it's weird, when I try to imagine Dwayne Johnson or Vin Diesel with hair, they do lose a few points of attractiveness!
I've got freckles; they really work the same way. Got bullied for them all through childhood. Hot girls with freckles are hot and people love their freckles. Drab girls with freckles get picked on and their freckles are gross. In adulthood, nobody's picking on me for having freckles, but I hear how other adults talk about their attraction to other people. Fortunately I'm firmly middle aged so my prospects tend to be less focused on appearances by definition.
My appearance is carefully refined to disappoint and frustrate people who expect me to care about my appearance. This optimizes for my time, and connection with people who are more interested in what I say and do. Oh, and low carbon footprint.
I have male pattern baldness, long hair (ends unceremoniously chopped once a month for easier brushing) and silly facial hair shaved once a week. Random t-shirts, thrift shop jeans, and technical outerwear, all worn until they start to disintegrate.
> people who expect me to care about my appearance
You seem to care about your appearance a lot, and also seem to be putting a lot of effort into cultivating a particular image. There used to be a lot of punk rockers in high school who "didn't care about fashion" but somehow all dressed exactly alike and had very similar haircuts.
Reading this, I can't help but think that you probably spend more time on and care more about your appearance than random person. I hope the equation works out for you.
That being said, appearance is a disguise we choose -- wittingly or unwittingly -- and I think that's just fine.
I've been bald for 20 years now. Started losing hair when I was 19. I couldn't really care less at this point and probably wouldn't reverse it even if I could. Just rock a 5 o'clock shadow all over my head and love it, but man those first 3 years were absolutely brutal. It's a hard thing to cope with for any man. I wish there was a treatment for young guys out there, but I also wish we spent more research on more important things instead.
The side effects of finastetide can be pretty nasty, and you might not even notice you have them. You would expect it to suppress your natural testosterone production, which you’re not going to notice unless you ever stop taking it. It can easily reduce your fertility, which again you’re not going to notice unless you’re having trouble conceiving. The reduction in DHT can also have side effects that are far less visible than gynecomastia. It can cause ED, reduced libido, and mood disorders like depression and anxiety which you might not easily attribute to taking fin.
Unless you’ve had a lot of bloodwork and other testing done, it’s unlikely that you would know how you’ve been impacted by its side effects, and even if the impact to you is ultimately very minimal, a treatment that didn’t have these risks would be far superior.
Any exogenous hormone treatment (or treatment that interferes with the metabolism of hormones) is going to affect the natural functionality of your body in ways you probably don’t want it to. They’re all very risky and dependency forming. It’s almost not really true that these risks are side effects either, they’re just the expected outcomes of the treatment.
Finasteride does not suppress your natural testosterone production. Your free testosterone levels might actually be increased. As precursors are no longer converted into dihydrotestosterone but into testosterone...
I think you need to keep reading. Finasteride blocks the enzyme that converts testosterone to DHT, which initially raises your testosterone levels. Your body reacts to this by secreting less luteinizing hormone, which results in less testosterone production, and your test levels return pre-finasteride levels. This is the suppression of natural testosterone production, and is exactly the same reaction you’d get from directly taking exogenous testosterone. If you ever come off finasteride, your test levels will immediately drop, and may or may not ever return to normal. If you’ve been taking finasteride for a very long time, it would be unlikely for your testosterone levels to ever return to what they were pre-finasteride.
I didn't edit my comment if that's what you're saying...
Taking moderate doses of steroids is also massively beneficial in many ways, with the worst of the side effects typically occurring if you stop taking them. But a lifelong dependency on a drug with a long list of adverse side effects is not a good thing, especially when ceasing treatment has its own long list of potential side effects.
Finasteride does suppress your natural testosterone production. If you intend to take it every day for the rest of your life, and are happy to gamble that you don’t get any of the other side effects, then maybe you’re happy taking that risk. But this is clearly not an ideal treatment, and I suspect most people who are prescribed it aren’t properly informed about these risks.
I fully agree with the risk factor, I was even on it for some time and discontinued the use because of the risks involved. But the risks were (to my limited understanding) less associated with testosterone, but rather the decrease in dht. And the potential effect that it has on your sexual life
Yes, you're right about that. I'm just trying to note that there is no guarantee that ceasing treatment would reverse those side effects (if you happened to have them), or that it wouldn't create other also-bad side effects.
Hormone treatments are very scary, and I think people are far too casual about them. You usually take a hormone treatment to affect one thing that the hormone does, but it probably also does 100 other things that you might not want to interfere with, and those 100 other things probably also affect many other things downstream themselves. Your body probably also regulates production of that hormone in some way, so now you're also probably interfering with god knows what upstream from that hormone production. Some of these effects are well understood by medicine, but plenty of them aren't, and even for the ones that are, there's no way of predicting how you're going to react personally. They're a very blunt tool in that respect, and I think most people who take finasteride, or TRT, or birth control, or beta blockers, or even things like topical steroids aren't helped much to properly understand how they work, and all the ways the treatments can go wrong, including the ways that they can form dependencies on the treatment.
Neuroprotection of dihydrotestosterone via suppression of the toll-like receptor 4/nuclear factor-kappa B signaling pathway in high glucose-induced BV-2 microglia inflammatory responses
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31876682/
If (adult) DHT was only bad, then you wouldn’t see any adverse side effects from blocking its synthesis. DHT is just an androgen receptor agonist, its effects in adult male biology are not understood very well, including the reasons why DHT blockers (absolutely do) cause a number of adverse side effects.
I just started taking finasteride and it seems it has negatively impacted my arousal patterns. I am also transgender and taking estrogen (but no t-blockers, hence the finasteride) but I did not make any other med changes for a year when I started finasteride so the correlation feels pretty clear. I would rather not be taking it!
I thought after you take estrogen long enough you don't have to take t blockers or fin anyway? Once your body see's you have enough sex hormone doesn't it naturally stop T, even if the hormone is estrogen? (Sorry for the stupid question)
If you take a high enough dose of estrogen, generally referred to as estrogen mono therapy, it will knock down your T levels. But high estrogen levels have some risks as well, and different doctors have different preferred approaches. My doctor is willing to do estrogen monotherapy, but I would have to switch from oral pills to injections as the higher dosages taken orally would be hard on the kidneys. Before switching to injections, I just wanted to see how finasteride worked for me. It is okay, but not perfect.
It is hard to tell if what I am experiencing is a side effect of the finasteride unrelated to my T levels, or it is due to some reduction in the effects of testosterone because of the mechanism of action of the finasteride. If it is the latter, switching to injections and doing monotherapy to lower my T could have the same effects. The fact of the matter is the penis functions better with testosterone in my system but testosterone also leads to hair loss, so trying to get both is somewhat of an imperfect balancing act.
But hey, I'm having the best sex of my life and the people I am attracted to think I am hot as hell so I don't mind a little experimentation to see what works best! Actually its super cool what we can do with a little hormonal alchemy.
"High" E dosages enough to knock down your T are not that high at all.
Also fin won't reduce your T, it might actually increase it, and by using fin instead of duta you still produce dht.
Chances are you are still irreversiblly masculinizing if you are on a low dosage of E (including oral). Please consider an actual T blocker, and consider a suitable medication to help with erections.
Im not on a low dose, I take 8mg oral estradiol per day. It’s just not a particularly high dose, just the highest my doctor is comfortable giving someone orally. I don’t care about the testosterone in my system I only want to stop hair loss (I’m very genderfucked non-binary). It was my doctor from the UCSF Transgender Care center that suggested finasteride may have effects similar to that of reducing T (specifically a more estrogen dominant arousal style). I’m already on cialis and previously I’d take 5mg a day normally and 10mg on days where I would have sex, which is a pretty high dose. On finasteride I’ve noticed reduced erection performance even with 15mg cialis which is the most I want to take in a day (20mg is the maximum recommended daily dose).
Also I’m 39, so whatever masculinization I’m due for I suspect has all happened already.
Alternatively it might be worth trying sublingual, turning pills into stickies for extended-release direct absorption (https://stickies.neocities.org/stickies though I suspect the author dosed low), or switching/supplementing with other routes of administration (you mentioned injections).
I mean I can just ask my doctor for a higher dose. I’m currently not interested in suppressing T if finasteride works for me. I literally just started finasteride so I’m going to evaluate it until my next appointment in December and decide with my doctor how to proceed. I actually explicitly do not want to suppress my T unless doing so would result in better erection performance than not doing so and taking Finasteride. I’m extremely happy with where my body is.
Honestly it’s a little unnerving being told by strangers on the internet I should change my HRT. I’ve got a transgender doctor at one of the best Trans care clinics in the country. I get that folks are trying to help but really I’m fine.
Right. I am not trying to suppress T. I’m super genderfucked non-binary and happy with T in my system. Estrogen has done wonders for me and I’m happy with that. I only want to prevent further recession of my hair line while optimizing erection performance. If suppressing T ends up being better for that I will try it. But I just started finasteride. I have a check up in September and at that time my doctor and I have already discussed that we can consider switching to injections and higher E doses if we want to suppress T instead of relying on Finasteride.
It’s just one thing at a time, and giving it some months to balance out in my system.
Honestly I have a transgender doctor at one of the best trans care clinics in the country. I’m all set. Just wanted to share that finasteride is not always without side effects. My doctor and I can figure out my HRT.
I think estrogen increases my risk of breast cancer to that of a cis woman, but decreases some chances of testosterone related cancers. I really don't know much about this, but in general it seemed like I did not particularly have increased risks.
I don't know, could be, but it was too weird because they came out of the blue and when I stopped it, they went away too. There was no sexual disfunction IIRC.
Could be unlinked, but for me it just wasn't worth the risk.
You can find various articles of you search the web for this btw.
tl;dr While it can have undesirable side effects, these are long-term. But these side effects make it a powerful nocebo for some people to the point where they almost instantly get side effects (nausea, anxiety, sexual dysfunction), despite that being pharmacologically improbable.
It's mostly nocebo, they read about it online for weeks and then try it, and at that point they are so psyched out that they keep watching for every little thing, effectively making it a self fulfilling prophecy.
I started dutasteride when I was 20 and have been on it for many years and it really stops hair loss, because my hair loss was very fast and aggressive.
So if someone after two weeks had their semen consistency change to be completely watery, would it be their eyes that produced the nocebo effect or? Or how is the doctor who went on it for a few months, lost erections, then gained them back after quitting explained by a nocebo?
Again, I've heard at least 5 of these first-hand, which is kind of wild for a drug I've probably only talked to 20 people about in total.
We're terrible at detecting changes over long periods of time. If anything I'd think long term users would be much more liable to bias.
If you mean that men with baldness have more testosterone than men with hair and that due to the higher testosterone concentration men with baldness have lost their hair, I have to disappoint you: Men with baldness do not have a higher concentration of testosterone on average. The hair roots of men with baldness are more sensitive to testosterone, another cause of hair loss. In your context, men with baldness have another weakness. Sorry.
I’ve been balding since I was 23 and trimmed my head for about 2 decades now. I can’t grow a decent beard for the life of it, but my eyebrows need regular trimming, so I am considering letting them grow for a magnificent comb over.
People do all kinds of things to look good. People dye their hair, put on makeup, wear lipstick, buy clothing that matches their personality whether that's high fashion or skater threads. You can usually tell every hippy by their clothing and often their hairstyle.
yeah, you almost definitely look worse without hair because almost everybody does, but just accept it and choose not to get it fixed. it makes all the other bald people feel better!
Male pattern baldness has been sexually selected for as a preference for millennia and is a positive body feature. I find the assertion that it is medical ailment that requires a cure shocking and offensive.
Your armchair evolutionary science presumes that baldness is present at the moment of "selection" which is very unlikely to be the case, considering the fact that the majority of male pattern hair loss occurs around or after the age of 35.
Since this is related to a 'sugar', I wondered if the (keto) diet could have an impact.
The metabolic cycles of deoxyribose are mainly related to DNA metabolic pathways, which isn't really related that is the glucose/insulin metabolism.
In particular, these DNA pathways are very reliant on nutrient and vitamins (folic acid, B6, B12, ...), , so that is the first thing to take into account in the diet.
But further than that, there are other ways it can majorly impact DNA repair.
For instance ATP production, and there is extensive research showing that cell inflammation is reduced by ketosis, and so by different mechanisms (reduction in oxidative stress, BHB metabolism, etc).
Also note that in the other direction, the keto diet can promote hair loss in two ways. The first is short term, as the body takes one month to adjust from high-carb diet to low-carb, so it may cause a short nutrient deficiency. The second is long term, in the case of "dirty keto" diet.
It is an approach where people only cares about getting the macro values right (that is a proportion of about 70% fat, 20% protein and 5% carbohydrates), and does not care about nutritional value. So industrial highly-processed food-stuff instead of veggies. This can cause serious nutrient deficiency that is really harmful.
Sure, I addressed it in my second sentence. However a bit more research shows already well-researched metabolic changes could have an impact, and I thought it was interesting, but apparently I was wrong.
Think about the end game - hair loss is probably only going to escalate over time. This is an uphill battle. Focus on other parts of your body. Things you can fundamentally improve without drugs and other fake crap. I am sure everyone on this board can quickly identify certain popular figures who have gone all-in on the "save my hair at all costs" angle and should look to this as a cautionary tale, not an inspirational one.