Rogaine - how long before it stopped working?

[goldbondmafia]

I am about to try using rogaine to thicken my hair and fix bad hair follicles. Ive read about the product quite a bit and heard that for some people it works for a year then they shed and thin out, others its worked for a few years then thins out as well, and others have been using it twice a day for years and their hair is still fine great!

To the members that use it on here, how long has rogaine worked for you and is it still continuing to work well or has its effectivness stopped after a certain amount of time?

[Tracy C]

I have been using Rogaine and generic Minoxidil for about three and a half years. It does not seem to be losing effectiveness.

Personally, I am not buying into the notion that it loses effectiveness. I believe there is something else going on in the lives of those who say it just stops working and then they thin out. What that something else might be, I don't know. But it makes more sense to me.

[stravucce]

I don't know about rogain did not use it for long enough to even see it working!

[Tracy C]

Why post a responce then?

[kanyon]

It worked for me for about 6 and a half years. It has completely lost its effectiveness now.

I don't disagree with Tracy. There could be other reasons why it stops working besides building a tolerance. I'd be lying if I didn't say that over the years I used it very inconsistently. Because my results were so incredible, I got so confident and blase about it, and I even went some months without using (when travelling for example) and would get back on it with no hairloss evident.

Finally this caught up with me (or as I believe the stuff just stopped working for me) when I noticed severe hairloss again about 13 months ago. So to combat it, since October 2010 I've been committed and diligent over this past year and applied it twice a day everyday.

So basically it's worthless to me now but I do still use it because I'm scared not too.

I started Fin in February this year (I used Regaine by itself for all those years) and am hoping Fin will work for me until a better treatment becomes available (a few years I guess).

I have been tempted to shave my head with the hope I could pull the look off but I doubt I could. I'd prefer to keep my dodgy combover.

[Tracy C]

I don't disagree with Tracy. There could be other reasons why it stops working besides building a tolerance.

Here is what I think pobably happens... Please understand that I am not a doctor... As men get older, their hormone levels change just as it does in women. As the androgen levels increase, eventually they over power Minoxidil's effect. So in the case of those men who use Minoxidil but don't do anything to keep DHT under control, eventually Minoxidil alone is not enough to keep up the fight...

Ideally, it is best for a male to do something to take control of DHT as well as start Minoxidil from the beginning. If however a man didn't do that, he should do so at the first sign that Minoxidil seems to have "lost its effectiveness".

Does that make sense to anyone other than me?

[kanyon]

Yeah Tracy I do agree with that theory.

I guess that means that I should regret not being on Fin while I was on Minox but I actually don't. I understand that after a few years the benefits of Fin also wear off. I'm kind of glad that I have Fin as a second back up option now that Minox doesn't work. Because if they both wore off I'd be left with nothing.

Perhaps using one and then the other is a way to delay balding over a long period of time. Or perhaps not.

I'm 29 now and for me to have ultra thin hair sucks but it's not as uncommon or devestating as if Regaine didn't work and I was bald by 21. Although I hate that I'm going through this all over again nothing can take away those glorious 7 years of my life and I'll always have those adventures/exploits to remember.

When I was 20 I cried about it. People would comment that they could see my scalp. I thought it was over for me but Minox really is an amazing product for the duration it can help you.

[kanyon]

I would be interested to hear your story Tracy if you'd like to share.

[Tracy C]

When I was 20 I cried about it. People would comment that they could see my scalp.

Just try to imagine how that would feel if you were female.

I would be interested to hear your story Tracy if you'd like to share.

It's in one of the threads about RepliCel.

http://www.baldtruthtalk.com/showthread.php?p=42906#post42906

[goldbondmafia]

Ideally, it is best for a male to do something to take control of DHT as well as start Minoxidil from the beginning. If however a man didn't do that, he should do so at the first sign that Minoxidil seems to have "lost its effectiveness".

Does that make sense to anyone other than me?

that makes perfect sense to me. when you say controlling DHT are you basically just refering to Fin/Propecia? To control DHT for me I just use Niz as i told you in my thread...hopefully that is good enough for now!

BTW Tracy after reading your story Im so happy that your hair situatuin is under control for you now, you deserve it more than anyone.

[headOhair]

most people use both, an internal and external method to combat dht - fina internally and nizoral with 2% ketoconazole topically....

those are the most effective ways to keep dht away from the scalp, although fina can have some serious sexual side effects and I'm worried about the recent reports that it has a huge half-life of 50 years...

if things do go wrong it's more than simply stopping the fina, so i stopped over a year ago and haven't had any more hair loss, just using the Nizoral 2% to fight the dht and it seems to be working fine

that makes perfect sense to me. when you say controlling DHT are you basically just refering to Fin/Propecia? To control DHT for me I just use Niz as i told you in my thread...hopefully that is good enough for now!

BTW Tracy after reading your story Im so happy that your hair situatuin is under control for you now, you deserve it more than anyone.

[WarLord]

It worked for me for about 6 and a half years. It has completely lost its effectiveness now.

I don't disagree with Tracy. There could be other reasons why it stops working besides building a tolerance. I'd be lying if I didn't say that over the years I used it very inconsistently. Because my results were so incredible, I got so confident and blase about it, and I even went some months without using (when travelling for example) and would get back on it with no hairloss evident.

Finally this caught up with me (or as I believe the stuff just stopped working for me) when I noticed severe hairloss again about 13 months ago. So to combat it, since October 2010 I've been committed and diligent over this past year and applied it twice a day everyday.

So basically it's worthless to me now but I do still use it because I'm scared not too.

I started Fin in February this year (I used Regaine by itself for all those years) and am hoping Fin will work for me until a better treatment becomes available (a few years I guess).

I have been tempted to shave my head with the hope I could pull the look off but I doubt I could. I'd prefer to keep my dodgy combover.

LOL So I found another exemplary case, when minoxidil mysteriously "stopped working". I would like to warn all potential users of minoxidil that this stuff is not for lazy and undisciplined people. And what is worse, when the consequences of the sloppy application eventually count up, they come to internet forums and spite their silly agenda that "minoxidil won't maintain hair" to all directions.

"I even went some months without using it..." INSANITY!

"when I noticed severe hairloss again about 13 months ago..." After some long trip, I suppose?

[WarLord]

Here is what I think pobably happens... Please understand that I am not a doctor... As men get older, their hormone levels change just as it does in women. As the androgen levels increase, eventually they over power Minoxidil's effect. So in the case of those men who use Minoxidil but don't do anything to keep DHT under control, eventually Minoxidil alone is not enough to keep up the fight...

Ideally, it is best for a male to do something to take control of DHT as well as start Minoxidil from the beginning. If however a man didn't do that, he should do so at the first sign that Minoxidil seems to have "lost its effectiveness".

Does that make sense to anyone other than me?

But here it was probably the laziness of this user that eventually overpowered minoxidil's effect. Further, levels of androgens decrease with age. Hence it would seem that after a certain age threshold, a user of anti-hairloss treatments shouldn't be afraid of hairloss anymore, but this may not be true. I think that DHT may cause hairloss via attacking the follicle by small "shoots" over a long period of time - which happens in old people. In this case, the hairloss proceeds at a slow pace, because it takes many hair cycles, until the follicle can't resist DHT anymore. Since minoxidil basically increases the follicle's resistance to DHT on the level of much older people, it means that if it lost its effect one day, it would in all likehood resembled the slow hairloss in old people, not a sudden "severe hairloss" like in this poster.

Yes, combining fin and minox is always better that using either of the drugs alone. But your reasoning is not correct. The levels of DHT don't matter; minoxidil has a different mechanism of effect than 5-AR blockers, but it doesn't mean that it would be inferior. It only addresses the problem from a different angle than DHT suppression (probably via the balance between prostaglandins). Furthermore, its effect is dose-dependent and individually variable. At a certain dosage, it should work infinitely, similarly like 5-AR blockers. However, in contrast with 5-AR blockers, where the effect on DHT can easily be measured, we can't predict a long-term effect of minoxidil from any numbers. This is a big disadvantage of this drug, and I would recommend to all minoxidil users - irrespectively of how long they are on the drug - to add 5-AR blockers soon or later. And I am saying it as a very good responder, who has maintained his NW 1.5 hairline on minoxidil alone for 15,5 years.

[WarLord]

When I was 20 I cried about it. People would comment that they could see my scalp. I thought it was over for me but Minox really is an amazing product for the duration it can help you.

But your horrible discipline didn't betray that you would be especially worried about the possible consequences. Just for your information: Long-term trials from late 80's demonstrated that the average minoxidil user (on 3% minoxidil!) was a way above baseline even after 4-5 years. In fact, although the average haircounts tended to decline with time, they would probably touch the baseline after ca. 15 years.