Quit Minoxidil

[WarLord]

I was so ecstatic with the results of Minox for so long that I didn't use it when I travelled for months at a time. I was so confident that it would always work even if I stopped now and then. I would be comsistent with it again before I lost noticeable hair each time when i had lazy bouts.

Then I did actually lose a heap of hair and in an effort to get it back I have started using it twice a day everyday for about 18 months now. But that hair has not grown back and will not grow back.

I have very little hair left but when I suspected Minox wasn't going to help me anymore I got on Fin (about 14 months ago) and I seem to have kept what I had since starting it. I still use Minox twice a day, and although I think it's not doing anything and is a waste of time, I'm too scared to stop.

Hair preserved on minoxidil can't be saved by finasteride. People, who used minoxidil first and later added finasteride had good results, but after they quitted minoxidil - disaster! Repeated frustrating experiences! Therefore, you should never stop using minoxidil, if you want to keep the hair you have!

[kanyon]

This is a factor that often comes on my mind, when people complain about the loss of efficiency. Look, I am a very disciplined person, but I myself started to be floppy with everyday's use after some seven, eight years. I really don't expect that the vast majority of users would be as consistent as me. Which suggests that much of the complaints can be ascribed to the "laziness" of minoxidil users. The very fact that you are not much sure, if you were consistent or not, is quite telling.

Luckily, I am both disciplined and sufficiently paranoid, so I quickly realized the foolishness of my praxis, and I again started to use it regularly, once every day. I have been using it since January 1997 and with the exception of a short, unhappy experiment with natural extrats (spring 1998), I have been keeping all the hair I had then (Norwood 2).

The most important thing that you should realize is that even if your hair loss now continued despite constant everyday's use, it doesn't mean that minoxidil "stopped working". It still slows down the process. If you now quit minoxidil, you can get bald within 6 months, because you would lose all the hair that minoxidil was keeping during the whole 9 years. You must either upgrade it (to a higher concentration) or - which I would strongly recommend - to start using finasteride (either alone or together with minoxidil).

I was so ecstatic with the results of Minox for so long that I didn't use it when I travelled for months at a time. I was so confident that it would always work even if I stopped now and then. I would be consistent with it again before I lost noticeable hair each time when i had lazy bouts.

Then I did actually lose a heap of hair and in an effort to get it back I have started using it twice a day everyday for about 18 months now. But that hair has not grown back and will not grow back.

I have very little hair left but when I suspected Minox wasn't going to help me anymore I got on Fin (about 14 months ago) and I seem to have kept what I had since starting it. I still use Minox twice a day, and although I think it's not doing anything and is a waste of time, I'm too scared to stop.

The reason I'm not positive the reason it all went to shit was my lazyness is because during the period when I noticed the massive hair loss, I had actually been using it consistently and had done so for about a year.

[WarLord]

Warlord, I think you need to go back and read AGAIN and you WILL see that I have used Minox 15%, yes, dr. Lee's -when he was in business- I was on it for 2 months or so but didn't feel it was any better than 5% and didn't see a justification for the higher price and that's why I dropped it, but at the same time it DIDN'T cause any shedding.

Read what I'm saying. It wasn't minox 15% that was causing the shedding. It was that specific garbage (Dualgen) that was. The ONLY explanation : SNAKE OIL. It contains ZERO% Minoxidil, let alone 15%. I have used 3 different products over the years (Rogaine, Kirkland, and for 2 months dr. Lee's 15%) and sometimes I switch between Rogaine and Kirkland and aside from the initial temporary shed, they all worked. I switch to these SOB's shit and my hair starts falling out like crazy and like NEVER before. I was shedding daily a minimum of 170 hairs even though I was using that shit. Like I said, I was on it for 3 months or so but my hair kept getting thinner and thinner.


"There are simply too many guys who experienced good results on it". I'm not sure what you're referring to by 'it'. If you mean Dualgen then I don't believe there are any, unless you want to believe the so-called "testimonials" by Dualgen. If you mean minox 15% by 'it' then it is possible that some people do experience better results.

I had HTs done but if you read my posts you'll see what area was done but I'll tell you again- the front quarter of the head. You'll also see that I was never bald to begin with. I had lots of hair in the hairline and temples -and behind that area my hair was 80% thick -but I just wanted to fill in the corners a little because I was too horrified of hair loss that I wasnt going to sit and watch it get worse before I did anything. Of course I continued to gradually lose more hair in the front and that's why I had more HTs. But even after 4 HTs I still had native hair left in the hairline and temples and I'm positive that's the hair I lost while I was on Dualgen. But I also lost probably 25% or more of my hair all over. The doctor says I was losing my transplanted hair or some of it but what about the rest of my head (the non-transplanted area) which was pretty thick before I got on that garbage (dualgen)?

"it is also possible that I didn't reveal everything" !! What the ****? What are you talking about ?? The only one here who doesn't make sense is you? Only 5 posts and you decide to write to defend Dualgen !!

I really think that you should think twice before you flood this forum by your frustrated excrements. If you had to stop minoxidil use for 14 days or so before every transplantation, that's enough time to cause serious problems. After 4 transplantations, I would suppose that you must have suffered serious loses. But you didn't tell us any details.

Look, I was looking for some info on DualGen and I have already found several embittered posts like yours. However, after some time it almost always turns out that their authors were confused nuts, who blatantly lied about basic facts. For example, recently I found a post in which its author complained that he lost tons of hair on DualGen and that it didn't work even after 5 months. However, an employee of ************, who was on the forum, showed that this nutcase ordered only 1 bottle and didn't use it for more than 2 weeks.

Therefore, I already learned to take all these experiences with a grain of salt. You should know best, where the problem is. According to the evidence you presented, I would look for an answer in the repeated transplantations that you went through.

[mpb47]

All hair that you regained from Finasteride or Rogaine, fall off 2-4 months after you stop using the products. The shed will never end, it'll continue until you're completely bald. Without it, your MPB will now continue on it's normal pace that it was in before you started Rogaine. Nobody told me this, I learned this the hard way.

I have dropped both in the past. With FIN I lost tons of hair in my normal loss areas and thought I was done for. After about a year about 50-60% came back with minox. I have been on Minox only since then.

This past fall I dropped minox for about 3 months and not only lost tons of hair but saw new areas of mpb as well. 2 mpb fingers appeared- 1 at the lower left side of crown and another and at upper left side. Not sure what it means but weird looking.

[gutted]

Yeah, like many of you, I dont understand why quiting minoxidil or Finasteride causes hairs to fall out and then not regrow. I understand if these hairs were so weak that the drugs were life support for them, but I have shed countless thick, full hairs which I assume will grow back, if perhaps weaker than before. I feel there must be better solutions out there, likely unknown.

i think after stopping minox, the users who report a huge shed, regrow those hairs after a while, but because hair loss requires visual analysis, i think this is what makes hair loss tricky, and those users dont recognise the fact those hairs have returned, people only notice the hairs that fall out!

[Pats]

Yeah, like many of you, I dont understand why quiting minoxidil or Finasteride causes hairs to fall out and then not regrow. I understand if these hairs were so weak that the drugs were life support for them, but I have shed countless thick, full hairs which I assume will grow back, if perhaps weaker than before. I feel there must be better solutions out there, likely unknown.

[gutted]

What really sucks is that the hair you lose if you stop using Minoxidil will not grow back if you get back on minoxidil. I don't understand why. What the hell happens that causes the hair that was there with the use of minox not to grow back even though you start giving it the life-giving minoxidil once again.

yeah, its baffling.
I dont understand why you got to keep using it for life to enjoy the benefits.
MPB is a progressive condition meaning damage probably occurs over time.
If you regrew hair with minox...this implies all of those years worth of damage has been reversed!

[PatientlyWaiting]

All hair that you regained from Finasteride or Rogaine, fall off 2-4 months after you stop using the products. The shed will never end, it'll continue until you're completely bald. Without it, your MPB will now continue on it's normal pace that it was in before you started Rogaine. Nobody told me this, I learned this the hard way.

[DepressedByHairLoss]

I think when it comes to hair/hair loss science we're still in the stone age. I don't think it's because hair loss is such a complicated problem but rather because no one bothered to tackle the problem sooner. And even now, there's hardly a genuine effort to try and figure out this mystery. Someone needs to take another serious look at Minoxidil. An effective treatment might be right under our noses but the lack of interest on the part of researchers is preventing us from seeing it.

Amen to that, man. And I'm even beginning to think that a major therapy to regrow hair could be autologous so it therefore wouldn't need to go through rigorous clinical trials for FDA approval. And people say that minoxidil works to regrow hair (albeit very minimally) because it's a vasodilator. Well, what about a stronger vasodilator than minoxidil? I too really believe that this isn't as complex people are saying it is.

[VictimOfDHT]

I think when it comes to hair/hair loss science we're still in the stone age. I don't think it's because hair loss is such a complicated problem but rather because no one bothered to tackle the problem sooner. And even now, there's hardly a genuine effort to try and figure out this mystery. Someone needs to take another serious look at Minoxidil. An effective treatment might be right under our noses but the lack of interest on the part of researchers is preventing us from seeing it.

[mpb47]

I think that many people in the internet spread rumours that are depressing - and blatantly untrue. Not a long time ago, people thought that finasteride worked only for ca. 5 years on average. Now, this myth was eventually debunked: 86% users of finasteride (without any other ancillaries) have kept or improved the state of their hair after 10 years. Only 14% experienced some loses.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21910805

This means that people spreading these misinformations make up only a small minority of users. They simply disproportionately concentrate on internet forums when looking for help, and here they meet unfortunates with similar experiences. Subsequently, they erroneously conclude that their experience is universal.

Apparently, the reaction to a particular stuff is very individual and there exist no rules. Someone doesn't react well, someone experiences a gradual loss of efficiency after several years, but someone can be successful almost indefinitely. I have been on 2-5% minoxidil since 1997 (15 years) and I have comfortably kept my Norwood 2 hair. Actually, it would never occur to me that it should stop working. But after visiting internet forums during the last years (when I was looking for some advice, how to regrow my temples back), I became paranoid and nervous, because many frustrated guys were basically telling me that my hairs were heretics and I should have been bald for at least 5 years already. It's...disgusting.

Yea I have seen a well known poster, someone that has been around since the 90's, swear it will only work for 5 years or less because all these articles say so. He is on a lot of boards saying this same basic message. Well I have no doubt mpb will eventually win out as I can see it slowly happening to me. But 15+ years is a heck of a lot longer than 5 years. I am backed into a corner as I can't take fin so this is basically all I can do so I am sure glad I did not listen to this guy as otherwise I would have just given up.

[tizzle]

thats exactly what i was asking myself too.
my doctor said a follicle takes a decade to miniturize to the point where it dies. so a few months off minox should not be enough for it to die. So restarting minox should basically work

I hope my hairline will fully recover from my initial shed (i stopped minox after a month in the middle of the shed) since im in the early stages of mpb and additionally taking Fin

[VictimOfDHT]

You are true that I forgot your experience with 15%Kirkland. But as you see, your transplanted hairs constitute a variable that can play some role. I really don't know, how to evaluate your experience. I also had a mixed feeling from the use of 15% Kirkland - it regrew some thick hairs on places that have been bald for 14 years, but simultaneously, it burned out my hairy areas like some acid. It's been almost 1 year since this experiment (January-June 2011). Subsequently I tried to use only 10-15% minoxidil every other day, but I think that my hair still hasn't stabilized from this shock. I stopped using all high minoxidil concentrations only 3 months ago.

By the way, I also wonder if you used minoxidil consistently, even shortly after your transplantations?

Warlord, I'm not sure if you meant dr. Lee's 15% and not Kirkland 15% since Kirkland doesn't have 15% Minox.


I always try to use Minoxidil consistently but there have been days when I missed a dose, and sometimes I miss a whole day without using Minox but I'd say less than 2 days in a month.

I was told by the doctor to stop using Minox 10 days prior to the HT till a few days after.

What really sucks is that the hair you lose if you stop using Minoxidil will not grow back if you get back on minoxidil. I don't understand why. What the hell happens that causes the hair that was there with the use of minox not to grow back even though you start giving it the life-giving minoxidil once again.

[tizzle]

Tizzle - Are you on 5% minoxidil? If so you might consider trying the 2% minox, less likely to have sides and shedding perhaps. If that works then maybe after some months work your way up to 5%. Worth a shot right?

You are right, it might be beneficial. But i really dont have the nerve to apply it twice a day or even at night. I am going to hope that finasteride will help me until good treatments hit the market. Thx for the responses

[WarLord]

I had health issues and needed to see if minox was the culprit. And yes I knew I would lose hair but it was a lot more than I expected as new areas appeared as well. Also about 4 years I was able to taper down for awhile without rapid balding. Not sure what the difference is between now and 4 years ago.


Many people think Minox doesn't work very well or it wears off in a couple of years, but my 3 month vacation is living proof that it keeps working for a long time-15-16 years for me.

I think that many people in the internet spread rumours that are depressing - and blatantly untrue. Not a long time ago, people thought that finasteride worked only for ca. 5 years on average. Now, this myth was eventually debunked: 86% users of finasteride (without any other ancillaries) have kept or improved the state of their hair after 10 years. Only 14% experienced some loses.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21910805

This means that people spreading these misinformations make up only a small minority of users. They simply disproportionately concentrate on internet forums when looking for help, and here they meet unfortunates with similar experiences. Subsequently, they erroneously conclude that their experience is universal.

Apparently, the reaction to a particular stuff is very individual and there exist no rules. Someone doesn't react well, someone experiences a gradual loss of efficiency after several years, but someone can be successful almost indefinitely. I have been on 2-5% minoxidil since 1997 (15 years) and I have comfortably kept my Norwood 2 hair. Actually, it would never occur to me that it should stop working. But after visiting internet forums during the last years (when I was looking for some advice, how to regrow my temples back), I became paranoid and nervous, because many frustrated guys were basically telling me that my hairs were heretics and I should have been bald for at least 5 years already. It's...disgusting.