Aames' Dutasteride Log

[PatientlyWaiting]

I am in the same boat as you, too scared to just drop fin and rely on dut for now. My original plan was to wean off fin for the 1st 6 months of dut, but man, after 2.5 years of popping fin every day it is going to be a mindf*ck to stop....
Was hard enough to drop from 2.5 mg daily to 1.25 mg. My hair is the last thing I want to gamble

The only reason i'm feeding my fear and sticking with finasteride is because some how my insurance pays for my 5mg fin, so it's free for me I pay nothing at all. Although it's only 30 pills at a time, they are free after all. The biggest issue is just making an appointment with my derm and waiting a month or two so I have to make sure to make the appointment in my last refill so I can have enough time.

If I had to pay for it, I would drop it in a heart beat.

2.5mg is a lot, I admit I did that too at one point but not for long. Nothing happened I just stopped doing that, because of the situation above.

[itsmyhairs]

Where's your baseline pics for us to evaluate?

Surely you aren't scared to post cropped photos of your hair?

[Aames]

Great, now we don't have to worry about dutasteride's legitimacy from inhouse. Thanks for this, really helpful news for me and anyone else who had doubts about inhouse before. I never had doubts, but I feel much more confident now.

Yes, I was hoping to put some people at ease with my results.

Even though your DHT levels are very low, I bet mine even on dut+fin are still pretty high because I have a feeling I just have so much. What else would explain MPB starting at 16 and having it really aggressive at that.

I don't think it's as much your DHT levels as it is your follicles' sensitivity to DHT. It's hard to say for certain but I believe that is what I have read.

Hi Aames. Congratulations on the DHT results. However I must ask, are you sure this is not the result of fin? I thought you had been on fin for a bit before starting dut and still take it every day?
Or is your fin also from In House?

thanks in advance

Thanks, man. I was on fin and dut for a brief period but I deliberately stopped taking fin on February 22 so as not to corrupt the results of this test. But yeah, I was using Cipla Finpecia from inhouse.

Nope. No way. Doctors would definitely go against that.

Since I have had no sides from fin 1.25 every day for 4 years, I upgraded to dut 0.5 every day and haven't dropped fin out of fear of losing the hair fin has maintained, if any. I know that dut is just a stronger version of fin, but I don't know, it's just senseless fear in my part I guess. I took my 5th dut pill today and still no signs of sides, but I guess it's too early to tell. I expect to have no sides though, I think my MPB is too aggressive and dut+fin at best would only tickle my MPB. That is where Rogaine comes in, I hope it gives me a little boost.

People theorize that fin is useless in the presence of dut since dut is inhibiting like 98% of Type II 5ar, which is the only type fin acts upon anyway.

This thread is a joke!!!!!

I find it personally offensive for us chrome domes to have be subjected to people like you pretending they are bald.

If I had half of your hair I would consider myself cured.

Honeslty get a f**cking clue!

I'm not bald yet, that's why I'm on treatments. I'm sympathetic that you weren't able to halt your loss but that is either a function of you experiencing loss before the advent of treatments or your own stupidity/lack of foresight. Stop trying to bring others down so that you have people to suffer with.

He's in the early stages of MPB. He's smart and doing something about it early on before he ends up a NW7.

Thank you.

Where's your baseline pics for us to evaluate?

Surely you aren't scared to post cropped photos of your hair?

You clearly haven't read through the entire thread. I posted both dry and wet pics that will serve as a baseline for my duta usage.

[25 going on 65]

This makes me consider ordering dut from inhouse and bumping my dose to 1 mg a day (.5 brand name Avo in morning, .5 inhouse in evening).
However I am still too paranoid to switch over completely form brand name. I can just imagine me worrying "what if something is wrong with THIS batch," etc

Anyway nice job getting your blood test done, definitely a great service to the forum!

[PatientlyWaiting]

Do you think taking 0.5 mg of dut twice a day would be beneficial to your MPB? From what I see in the clinical studies it shows 0.5 mg dut grew 95 hairs while 2.5 mg grew 110 hairs in 24 weeks. That's not a very big improvement for such a high dose, so I imagine 0.5+0.5 wouldn't do much either.

I'm definitely hoping to get a lot more than 95 hairs in 24 weeks because i'm using Rogaine. I actually don't even care that much for new hair right now, I would be happy with my current hair thickening up.

[PatientlyWaiting]

I don't know why, but I am looking at the pictures that I took last night, and I find myself studying my hair loss and the alopecia areata in an enjoyable manner. I'm not obsessing over hair growth like I used to, i'm just looking at it, how ugly it looks and why would such a horrible pair of genes exist. But the reason I am enjoying studying my hair loss is because I am at ease knowing i'm doing everything that I can do for it. When I was just on fin 1.25mg, I was a wreck because I knew I was not doing everything possible for it, now with dut+rogaine the next best thing is something I can not afford right now which as an HT.

[medion1]

I'm not bald yet, that's why I'm on treatments. I'm sympathetic that you weren't able to halt your loss but that is either a function of you experiencing loss before the advent of treatments or your own stupidity/lack of foresight. Stop trying to bring others down so that you have people to suffer with.

No, you're not listening. I did not say I have a problem with people trying to stop baldness.

I'm saying that YOU ARE NOT BALDING AT ALL!!!!!!!

You are using meds because you are scared of eventually developing baldness.

Anyway good look with the impotence that may occur with your "pre-emptive" treatment.

[25 going on 65]

Do you think taking 0.5 mg of dut twice a day would be beneficial to your MPB? From what I see in the clinical studies it shows 0.5 mg dut grew 95 hairs while 2.5 mg grew 110 hairs in 24 weeks. That's not a very big improvement for such a high dose, so I imagine 0.5+0.5 wouldn't do much either.

2 things I am thinking:

1- My goal is not just regrowth but improving existing hair and maintaining it long term, and since dut is more dose dependant than fin I feel it could be worth a shot.
2- True, 2.5 mg grew only 10 more hairs in the test area than 0.5. However 0.5 grew 16 more hairs in the test area than 0.1. In other words I am thinking the dose dependency is stronger at lower doses, and fades with higher doses....so the jump from .5 to 1 mg might still be a reasonable value. Especially if I can get a legit generic

Edit: However, as I say, hair count is only one part of the equation. There could be other real benefits at higher doses that just were not tested for in that study. Unfortunately 2.5 mg every day gets to be expensive....

[PatientlyWaiting]

Yeah I don't even see 2.5mg available anywhere, not even inhouse. Actually I have never even seen 1mg.

Good luck with your 0.5 mg twice a day.

Oh yeah one thing I left out of my previous post, dutasteride's half life is 5 weeks vs finasteride's 6-8 hours. This was in a study with 0.5 mg a day for 1 year. Just pointing that out, that's a loooooooong half life for 0.5 mg.

The terminal elimination half-life of dutasteride is approximately 5 weeks at steady state. The average steady-state serum dutasteride concentration was 40 ng/mL following 0.5 mg/day for 1 year. Following daily dosing, dutasteride serum concentrations achieve 65% of steady-state concentration after 1 month and approximately 90% after 3 months. Due to the long half-life of dutasteride, serum concentrations remain detectable (greater than 0.1 ng/mL) for up to 4 to 6 months after discontinuation of treatment.

http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/archives/fdaDrugInfo.cfm?archiveid=7950

BTW what does this part mean:

"dutasteride serum concentrations achieve 65% of steady-state concentration after 1 month and approximately 90% after 3 months."

Does it mean that it takes 3+ months of daily 0.5mg use to lower serum DHT by 90%?

[25 going on 65]

Not sure what that could mean. I get the impression it has to do with concentration of the drug in your system and not how much it is lowering DHT. Maybe it just takes that long to reach peak "steady state" concentration since the drug has such a long half life

And to my knowledge there are no 2.5 mg capsules available. I assumed in the studies the participants were just taking 5 .5mg capsules?

[PatientlyWaiting]

It could be that then. There's a thread in *** where a member who posted on there said he takes 5x 0.5 dut pills a day, he claims he has no side effects. There are others who posted they use 2 pills a day.

I'll see what 0.5/day does for me in 1 year. I'm hoping to see some significant improvement in month 4-6 though.

[mpb47]

It could be that then. There's a thread in *** where a member who posted on there said he takes 5x 0.5 dut pills a day, he claims he has no side effects. There are others who posted they use 2 pills a day.

I'll see what 0.5/day does for me in 1 year. I'm hoping to see some significant improvement in month 4-6 though.

Have you seen this recent dut thread:

http://www.hairlosshelp.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=10&threadid=105032

If I could tolerate anit-dht meds, I would have been on it yesterday.
check out the before and after pictures.

I have been balding for over 30 years now, yet this young guy started worse off than me- but look at his results. For some people this stuff really works!

[Aames]

No, you're not listening. I did not say I have a problem with people trying to stop baldness.

I'm saying that YOU ARE NOT BALDING AT ALL!!!!!!!

You are using meds because you are scared of eventually developing baldness.

Anyway good look with the impotence that may occur with your "pre-emptive" treatment.

I have hairline recession and thinning at my crown. It's been verified; you're wrong.

Have you seen this recent dut thread:

http://www.hairlosshelp.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=10&threadid=105032

If I could tolerate anit-dht meds, I would have been on it yesterday.
check out the before and after pictures.

I have been balding for over 30 years now, yet this young guy started worse off than me- but look at his results. For some people this stuff really works!

Wow, great results. Thank you for posting that. Hopefully, I can replicate something like that! How are you maintaining/slowing loss without DHT inhibitors?

[PatientlyWaiting]

Have you seen this recent dut thread:

http://www.hairlosshelp.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=10&threadid=105032

If I could tolerate anit-dht meds, I would have been on it yesterday.
check out the before and after pictures.

I have been balding for over 30 years now, yet this young guy started worse off than me- but look at his results. For some people this stuff really works!

That thread made me want to look up more dutasteride results threads, and all I see is positive results from those who used it for a prolonged period of time like 8 months+.

[Aames]

That thread made me want to look up more dutasteride results threads, and all I see is positive results from those who used it for a prolonged period of time like 8 months+.

Yeah, it really seems that people who give it a fair chance experience fantastic results. I hope each member of the duta crew here soon adds to the positive results.