For guys <NW4 who refuse oral DHT inhibitors, what do you think is the end game here?

[25 going on 65]

I'm just 17 and I agree with you.

Started taking Finasteride as soon as I hit Norwood 2. No sides and I don't even care.

Many guys would tell you not to take fin until you are 20. But your bravery will pay off

Waiting 3 years can be the difference between NW2 & NW3a-4. Somewhere else in the world is a 17 yo NW2 who decided to wait til 20....his college years are basically ruined & he does not even know it yet

[ChrisM]

Yes. Either take the risk because that is the front line of what is out there to fix the problem or don't and accept what is and shave your hair down and leave it at that. The whining about the black tea and the saw palmetto and all of those other useless placebos and your hair still falling out and receding.. well guess what you haven't impacted the process at all.

Balding is a combination of an imbalance of hormones and genetic triggers combined with androgen sensitive hair receptors locked under the hair follicle to cause shrinking and fallout of hair. You are interrupting the outgoing chemistry stream in your blood of the DHT imbalance in the hormones since nothing out there currently exists to lock to the receptors themselves shielding them as a permanent barrier and there is nothing out there yet to reset the genetic code that implements baldness in human beings. So being that this all we have and by the way DHT and T lessen as you get older past 40 years old so then with the oral inhibitors they would logically be more successful in those who have maintained their hair slowing the baldness over time as there is less to fight against the treatment. So there is merit taking this from your 20's, 30's and into your 40's restoring your hair until the next thing comes around the curve.

[capitan]

Then your sarcasm aside he is f*cked and that is the cold hard truth

I'm just 17 and I agree with you.

Started taking Finasteride as soon as I hit Norwood 2. No sides and I don't even care.

And to the guy afraid of Fin, do you even know what "f***ing with your hormones" really is?

Go on any anabolic steroids or bodybuilding forum. Read about all the guys planning their cycles. Or just hit the local LA Fitness or Gold's Gym and see them for yourself.

And you're scared of Finasteride?

Lol.

[ChrisM]

you do realize he just said he doesn't like the idea of playing around with his hormones right?

Then your sarcasm aside he is f*cked and that is the cold hard truth of it because those are the only options out there today besides of course... a hair transplant costing in the thousands of dollars if you have that kind of cash to shell out.

Thing like Fin and Dut and RU and CB and all of the like have possible side effects and if you have never tried them and have no intention of ever trying them then the pharmaceutical market as was said in earlier thread is not interested in a cure for MPB. They are interested in giving results that make you the buyer have to keep taking and taking and ingesting whatever it is they market to keep the results you are getting and the reality is that affects your blood chemistry and again that acts against dihydrotestosterone a naturally occurring hormone triggered by genetics to an aggressive level is still going to have side effects major or minor regardless of whatever the product is in theory or in practice. And the moment you stop *poof* you lose everything you attained and may even be worse off than you were when you started.

I took my risk like everyone else (and rolled the dice late in NW5 land I might add) who was leery and my hormones are fine and for the next man that might not be the case and that is what getting your blood checked and talking to specialists are for to either reinforce your commitment to no meds or to take a chance. Topicals like Minoxidil and ketoconazole are hair boosters but the DHT in your blood serum chermistry as culprits will always be there lurking about. Someone will invent the cure for AIDS and cancer because there is a Nobel Prize in it and making the history books and huge cash in the billions for such things and the adoration of a society free of that blight. Hair loss does not weigh in on that level and as such is and will always be a low priority.

Time is not on the side of the balding man depending where you are on the Norwood scale and it worsens every month and every year more of your hair sheds. You eventually come to a crossroads where either you decide to do something about it or you shave your hair off and accept your baldness and move on.

[hiilikeyourbeard]

You do realize there is Dutasteride which is three to four times more effective that Finasteride and blocks at least two types of 5AR hair loss enzyme in DHT making it a far more potent DHT blocker.

I quit Finasteride correction I weaned myself off of Fin after a year and three months seeing no remarkable results and then switched up to Avodart. Holy Crap... in under six months the baby vellus hairs on my crown and vertex darkened and in some cases turn gray by thickened. Since I had no side effects from Fin I figured in was worth the crap shoot and it was most definitely pics will be forthcoming. I was an advanced NW5 into a NW6 and now it looks like I jumped up in levels back steadily to a NW3 due to patience and resolve. Even my ex and the mother of my kids has a lingering stare after me as I leave the door from her place to pick them up with a renewed look on her face of what happened this guy looks better and I have worked out in conjunction with that and lost weight and gained some abs and put a chin up bar in my home. It has given me back a sense of coming back from limbo.

In a few months I saw far more results than Fin ever showed and on top of that I upped my keto to the medicated 2 percent and got more Minoxidil 5 percent foam and now I see my scalp flaking and shedding for more sensitive skin underneath growing hair. With very little to no shed just growth. Plus I take Biotin a hair growth and nails supplement which has also helped along with black tea.

you do realize he just said he doesn't like the idea of playing around with his hormones right?

[ChrisM]

1) there is a poster called kirkby on here who lost a drastic amount of hair after hopping on fin. Went into a never ending shed.

2) Cognitive sides - brain fog worries me. I am required to have a clear mind due to work.

3) I am hoping histogen would hurry up. My HL being slow - I am hoping that it will hold out until then, they I will get a HT and top up from histogen.

4) I dont like the idea of playing around with my hormones.

5) I AM PISSED FIN IS THE ONLY THING ON THE MARKET

You do realize there is Dutasteride which is three to four times more effective that Finasteride and blocks at least two types of 5AR hair loss enzyme in DHT making it a far more potent DHT blocker.

I quit Finasteride correction I weaned myself off of Fin after a year and three months seeing no remarkable results and then switched up to Avodart. Holy Crap... in under six months the baby vellus hairs on my crown and vertex darkened and in some cases turn gray by thickened. Since I had no side effects from Fin I figured in was worth the crap shoot and it was most definitely pics will be forthcoming. I was an advanced NW5 into a NW6 and now it looks like I jumped up in levels back steadily to a NW3 due to patience and resolve. Even my ex and the mother of my kids has a lingering stare after me as I leave the door from her place to pick them up with a renewed look on her face of what happened this guy looks better and I have worked out in conjunction with that and lost weight and gained some abs and put a chin up bar in my home. It has given me back a sense of coming back from limbo.

In a few months I saw far more results than Fin ever showed and on top of that I upped my keto to the medicated 2 percent and got more Minoxidil 5 percent foam and now I see my scalp flaking and shedding for more sensitive skin underneath growing hair. With very little to no shed just growth. Plus I take Biotin a hair growth and nails supplement which has also helped along with black tea.

[yeahyeahyeah]

1) there is a poster called kirkby on here who lost a drastic amount of hair after hopping on fin. Went into a never ending shed.

2) Cognitive sides - brain fog worries me. I am required to have a clear mind due to work.

3) I am hoping histogen would hurry up. My HL being slow - I am hoping that it will hold out until then, they I will get a HT and top up from histogen.

4) I dont like the idea of playing around with my hormones.

5) I AM PISSED FIN IS THE ONLY THING ON THE MARKET

Not the guys who tried to take fin or dut but could not tolerate the sides. To them I give my deepest respect and condolences.

I mean guys who are NW1.5-3 who easily have enough hair worth saving, but refuse to take fin or dut (usually fear of sides). Do you not realize you are worried enough to be on a hair loss forum, yet you are giving up without a fight?
If you do not realize, then here- YOU ARE GIVING UP YOUR HAIR

There are guys on this forum who would love to be in your position, to have the choice to take these drugs, as they watch you complain about baldness while you are simultaneously letting it happen.
tbh you kind of owe these guys an apology.

Do you even realize you have a huge advantage over like 95% of balding men? Most guys never understand MPB well enough to effectively stop it. They just f*ck around until one day they are like NW3 + diffuse, then start inconsistently rubbing rogaine into their scalps, then at NW4 start "researching" (ie surfing Wikipedia & randomly ordering crap like saw palmetto or nettle root). Then they hit NW5, realize they are f*cked for life, and just give in. Just settle down with some hillbilly lady in a rundown, ranch style house with nothing but cable TV to look forward to every weekend

Meanwhile I see guys who are like NW1.5-2, who can easily avoid all this, posting about MPB on hair loss forums yet too scared to take fin/dut. Well done wasting your advantage. Congratulations, you are more aware than like 19/20 dudes on the street, yet because you spent 30 minutes pissing yourself on PropeciaHelp it means absolutely nothing.

The worst part? Half of you will end up taking oral inhibs anyway, like 2 Norwood levels after you knew you should have.

You have 2 possible futures. One is you with hair, one is you bald.

Do not be the "what-if" guy

[Zapy]

I'm one of those people, I don't know I figured that what triggered it was what I was eating and the weight lifting.

I know once I started eating healthy (lost 20 lbs) and stopped lifting weights and started doing more cardio and started using healthier better shampoo I feel like it stopped. Maybe I'm wrong, but even if I am I figure that by the time I'll be bald I won't mind it anymore. I'm 24 right now.

Also I know that weight lifting is probably what caused my hairthinning. My mom told me that no one in our family had hairloss except for my uncle who weight lifted. And I remember that once I started weight lifting, I got a bit of hair in my upper back (immediately) where I built new muscle. It also makes me a lot hornier lol

At the end of the day it's just hair on your head, not that big of a deal, be glad you're healthy and have a fullfillign life. Appreciate what you do have and enjoy the little things, stop crying about things you can't control. The people that matter won't mind and the people that do mind don't matter.

[hiilikeyourbeard]

You've defeated your hair loss. Congrats. Most guys are not in the same boat as you and will not accept it as you have. For those guys a decision needs to be made. Get on proven meds or accept losing your hair.

alright, i agree that all guys should give fin a chance. fin and minox aren't the only options. lot of people do well with some of the experimentals

[Notcoolanymore]

If these meds you are talking about actually cured hairloss as in take once and never again then i would of took it but it dont you have to keep paying for me it is just a waste of money but thats just me...and not gonna risk my sex drive either just to have hair and i couldnt care less if those sides you get are rare just not taking the chance...only took one thing to try and and help my hairloss and it was some shampoo for my dandruff (i thought maybe dandruff was the reason what can i say i was young and dumb and hoping for the best i was probably about 17/18)...but even then i hardly used it which proves i cant of cared that much otherwise i would of used it all the time would of been a waste of time regardless but still never knew that then.

You've defeated your hair loss. Congrats. Most guys are not in the same boat as you and will not accept it as you have. For those guys a decision needs to be made. Get on proven meds or accept losing your hair.

[DannyBoyy7]

If these meds you are talking about actually cured hairloss as in take once and never again then i would of took it but it dont you have to keep paying for me it is just a waste of money but thats just me...and not gonna risk my sex drive either just to have hair and i couldnt care less if those sides you get are rare just not taking the chance...only took one thing to try and and help my hairloss and it was some shampoo for my dandruff (i thought maybe dandruff was the reason what can i say i was young and dumb and hoping for the best i was probably about 17/18)...but even then i hardly used it which proves i cant of cared that much otherwise i would of used it all the time would of been a waste of time regardless but still never knew that then.

[ChrisM]

After a year and three months on Fin and now 6 months on Dut I can say my vellus hairs have all darkened and thickened and gotten coarse. I never had slick baldness but a diffuse pattern baldness that was NW5 slipping in NW5V - 6 and it has gradually over time with consistent medication, patience and time paid off. Even with my head shaved I used to be able to see the horseshoe baldness pattern and now I can't see its boundaries more gray hair is filling in where there was no hair at all and right now I would say that it has pushed my hair forward at least about 1 up the scale if not reversed it out so that the thinning is now located in the vertex mainly while the crown has thickened up considerably. I have had an on and off war with my MPB since the age of 23 and I am now 42. Propecia was just marketed at the time of the start of my fight and it was not available over the counter or in generic form and a dermatology specialist I decided to see at the time would not prescribe it. I was using Rogaine which was at 2 percent at the time and scalpicin for the burning of my scalp that felt like acid was poured on it and my bald spot grew. I took to wearing hats it grew larger. I started all the crap fads, Procerin, Beta Sisterol Shampoo of Dr. Lee, Nioxin, Follicure, T-Gel, Tricomin herbal remedies, and guess what noithing nada.. zero, zip and zilch. Only now I believe at least what I did stopped the acceleration which would have been far more rapid. My dad at the age I am now was a Norwood 7 with small wreath of hair on his sides and the back of his head virtually nothing. Now I am using Minox foam at 5 percent, T-Gel or T-Sal for any folliculitis or dermatitis, Ketoconazole at 2 percent, and Dutasteride because I needed to kick hair loss in the ass and Fin was not cutting it. Now have lower T in my blood past my forties and by extension lower DHT levels in that ratio that now my chances of retaining and getting back more of a youthful appearance in my hair or least my hair gray and not youthful will have returned over time and by the end of the year it will more than likely be with optimism that I will look like I was never as bad as I was with full coverage and that counts for something. Thing is consistency is the key here as well as when you start is the consistency of your regimen. You can't stop and start it and expect results.. you can't half ass it. You can't say hey I started this two weeks ago and where is my hair it doesn't work that way either. It is going to be a long, hard fought battle and you have to be prepared for the worst even then.

[Dan26]

@notcool there is much more to hair loss than androgens. And they're are things like CB which are supposed to address the androgen side of hairloss even more effectively than finasteride, and have no sexual sides, and hopefully no other sides as well. But still even with androgens covered that will at the best only maintain what you have, people looking for true sustainable regrowth will need more. (AA's can add thickness etc but as far as regrowth it is not common for most)

To all the young guys on here...Beleive me, I was very very anti fin and anti minox in the beginning, and in a lot of ways I still am. BUT, this is about being honest with yourself and realistic...

Take me as an example brothers...
I thought RU would be enough to maintain for me and then I could switch to CB once it got figured out and I would avoid fin...but as my hair got worse and i started to realize the uncertainty of the effectiveness and timeline of obtaining CB, I had to change things up. On top of that, applying those expensive experimentals everyday on my entire nw6 area would be mad expensive. My original plan was to start on fin for ddensity/crown etc and nuke the hairline to do everything to preserve it, and I shiould have stuck with that but I kept putting off fin.

My case is a lot different then most of the guys this thread is aimed at because I'm into expirmentals, but the idea is still the same, be realistic with yourself at the very beginning.

[StuckInARut]

This is so true, thanks OP for posting this thread. I hope if someone currently sitting on the fence reads this it helps them to see the light so to speak. Better to have tried than not tried at all and live with regret. That is unless you can accept your hair loss and just move on with your life.

[25 going on 65]

I thought I would get more resistance but I like the replies so far. If this thread convinces even one guy to take fin/dut who would go bald otherwise, we have done good work here