After quitting Propecia: Lose everything maintained fast or pick up where you left?

[JSmyth]

I have heard people say that you will lose everything you maintained on Propecia quite rapidly (< 1 year) after quitting. Is this true?

It seems kind of counter-intuitive to me from what I know about hair loss. If you truly halted your hair loss then shouldn't it just resume on the same course it would have had you not started on meds rather than losing all of it in this rapid fashion?

[x4342]

The truth is somewhere in between. There's the myth of "catch up loss" as if your body knows exactly how much hair you were supposed to lose and then somehow makes up for it as soon as your DHT levels return to the normal. It doesn't work that way.

It is also inaccurate to to presume the things will simply pick up where they left off. It's possible for the hair loss to be much worse simply because more androgen receptors have become active. Your "pattern" has advanced even if you haven't lost any hair. Think of it this way. Imagine if you started taking fin as an 18 year who wasn't experiencing any MPB at all (just for the sake of argument) and then remained on fin for 10 years without losing any hair. Suddenly you went off of fin and immediately started to shed hair. Before you were losing no hair, simply because MPB hadn't even kicked in. Now, you would obviously be losing hair because your receptors had become active. The same thing would apply at any stage. You might have only been losing hair at the crown at 23 but your mid scalp became active at 28. If you were blocking enough DHT you might not lose any hair, but rest assured you would now lose more hair when you came off it.
On the other hand it's also possible for the rate of loss to be slower if you have aged significantly since you have been on fin and now have lower levels of androgens in your body. For example someone who went on fin at 20 and got off at 40 might actually lose less hair because they were now out of their hair loss "prime".

[JSmyth]

That makes sense to me. I started taking fin at 21 and it was somewhat pre-emptive; I hadn't lost a lot of hair but could feel it was not the same as it once was. I am 24 now and quit two weeks ago. My sides were nothing too bad, but I just got to the point where I felt kind of off, especially my libido. I guess I will have to wait and see how things are. In the event it gets bad I may hop back on the fin.

Are you saying that the upregulation of androgenous receptors occurs with or without the use of finasteride but blocking DHT is what makes the difference in visual hair loss. So I could have a receptor mapping for an NW3 but the fin blocks the binding and therefore when I quit the drug those receptors are there and the dht will be able to bind to them?

[x4342]

That makes sense to me. I started taking fin at 21 and it was somewhat pre-emptive; I hadn't lost a lot of hair but could feel it was not the same as it once was. I am 24 now and quit two weeks ago. My sides were nothing too bad, but I just got to the point where I felt kind of off, especially my libido. I guess I will have to wait and see how things are. In the event it gets bad I may hop back on the fin.

Are you saying that the upregulation of androgenous receptors occurs with or without the use of finasteride but blocking DHT is what makes the difference in visual hair loss. So I could have a receptor mapping for an NW3 but the fin blocks the binding and therefore when I quit the drug those receptors are there and the dht will be able to bind to them?

Yes, exactly. Blocking DHT isn't stopping the progression of a pattern. The patterning of male hair loss is pretty interesting. Even within the Norwood ranges there is obvious patterning. We've all seen people with surviving tufts of strong terminal hair surrounded by bald scalp.

[burtandernie]

Its surprising the lack of good studies on receptors like the layouts and density on various people in different parts of the scalp. Seems pretty important

[Localguy]

Just be careful, this is what happened to me within 6-8 weeks of quitting fins cold turkey.
I was on it for 13 years and just stopped. It never came back the same when I went back on, it's very thin on top now. It was so embarrassing I wanted to hide.

[TinTin]

Its surprising the lack of good studies on receptors like the layouts and density on various people in different parts of the scalp. Seems pretty important

It's possibly a topic in which most of the drug companies avoid laying down a budget for, taking into consideration that the results of such studies could very well damage their sales (referring to the possible up-regulation of ones androgen receptors as a result of the meds)