5000 Mcg's Biotin - My Experience Chronicled

[worm]

1) Yes, all along my hairline (besides completely bald parts of temples) I saw new hairs after the first 6 weeks of treatment. These all grew to full sized hairs and I now see another layer of new small hairs although they've been small for a while and likely won't grow. Also the rest of my hair, even around my temples, has thickened up significantly. I've gone from having NW2.5 with very thin hair so couldn't style to NW2 with relatively thick hair (just normal by non balding standards). My barber was amazed.

2) I tend to overthink things. I've always had a huge libido. 3 weeks after starting finasteride I no longer got random boners, which would usually occur daily. I could still masturbate but it felt forced, my dick was only on a semi. Ball ache and watery semen also occurred. I hoped I was just anxious but then one day I realized I had being obsessively worrying about it for days, I feel it was making me extremely anxious. I stopped taking it and two weeks later I felt better.

When I started my regime of saw palmetto, zinc, pumpkin seed oil and minoxidil I initially got a huge libido increase for the first 2 to 3 months. I understand being skeptical on the net but for me I'm 100% sure I had a libido increase. It was actually distracting it was so bad. This calmed down and now I'd say I'm back to normal. This could have been the zinc or the SP, or likely a bit of both. (SP, like finasteride, will cause an increase in free testosterone). I've experienced no other sides besides acne from biotin and puffy eyes from minoxidil (which went away).

3) 23

4) Shedding increased to about double what it was at (which was bad) for the first month. Then it leveled off to normal levels for a few weeks and since then it's been lower than it's been since I started watching it. I find no hairs at my desk in work and whilst conditioning my hair there might be 3 or 4, there used to be 20+.


If I were to guess personally what's mostly working for me I'd put my treatments in this order. Minoxidil > Nizoral > Saw Palmetto > Pumpkin Seed Oil >>> MSM = Biotin > zinc.

Check out my thread on SP with studies, other people who are trying it and a note on what you should look out for when buying (90% fatty acids and sterols).

https://www.hairlosstalk.com/intera...finasteride-studies-and-my-experience.101402/

Interesting report thanks. I had sides too, just like you mentioned, but suffered through brain fog, watery semen, soft erections, depression and confusion for 7.5 years. Im sure it had it's long term lasting effects. Not much i can do now, except be happy im no longer on it and be happy for all the great things i have in my life.

As for sides, I think Zinc really helps counter the decrease in dht, and so any lack of libido you may suffer from SP (I know you say it may be the opposite), will be helped my zinc. I noticed a huge boost in libido, especially using zinc picolinate. I wish I had tried it while on finasteride. I will not be trying that experiment at this stage in my life however.

I think I may add minoxidil in about a month or two, I really feel like I would get a lot of benefit. I'd like to have a better idea as to what biotin is doing before I add anything else. Who knows maybe by then, we'll have more news from the brotzu front. Looking forward to this announcement from Fidia this week.

Cheers!

 

[worm]

I saw your thread already on SP, good research. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[worm]

Just updated. Think cold showers added to my regimen is helping, otherwise see below.

Jan 11 (7 weeks) - Tough to really say what's going on. I reently cut my hair, it was fairly long, and not it's quite a bit shorter, so it may be harder to evaluate the shedding. That said, I definitely have not increased my shedding. I suspect I have reduced it, and maybe my hair is growing a little thicker. ultimately it's too early to tell, but Im encouraged that it has no adverse effect on my hair. I have noticed, since I started only using cold(ish) water on my scalp a week ago, my scalp has turned the normal color as opposed to looking a little inflammed (red) and greasy. I think a healthy scalp improves hair loss/quality. And the shedding has decreased by about 10-12 hairs. So I would say Im losing about 15 hairs less per day, about a 43% drop in shedding, that's significant. Keeping the course, still tempted to add minoxidil, but holding off another month or 2 to give this more time to evaluate results.

 

[worm]

Well Im at just about 2 months.

I forgot to mention one side effect that I've been experiencing, congestion. Since I started, I tend be snoring and often have to clear my throat and it feels like i have something stuck in my chest during the day. My girlfriend wakes me up to stop snoring, and my quality of sleep is definitely diminished. I looked it up only today and found this which seems to corroborate my observation.

http://www.ehealthme.com/ds/biotin/respiratory tract congestion/

For the past year Ive been taking symbicort and avamys, for sinusitus and asthma. I was doing super well without biotin. Ive dealt with congestion since Ive been 18/19, and am now 39. Ive tried all sorts of things, and finally resolved everything after dealing with something that's significantly impacted my quality of life. The past two months havent been ideal, Im pretty sure it's biotin, as I remember getting mild bronchitis last time I tried it years ago. Over christmas, I had a pretty bad congestion cold as well. I'll be taking a couple days off.

I really think biotin is the cause, which sucks because I think my hair is feeling thicker and my girlfriend even said it looked great the other day. I may reduce my dose to every 2 days and see how that goes if my congestion clears up. If I end up dropping biotin, there goes my experiment. That said this will lead to me using minoxidil that much sooner, which isnt a terrible thing (I hope)....

 

[worm]

Well ive been off biotin almost a week.

I am seeing about 10-15 more hairs in the drain now. I believe it decrease my shedding about 30%.

I am going to restart tomorrow. I hope i dont get congestion again, guess I'll see.

On a side note I ordered another brand of Biotin, will likely start that in a few weeks.

 

[worm]

Last update -


FEB 21 - Well guys, just thought I would chime in here as Ive gone silent for a month. I have abandoned my experiment. For whatever reason, I seem to react adversely to Biotin. It irritates my sinuses and my lungs I believe. I have inhalers for asthma, and my sinuses, and was hoping they would keep any symptoms at bay. They did not. I get super phleghmy, congested lungs and sinuses, which inevitably have turned into 2 colds in the past 8 weeks.I struggle to breathe when playing sports. Every time I stop the symptoms go away.

So, im sorry to report the experiment fell short for me unfortunately. I wish I could have done 9 months to get a real assessment, but it didnt pan out.

For whatever it's worth, I think it was helping reduce the shedding by 5-10 hairs a day, I think it may help extend the hair growth cycle and quality of hair. I dont think it's super significant, but does help to some degree.

On the otherhand, I think my experiment with adding more zinc to my zix has been working better for me, so Im hovering at around 20 hairs shed in the shower which to me is a success. Stepping up the zinc tomorrow, hoping for improved results in about 10 days.