paulsteel0
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Let me begin with a bit of my story...
I started thinning at age 23. I don't have a Norwood pattern though interestingly. I am a diffuse thinner by and large. Though on top of that I have what would be called 'balding' beginning at a very small patch at the very front of my hairline. Diffuse thinners are supposed to represent less than 10% of male pattern baldness cases, so I am a bit of a loner in this sense :wacko:. But I have found a couple other guys online throughout the years who have the exact same hairloss pattern I have. Diffuse for the most part with the beginning of actual balding at the front.
Anyway I was mainly worried about the little bald patch developing over the course of 9 months at the beginning of my hairline, but for some reason I didn't really care about going bald at the time and I looked into treatments and didn't want to take a medicine for the rest of my life so I decided not to do anything about it. Later though after about the nine month mark I got really bad 'male pattern baldness' burn (though I didn't know what it was at the time until I came to this forum) and then the -diffuse- thinning really set in and it was bad it was nothing less than the Norwood 7 shape coming in and within another year I'd probably be as bald as could be.
So this definitely made me realize hold on I don't want to go bald this is horrible plus I am small and kind of 'cute' looking people a lot of time think I am in high school even though I've graduated college already how dumb would I look with a NW7 it would make no sense at all I mean it would just be atrocious people would be thrown back anytime they saw me like a 16 year old who went bald somehow. Terrible. So I'm not like afraid of going bald but truly it would be a really bad look to be as fully bald as I am as young as I look and plus if there's medicine out there why not try it so that's how I snapped out of my not caring about going bald into full out battle-mode against hairloss.
I came to this forum and got the 'scoop.' Nizoral 2% was the first thing I started. I used it 2-3 times a week and my 'male pattern baldness' burn was cured after 3 applications. I then used it for another 2 months before beginning Kirkland minoxidil 5% and 1mg finasteride. Now I had pretty diffuse thinning in every which way totally a NW7 shape you could see but after three months of finasteride and minoxidil I had full regrowth. It was a miracle. Looking back it was probably mostly minoxidil I don't know that finasteride works that fast. But I was pretty happy. I was a 'responder.' It turned out the combination of minoxidil and nizoral was too much for my scalp it was very dried out so after about a month I stopped using Nizoral 2% and went to Nizoral 1% and this helped a lot. Still using it only 2-3 times a week.
Again I had full regrowth after three months and had my regimen of 1mg finasteride, 5% Kirkland minoxidil, and 1% Nizoral every two days. I did this for about 6 months. Then I had two problems.
The first was I started taking Adderall for ADD. I have not found a whole lot of people with this same experience. but I do not handle stimulant medication well. I think it over stimulates my adrenal glands and gets too much adrenaline and testosterone in my system. But regardless I get a lot of 'stress' related symptoms like clenching teeth at night, acne, sweating, and last but not least hairloss. I lost a TON of hair. Like I would wash my hair and suddenly have Sasquatch hands. Like how could that much hair fall out of one person's head. I noticed I was losing hair but it wasn't until I went to 60mg of Adderall IR (instant release) a day that the shedding hit like a tidal wave. I don't know if you could tell I was thinning but just the front of my head looked flat compared to the back. A lot of people wouldn't know but it was because the back of my head still had thick hair and the front had thinned out terribly. I quit Adderall and thank God it all grew back.
The other problem a few months after I got full regrowth from my medicine induced shed was I immediately became paranoid. I decided not to quit the drug but to go down to at least 0.75mg and see if that was just as effective. I did it for about 6 weeks and I didn't notice anything major but the 7th week I could tell my hair was falling out. I never noticed it on my hands in the shower which goes to show you can't always detect a shed by looking at your pillow your hands after shampooing, because I was definietly watching to see if the lowered dose would make me lose hair, but at week 7 I noticed the front of my head was looking really flat and thin and yes it is because I was losing hair. I immediately went back to 1mg and after about a month or two I grew my hair back. Which I was thankful for because I heard Propecia is only good for maintaining hair not necessarily growing stuff back you'd lost. It also deflates the idea that 0.5mg is almost as effective at DHT reduction as 1mg finasteride. There is some graph floating around that seems to assert as much but I can tell you it's not the same. 0.75mg isn't even the same as 1mg. I started rapidly going on me after about 6 weeks on the lowered dose. So no good. I went back up to 1mg and after about 1 and a half months I had full regrowth. At least as far as I could tell.
This also goes to show how critical finasteride is in the Big 3. Nizoral and minoxidil didn't pick up the slack when I lowered the finasteride dose. It made me realize 80% of my hair growth and maintenance was probably because of finasteride. I had a much greater respect and appreciation for the drug after that, and recognized anything else shampoo or topical or anything else is really just a supplement. That at best works synergistically with finasteride.
Also, because of this, I decided to drop Nizoral all together because I figured it wasn't doing much. And when I dropped it and didn't get any 'male pattern baldness' burn afterward I decided I was fine to drop it for good. (Later I realized this was probably a mistake. I didn't know nizoral helped finasteride become more effective by reducing inflammation otherwise I probably would have stayed on it!)
All this was about 8 months into my regimen. I went another year without trying any hairloss stunts and maintained my full regrowth perfectly. Just on finasteride and minoxidil. For a total of 20 months of full regrowth. I was a happy camper.
This is where the story gets sad and I lost hair that didn't grow back for the first time. :sad:
I stupidly took Adderall again. I had been taking it on and off for the past year, but not the instant release version I experimented with the extended release version. It is a lot smoother and less harsh and I didn't have as much hairloss issues with it. However I did still inevitably lose hair when I was on it. Not very much but a little so I would quit and it would always come back anyway.
Long story short I hadn't taken Adderall of any sort in a long time but I was struggling at work learning to drive a forklift so I was like dude I need to focus for these tests I'll just take a couple maybe I won't shed. I didn't take very many but I did shed. Pretty bad. And it was in a very definite oval shape in the front. I thought that was odd. And this time even though I took the extended release which generally wasn't as bad, I shed like it was the instant release formula. It sucked. But I figured it would grow back.
It never did. Not entirely. I'd say I lost 30-35% of my hair in the front, and grew back only 80% of what I grew back rather than 100%. It was pretty sad.
My hair still looked good though and I figured man I'm not a hair regrowth all start anymore I've been on this stuff for almost two years now I can't be taking hits like this and just growing it back like I used to. So I never have done Adderall again seeing what i can do and additionally I upped my dose to 1.25mg from the 1mg I was taking since I figured maybe finasteride was starting to get weaker or something or maybe I was getting used to it. And I'm glad I did that because if the difference between losing hair as I did on 0.75mg and totally maintaining 1mg was so drastic, I'll bet 1.25mg is probably going to help in the long run. It probably does make a significant difference.
So anyway, I went another 6 months with a little bit of hairloss from the Adderall experience but for the most part looking pretty full. I'm about 2 and one half years in now. My regemin is still just 1.25mg a day and kirkland 5% minoxidil twice a day. (Which really I try to do it every day but it doesn't always happen lol there's more than one time each week I only use it once a day. This may be not so bad considering the half-life of minoxidil keeps it in your system for almost a full 24 hours anyway making two applications unnecessary. I don't like to experiment with my hair though so I stick with the two doses a day.)
Then I did something stupid again. I had a job in a factory that was boring. And we smoked cigars all the time. And after a few weeks I started to shed pretty badly. And I realized why. Nicotine is also a stimulant like amphetamine in Addreral is. And that doesn't go so well with me. I started losing hair in the front in a kind of a typical oval pattern rather than diffuse for some strange reason. But anyway, it was pretty bad. I would say I took another hit of about 30% of my frontal hair. I again quit smoking and grew back about 80% of it within 2 or so months. I didn't keep track really because it was so depressing I didn't want to think about it ha. But I remember after a few months it started looking okay again. You couldn't tell I was balding necessarily at all.
Anyway, near three years I decided I wanted to up my game a bit. And I would add Nizoral back into my regimen. Because I realized it was more effective probably than I assumed it was at regrowing hair and also it is great at dealing with inflammation which helps minoxidil and finasteride be more effective. I went crazy with it though after a few weeks of moderate use and wanted to be like the guys in that Japanese study and use it every day. I decided to use it only every other day and only the 1% formula. But that did not go well. Hair got extermelyi thin and straw like, presumably because nizoral lowers sebum so much, and also I got bad Nizoral burn on my scalp. Flaking which I think qualifies as psoirais even folliculitis like bing nasty acne type swellings. It was gross. I did once a day for about 2 months until this all set in at once.
I promptly quit it entirely and very quickly the thin, straw-like texture of my hair left, but I noticed I had defineitly just plain lost hair. Too bad.
One thing that is also weird is I got a lot of nut aches when I started using nizoral regularily. And these continued for about a month or so after I quit nizoral. Eventually they stopped. But it was weird I didn't think nizoral went systemic but I know nizoral caused my nut aches they started when I began going heavy duty on the nizoral and stopped entirely once I guess all the medicine got out of my system. I had no problem with nut aches prior and since they have ceased upon stopping the medicine I haven't had any again. So I know it was nizoral. And there are posts on forums of guys noticing this. (And then promptly being harassed as a fear monger or hypochondriac because 'nix doens't go systemic' or 'nizoral can't do that' etc. etc. Okay people. It DOES.)
I'm still using nizoral only once a week. I think it is a helpful addition but too much is no good once a week I get no nizoral burn and no nut aches and according to the official website nizoral stays in your scalp at a therapetiic level for a week anyway so it might be okay. I'm wondering about going to twice a week since once a week I'm not having any problems but I'm not sure. Definietly not every other day again. That was a disaster. And if you look online I'm not the only one to have heavy usage of nizoral not do them any favors.
So anyway I'm three years in and I look okay but I am feeling more and more vulnerable by the day. I've had three big dents into my frontal hairline. My last experience with Adderall which never grew back, the cigar incident three months later, and then the over use of nizoral incident. It's only been two months since I stopped over using nizoral so some of my front my come back yet I'm not sure you're supposed to let 3 to 4 months pass but I'm not hopfully 100% will grow back. Maybe 80-85% I'm hoping. Some people have said it all comes back in time some say it won't I'm happy with 85%. I'm probably at 65% back from where I was at the moment. Maybe a bit higher. I also can't complain because frontal is where my balding is aggressive anyway I've never had much thinning in the back so I'm susceptible to thinning here anyway.
So I'm thinking what's my next step. I did add a non SLS shampoo the Aveeno Renewals after nizoral fried my scalp and I think that helps okay I was originally using Nioxin but it's overpriced and non-SLS appeals to me so I began using that and I think it makes my scalp happy. One other thing I did was switched to rogain foam in the morning and the liquid at night also in response to the dry scalp issue after nizoral. This actually has been a great choice. I wish I'd done it sooner. The propolyne-glycol in the liquid minoxidil is a more effective delivery vehicle according to many, but it is also hard on yoru scalp. Foam is supposedly less effective but it doesn't have that nasty chemical in it. and I've noticed a difference. Only using the minoxidil with the Propecia-glycol once a day instead of twice a day has made my scalp less irritated and less flaky. I wish I would have done that sooner as minoxidil has always dried out my scalp.
SOOOO. I feel like I've run out of options and also feeling vulnerable I'm at that three year mark finasteride might stop losing effectiveness soon plus it's already been shown I dont' regrow hari I've lost like I used to which is a sign of things to come, so I wanted to see if there wasn't anything else I could do to help my situation.
I decided to try Avodart. I'd been pretty reluctant to start it because of side effects and also because of it inhibiting an enzymein the brain and other organs like the kidney, but it's one of my last real weapons I think.
I decided to give that a shot. Why not. I looked into all the studies being done in Korea by GlaxoSmithKline and it seemed relatively safe. Plus only taking 0.5mg once a weeks surely can't cause that many side effects. It's a very small dose. So I went to a doctor and she agreed with my idea.
I have been on Avodart 0.5mg once a week for 2 and a half weeks now. I will be taking my third pill this Thursday. Woo!
So I broke my smartphone I don't get a new one until May when I qualify for early upgrade, so I can't take pictures, but I wanted to document what was going on.
My hair situation may seem pretty up and down as per my description/life story I just gave, but for the most part I'm usually pretty stable, and I'd been stable for about 6 weeks when I started duasteride. If anything just hoping to get a little more hair back in the front after my nizoral experiment. So I'm pretty sure anything that happens in the next weeks and months should be related primarily to my dosage of duasteride.
And something has been happening. a SHED! But I'm kind of excited. Because I've noticed it's a lot of really crappy miniaturized hairs.
I think that's amazing I wouldn't have though half a miligram once a week would have much effect, but clearly it is because I'm having a shed two weeks in. And it is a significant shed probably 40+ hairs in my hands after shampooing and lots on my pillows and I never see that.
I'm a little scared to take my third pill this Thursday to being week three because I don't want this shed ot get severe and I kno wthere is a hug emyth out there and duasteride causes frontal balding, but I want to dispell that myth and that is the primary reason I wrote this all out. I'm beginning to shed int he front as everyone dreads, but it seems like mostly crappy hair to me I want to get out so a new telogen phase can start anyway. And I don't think overall even if I don't gain hair I don't think it will cause me to lose hair. Here is the experiment.
Also I should mention I've not had any side effects no loss of labido no hardness of nipples so far I'm good. Stay TUNED.
I started thinning at age 23. I don't have a Norwood pattern though interestingly. I am a diffuse thinner by and large. Though on top of that I have what would be called 'balding' beginning at a very small patch at the very front of my hairline. Diffuse thinners are supposed to represent less than 10% of male pattern baldness cases, so I am a bit of a loner in this sense :wacko:. But I have found a couple other guys online throughout the years who have the exact same hairloss pattern I have. Diffuse for the most part with the beginning of actual balding at the front.
Anyway I was mainly worried about the little bald patch developing over the course of 9 months at the beginning of my hairline, but for some reason I didn't really care about going bald at the time and I looked into treatments and didn't want to take a medicine for the rest of my life so I decided not to do anything about it. Later though after about the nine month mark I got really bad 'male pattern baldness' burn (though I didn't know what it was at the time until I came to this forum) and then the -diffuse- thinning really set in and it was bad it was nothing less than the Norwood 7 shape coming in and within another year I'd probably be as bald as could be.
So this definitely made me realize hold on I don't want to go bald this is horrible plus I am small and kind of 'cute' looking people a lot of time think I am in high school even though I've graduated college already how dumb would I look with a NW7 it would make no sense at all I mean it would just be atrocious people would be thrown back anytime they saw me like a 16 year old who went bald somehow. Terrible. So I'm not like afraid of going bald but truly it would be a really bad look to be as fully bald as I am as young as I look and plus if there's medicine out there why not try it so that's how I snapped out of my not caring about going bald into full out battle-mode against hairloss.
I came to this forum and got the 'scoop.' Nizoral 2% was the first thing I started. I used it 2-3 times a week and my 'male pattern baldness' burn was cured after 3 applications. I then used it for another 2 months before beginning Kirkland minoxidil 5% and 1mg finasteride. Now I had pretty diffuse thinning in every which way totally a NW7 shape you could see but after three months of finasteride and minoxidil I had full regrowth. It was a miracle. Looking back it was probably mostly minoxidil I don't know that finasteride works that fast. But I was pretty happy. I was a 'responder.' It turned out the combination of minoxidil and nizoral was too much for my scalp it was very dried out so after about a month I stopped using Nizoral 2% and went to Nizoral 1% and this helped a lot. Still using it only 2-3 times a week.
Again I had full regrowth after three months and had my regimen of 1mg finasteride, 5% Kirkland minoxidil, and 1% Nizoral every two days. I did this for about 6 months. Then I had two problems.
The first was I started taking Adderall for ADD. I have not found a whole lot of people with this same experience. but I do not handle stimulant medication well. I think it over stimulates my adrenal glands and gets too much adrenaline and testosterone in my system. But regardless I get a lot of 'stress' related symptoms like clenching teeth at night, acne, sweating, and last but not least hairloss. I lost a TON of hair. Like I would wash my hair and suddenly have Sasquatch hands. Like how could that much hair fall out of one person's head. I noticed I was losing hair but it wasn't until I went to 60mg of Adderall IR (instant release) a day that the shedding hit like a tidal wave. I don't know if you could tell I was thinning but just the front of my head looked flat compared to the back. A lot of people wouldn't know but it was because the back of my head still had thick hair and the front had thinned out terribly. I quit Adderall and thank God it all grew back.
The other problem a few months after I got full regrowth from my medicine induced shed was I immediately became paranoid. I decided not to quit the drug but to go down to at least 0.75mg and see if that was just as effective. I did it for about 6 weeks and I didn't notice anything major but the 7th week I could tell my hair was falling out. I never noticed it on my hands in the shower which goes to show you can't always detect a shed by looking at your pillow your hands after shampooing, because I was definietly watching to see if the lowered dose would make me lose hair, but at week 7 I noticed the front of my head was looking really flat and thin and yes it is because I was losing hair. I immediately went back to 1mg and after about a month or two I grew my hair back. Which I was thankful for because I heard Propecia is only good for maintaining hair not necessarily growing stuff back you'd lost. It also deflates the idea that 0.5mg is almost as effective at DHT reduction as 1mg finasteride. There is some graph floating around that seems to assert as much but I can tell you it's not the same. 0.75mg isn't even the same as 1mg. I started rapidly going on me after about 6 weeks on the lowered dose. So no good. I went back up to 1mg and after about 1 and a half months I had full regrowth. At least as far as I could tell.
This also goes to show how critical finasteride is in the Big 3. Nizoral and minoxidil didn't pick up the slack when I lowered the finasteride dose. It made me realize 80% of my hair growth and maintenance was probably because of finasteride. I had a much greater respect and appreciation for the drug after that, and recognized anything else shampoo or topical or anything else is really just a supplement. That at best works synergistically with finasteride.
Also, because of this, I decided to drop Nizoral all together because I figured it wasn't doing much. And when I dropped it and didn't get any 'male pattern baldness' burn afterward I decided I was fine to drop it for good. (Later I realized this was probably a mistake. I didn't know nizoral helped finasteride become more effective by reducing inflammation otherwise I probably would have stayed on it!)
All this was about 8 months into my regimen. I went another year without trying any hairloss stunts and maintained my full regrowth perfectly. Just on finasteride and minoxidil. For a total of 20 months of full regrowth. I was a happy camper.
This is where the story gets sad and I lost hair that didn't grow back for the first time. :sad:
I stupidly took Adderall again. I had been taking it on and off for the past year, but not the instant release version I experimented with the extended release version. It is a lot smoother and less harsh and I didn't have as much hairloss issues with it. However I did still inevitably lose hair when I was on it. Not very much but a little so I would quit and it would always come back anyway.
Long story short I hadn't taken Adderall of any sort in a long time but I was struggling at work learning to drive a forklift so I was like dude I need to focus for these tests I'll just take a couple maybe I won't shed. I didn't take very many but I did shed. Pretty bad. And it was in a very definite oval shape in the front. I thought that was odd. And this time even though I took the extended release which generally wasn't as bad, I shed like it was the instant release formula. It sucked. But I figured it would grow back.
It never did. Not entirely. I'd say I lost 30-35% of my hair in the front, and grew back only 80% of what I grew back rather than 100%. It was pretty sad.
My hair still looked good though and I figured man I'm not a hair regrowth all start anymore I've been on this stuff for almost two years now I can't be taking hits like this and just growing it back like I used to. So I never have done Adderall again seeing what i can do and additionally I upped my dose to 1.25mg from the 1mg I was taking since I figured maybe finasteride was starting to get weaker or something or maybe I was getting used to it. And I'm glad I did that because if the difference between losing hair as I did on 0.75mg and totally maintaining 1mg was so drastic, I'll bet 1.25mg is probably going to help in the long run. It probably does make a significant difference.
So anyway, I went another 6 months with a little bit of hairloss from the Adderall experience but for the most part looking pretty full. I'm about 2 and one half years in now. My regemin is still just 1.25mg a day and kirkland 5% minoxidil twice a day. (Which really I try to do it every day but it doesn't always happen lol there's more than one time each week I only use it once a day. This may be not so bad considering the half-life of minoxidil keeps it in your system for almost a full 24 hours anyway making two applications unnecessary. I don't like to experiment with my hair though so I stick with the two doses a day.)
Then I did something stupid again. I had a job in a factory that was boring. And we smoked cigars all the time. And after a few weeks I started to shed pretty badly. And I realized why. Nicotine is also a stimulant like amphetamine in Addreral is. And that doesn't go so well with me. I started losing hair in the front in a kind of a typical oval pattern rather than diffuse for some strange reason. But anyway, it was pretty bad. I would say I took another hit of about 30% of my frontal hair. I again quit smoking and grew back about 80% of it within 2 or so months. I didn't keep track really because it was so depressing I didn't want to think about it ha. But I remember after a few months it started looking okay again. You couldn't tell I was balding necessarily at all.
Anyway, near three years I decided I wanted to up my game a bit. And I would add Nizoral back into my regimen. Because I realized it was more effective probably than I assumed it was at regrowing hair and also it is great at dealing with inflammation which helps minoxidil and finasteride be more effective. I went crazy with it though after a few weeks of moderate use and wanted to be like the guys in that Japanese study and use it every day. I decided to use it only every other day and only the 1% formula. But that did not go well. Hair got extermelyi thin and straw like, presumably because nizoral lowers sebum so much, and also I got bad Nizoral burn on my scalp. Flaking which I think qualifies as psoirais even folliculitis like bing nasty acne type swellings. It was gross. I did once a day for about 2 months until this all set in at once.
I promptly quit it entirely and very quickly the thin, straw-like texture of my hair left, but I noticed I had defineitly just plain lost hair. Too bad.
One thing that is also weird is I got a lot of nut aches when I started using nizoral regularily. And these continued for about a month or so after I quit nizoral. Eventually they stopped. But it was weird I didn't think nizoral went systemic but I know nizoral caused my nut aches they started when I began going heavy duty on the nizoral and stopped entirely once I guess all the medicine got out of my system. I had no problem with nut aches prior and since they have ceased upon stopping the medicine I haven't had any again. So I know it was nizoral. And there are posts on forums of guys noticing this. (And then promptly being harassed as a fear monger or hypochondriac because 'nix doens't go systemic' or 'nizoral can't do that' etc. etc. Okay people. It DOES.)
I'm still using nizoral only once a week. I think it is a helpful addition but too much is no good once a week I get no nizoral burn and no nut aches and according to the official website nizoral stays in your scalp at a therapetiic level for a week anyway so it might be okay. I'm wondering about going to twice a week since once a week I'm not having any problems but I'm not sure. Definietly not every other day again. That was a disaster. And if you look online I'm not the only one to have heavy usage of nizoral not do them any favors.
So anyway I'm three years in and I look okay but I am feeling more and more vulnerable by the day. I've had three big dents into my frontal hairline. My last experience with Adderall which never grew back, the cigar incident three months later, and then the over use of nizoral incident. It's only been two months since I stopped over using nizoral so some of my front my come back yet I'm not sure you're supposed to let 3 to 4 months pass but I'm not hopfully 100% will grow back. Maybe 80-85% I'm hoping. Some people have said it all comes back in time some say it won't I'm happy with 85%. I'm probably at 65% back from where I was at the moment. Maybe a bit higher. I also can't complain because frontal is where my balding is aggressive anyway I've never had much thinning in the back so I'm susceptible to thinning here anyway.
So I'm thinking what's my next step. I did add a non SLS shampoo the Aveeno Renewals after nizoral fried my scalp and I think that helps okay I was originally using Nioxin but it's overpriced and non-SLS appeals to me so I began using that and I think it makes my scalp happy. One other thing I did was switched to rogain foam in the morning and the liquid at night also in response to the dry scalp issue after nizoral. This actually has been a great choice. I wish I'd done it sooner. The propolyne-glycol in the liquid minoxidil is a more effective delivery vehicle according to many, but it is also hard on yoru scalp. Foam is supposedly less effective but it doesn't have that nasty chemical in it. and I've noticed a difference. Only using the minoxidil with the Propecia-glycol once a day instead of twice a day has made my scalp less irritated and less flaky. I wish I would have done that sooner as minoxidil has always dried out my scalp.
SOOOO. I feel like I've run out of options and also feeling vulnerable I'm at that three year mark finasteride might stop losing effectiveness soon plus it's already been shown I dont' regrow hari I've lost like I used to which is a sign of things to come, so I wanted to see if there wasn't anything else I could do to help my situation.
I decided to try Avodart. I'd been pretty reluctant to start it because of side effects and also because of it inhibiting an enzymein the brain and other organs like the kidney, but it's one of my last real weapons I think.
I decided to give that a shot. Why not. I looked into all the studies being done in Korea by GlaxoSmithKline and it seemed relatively safe. Plus only taking 0.5mg once a weeks surely can't cause that many side effects. It's a very small dose. So I went to a doctor and she agreed with my idea.
I have been on Avodart 0.5mg once a week for 2 and a half weeks now. I will be taking my third pill this Thursday. Woo!
So I broke my smartphone I don't get a new one until May when I qualify for early upgrade, so I can't take pictures, but I wanted to document what was going on.
My hair situation may seem pretty up and down as per my description/life story I just gave, but for the most part I'm usually pretty stable, and I'd been stable for about 6 weeks when I started duasteride. If anything just hoping to get a little more hair back in the front after my nizoral experiment. So I'm pretty sure anything that happens in the next weeks and months should be related primarily to my dosage of duasteride.
And something has been happening. a SHED! But I'm kind of excited. Because I've noticed it's a lot of really crappy miniaturized hairs.
I think that's amazing I wouldn't have though half a miligram once a week would have much effect, but clearly it is because I'm having a shed two weeks in. And it is a significant shed probably 40+ hairs in my hands after shampooing and lots on my pillows and I never see that.
I'm a little scared to take my third pill this Thursday to being week three because I don't want this shed ot get severe and I kno wthere is a hug emyth out there and duasteride causes frontal balding, but I want to dispell that myth and that is the primary reason I wrote this all out. I'm beginning to shed int he front as everyone dreads, but it seems like mostly crappy hair to me I want to get out so a new telogen phase can start anyway. And I don't think overall even if I don't gain hair I don't think it will cause me to lose hair. Here is the experiment.
Also I should mention I've not had any side effects no loss of labido no hardness of nipples so far I'm good. Stay TUNED.