I have been reading this forum almost every day for about a year now and finally decided to tell my story. It is nothing new or unusual, but I have found so much great information here that I feel selfish just reading and not participating... so here it goes.
I first started to notice that I was shedding a lot of hair when I was about 20 years old. I knew absolutely nothing about male pattern baldness and just assumed it was normal. Flash forward one year..... I moved out my dorm with communal showers and into an apartment with my own bathroom. I soon realized that I had to clean out the drain in my shower after each use which led me to suspect that something wasn't quite right. Finally, I decided to pull back my bangs and check out my hair a little more closely when I realized that I had a receding hairline. Like most young people here, I was in denial for a few months and tried to blame it on anything other than the truth...... I was going bald.
After reading about the issue on forums like this, I started to realize that my only hope was to get on some kind of meds. I tried saw palmetto for about a week, but then realized that it was probably a waste of time and I needed to tackle the problem head on. In the middle of September 2008 I finally got a script for propecia and started taking 1mg every day. It was great for about a week since my sex drive was off the charts, but that ended very quickly. Shortly after starting propecia, I was hooking up with my girlfriend and realized that my penis was useless. I got really freaked out and stopped taking it immediately. My erections came back about 3 days later, but I seriously doubted that I would get back on the drug again. After doing some more research I realized that a lot of people have had success with lower doses and managed to avoid the sexual side effects. So in early August I started taking .25 mg every day. I did this for about a month with no issues, so I bumped it up to .5 mg every day. I have a lower sex drive at this dosage (my girlfriend can even attest to that), but I am still about to perform at about 85%.
I stayed at the .5 mg dosage for about 8 months and I have seen a drastic reduction in the amount of hair falling out and also managed to grow back a decent amount of hair on my temples(Norwood 2.5 - NW2). While things have been going pretty well with .5 mg ED I have recently decided to change this to .5 mg EOD. I made this decision based on the graphs showing how finasteride can depress DHT levels for about a week, but also because my girlfriend always says that I don't like having sex anymore. After taking .5 mg EOD for about a month now I can say that my sex drive is rising and I have yet to see any detrimental effects to my hair. I am hoping that I can keep this up and all will be well.
As for now, I am just hoping to maintain with finasteride, but I have been considering getting on kirkland minoxidil in a few months (I wanted to give finasteride atleast a year before adding something else). My hair does not look bad, but I have gotten several comments from my friends about it and I am hoping this might give me a little more regrowth.
I didn't take any pictures before starting propecia because I didn't have a camera and honestly did not expect to see any improvement. However, I recently got a camera and decided to take some pics for comparison in the future. I realize my hair isn't terrible, but I just want to make sure I can keep it this way for a while. The lines on my head are where I have some very small hairs coming in since starting propecia and what I believe to be my juvenile hairline. Hopefully I can use them as a reference for any future regrowth I might get if I start minoxidil. (Pics are in the next post because I am having trouble figuring out how to do this)
Sorry for the novel, but thanks for reading.
I first started to notice that I was shedding a lot of hair when I was about 20 years old. I knew absolutely nothing about male pattern baldness and just assumed it was normal. Flash forward one year..... I moved out my dorm with communal showers and into an apartment with my own bathroom. I soon realized that I had to clean out the drain in my shower after each use which led me to suspect that something wasn't quite right. Finally, I decided to pull back my bangs and check out my hair a little more closely when I realized that I had a receding hairline. Like most young people here, I was in denial for a few months and tried to blame it on anything other than the truth...... I was going bald.
After reading about the issue on forums like this, I started to realize that my only hope was to get on some kind of meds. I tried saw palmetto for about a week, but then realized that it was probably a waste of time and I needed to tackle the problem head on. In the middle of September 2008 I finally got a script for propecia and started taking 1mg every day. It was great for about a week since my sex drive was off the charts, but that ended very quickly. Shortly after starting propecia, I was hooking up with my girlfriend and realized that my penis was useless. I got really freaked out and stopped taking it immediately. My erections came back about 3 days later, but I seriously doubted that I would get back on the drug again. After doing some more research I realized that a lot of people have had success with lower doses and managed to avoid the sexual side effects. So in early August I started taking .25 mg every day. I did this for about a month with no issues, so I bumped it up to .5 mg every day. I have a lower sex drive at this dosage (my girlfriend can even attest to that), but I am still about to perform at about 85%.
I stayed at the .5 mg dosage for about 8 months and I have seen a drastic reduction in the amount of hair falling out and also managed to grow back a decent amount of hair on my temples(Norwood 2.5 - NW2). While things have been going pretty well with .5 mg ED I have recently decided to change this to .5 mg EOD. I made this decision based on the graphs showing how finasteride can depress DHT levels for about a week, but also because my girlfriend always says that I don't like having sex anymore. After taking .5 mg EOD for about a month now I can say that my sex drive is rising and I have yet to see any detrimental effects to my hair. I am hoping that I can keep this up and all will be well.
As for now, I am just hoping to maintain with finasteride, but I have been considering getting on kirkland minoxidil in a few months (I wanted to give finasteride atleast a year before adding something else). My hair does not look bad, but I have gotten several comments from my friends about it and I am hoping this might give me a little more regrowth.
I didn't take any pictures before starting propecia because I didn't have a camera and honestly did not expect to see any improvement. However, I recently got a camera and decided to take some pics for comparison in the future. I realize my hair isn't terrible, but I just want to make sure I can keep it this way for a while. The lines on my head are where I have some very small hairs coming in since starting propecia and what I believe to be my juvenile hairline. Hopefully I can use them as a reference for any future regrowth I might get if I start minoxidil. (Pics are in the next post because I am having trouble figuring out how to do this)
Sorry for the novel, but thanks for reading.
