Exploring The Hormonal Route. Hair=life.

[BOLLYnorWOOD]

I am drinking topical minoxidil... and it is giving me horrible side effects.

wtf? you actually drink it?

 

[Father_of_Shiseido]

wtf? you actually drink it?

Many people on this forum drink it.

 

[Derelict]

I am drinking topical minoxidil... and it is giving me horrible side effects.

What sort of side-effects are you experiencing? i take 10mg oral minoxidil and have noticed lines under my eyes that weren't there before but i don't know if that's just natural aging, no effect on my heart rate or blood pressure.

 

[BOLLYnorWOOD]

What sort of side-effects are you experiencing? i take 10mg oral minoxidil and have noticed lines under my eyes that weren't there before but i don't know if that's just natural aging, no effect on my heart rate or blood pressure.

how Is it doing for your hair?

 

[Father_of_Shiseido]

What sort of side-effects are you experiencing? i take 10mg oral minoxidil and have noticed lines under my eyes that weren't there before but i don't know if that's just natural aging, no effect on my heart rate or blood pressure.

I started applying topical minoxidil five years back. After one year or so my face started growing bigger. After five years on it, my friends say my face has totally changed. They even say that two years back I used to look cute but now I look ugly. I have stopped applying the minoxidil and for the last six days, I'm drinking topical minoxidil. It is giving me body pain, low blood pressure and nausea. Me too got lines under the my eyes on topical minoxidil and hopefully it will remain there on oral minoxidil.

 

[whatintheworld]

but im like norwood 2.5 with some thinning.

Do you want regrowth? Maintain with finasteride and get a transplant if you want a norwood 1.

 

[BOLLYnorWOOD]

Do you want regrowth? Maintain with finasteride and get a transplant if you want a norwood 1.

i tried Finasteride before sir but didnt respond to it... hairloss is stubborn and agressive in my case.

 

[whatintheworld]

haha, you do realize you posted this in the extreme thread?

Fair enough, I just feel that unless a person is mtf or has some gender dysmorphia, the big 3 + a transplant should be the safest route to go.

 

[bridgeburn]

A majority of my loss is within the last year, so I don't want to lose my window of opportunity for regrowth. Based on your advice, maybe the next best thing to add would be dutasteride, once or twice a week, with finasteride on non-dutasteride days? My fear with dutasteride is that it will accelerate frontal loss either from androgen receptor upregulation or increased T. So I'm hestitant to use it every day. Still, since T is weaker than DHT at androgen receptor, I don't know why more T and less DHT would not be an improvement for hair.

yes I think that is a good idea to use dutasteride once or twice a week with fina as that has been shown to inhibit more DHT than with fina alone.. I would still take the finasteride even on the dutasteride days just to be safe. I think the up-regulation thing is rare. As long as you don't take super doses of 2.5mg dutasteride like some people on here. that would be way more likely to cause an up regulation..

I am still less than 6 months on my regimen and have been on 5 mg oral minoxidil for ~ 3 weeks (previously topical for 4 years). If I could just see a couple velus hairs in hairline or temples I think I could stop agonizing But none yet I do want to follow your program but in a stepwise fashion, in hopes of finding the sweet spot. A majority of my loss is within the last year, so I don't want to lose my window of opportunity for regrowth.

hmmm, I feel like maybe the issue is that your hair became minoxidil dependent. I personally believe that minoxidil does help and that it is required for maximum results however I view it as kinda like coffee. Coffee can give you a boost but it won't work if you are truly exhausted. I hear so many min stories about synchronized growth and shedding cycles, dependence, and initial results followed by a crash. minoxidil without proper androgen surpression is like stepping on the accelerater while the brakes are locked down. The car moves forward until the transmission fries.

If I'm going incrementally towards your regimen, should the next addition (already using E, finasteride, oral min) be dutasteride, cypro, or spironolactone. Thanks for giving us hope

yeah, try dutasteride once or twice a week. next step is switching to dutasteride everyday.. then next go to 50-100mg spironolactone, then increase by 50mg at a time. If it still doesn't work at 300mg (I wouldn't go higher than this) then cypro would be next, 25mg, then 50mg.. then finally increasing estradiol dosages, which is what is needed to get into castration range T levels, should be saved as final resort.

 

[Sonolmn98]

Fair enough, I just feel that unless a person is mtf or has some gender dysmorphia, the big 3 + a transplant should be the safest route to go.

You are right, I can't disagree, what pushed me for this extreme protocol, was that I had male to eunuch gender dysphoria, and losing hair was the last thing I wanna deal with, as I donot consider myself a man anymore,men are used to run on high testosterone, shut it down and replace it by estrogen, you are not a man anymore, I just wanna be honest here, some guys need to recalculate their priorities,castrating yourself with chemical is a short term solution if you want hair all your life, at the end you will need a surgery for sustainability

 

[bridgeburn]

Fair enough, I just feel that unless a person is mtf or has some gender dysmorphia, the big 3 + a transplant should be the safest route to go.

that's understandable and indeed it would be safe. but in my point of view it's also the fakest route.. a cosmetic illusion.

 

[whatintheworld]

that's understandable and indeed it would be safe. but in my point of view it's also the fakest route.. a cosmetic illusion.

I agree transplants are always an illusion.

But doing nothing is technically the most authentic option...and if all of us did nothing here, we (most of us) would be slick bald.

So I take the finasteride and minoxidil even though I know it's a "fake" version of myself, and I'm actually supposed to be bald.

My advice is only for relatively low norwoods to perhaps reconsider other avenues before going to a full extreme regimen, because modern day transplants can achieve quite impressive illusions nowadays.

However, of course for any trans people this need not apply.

 

[bridgeburn]

But doing nothing is technically the most authentic option...and if all of us did nothing here, we (most of us) would be slick bald.

I see what you're saying, but I don't agree. Drugs and Hormones act on our own biological pathways. They bring about changes which we always had potential to be. We were born with the receptors for it.

a transplant on the other hand is physical mutilation.

which is fine, but what bothers me about them is that you don't actual gain any more number of follicles then you started with.. You just appear to have gained more. with extreme methods it is possible to Actually gain more.

 

[bridgeburn]

What is the ypical dosage for male to female trangenders?

4mg to 8mg, although 8 is rare. 4 to 6 is more common. I take 6mg, plus Diane once a week.

 

[Sonolmn98]

My endocrinologist put me on 4mg of estradiol hemihydrate as a start, but iam still getting some hot flashes so I think iam gonna go for 8mg,do u think 8mg is too high for a eunuch, because most mtf go back on 4mg after their surgery

 

[BOLLYnorWOOD]

i plan to Hop on 2mg estrogen (hope that is nuff on its own cuz i already take oral spironolactone 200mg en dutas 0.5 mg).

 

[Obsessive]

yes I think that is a good idea to use dutasteride once or twice a week with fina as that has been shown to inhibit more DHT than with fina alone.. I would still take the finasteride even on the dutasteride days just to be safe. I think the up-regulation thing is rare. As long as you don't take super doses of 2.5mg dutasteride like some people on here. that would be way more likely to cause an up regulation..


hmmm, I feel like maybe the issue is that your hair became minoxidil dependent. I personally believe that minoxidil does help and that it is required for maximum results however I view it as kinda like coffee. Coffee can give you a boost but it won't work if you are truly exhausted. I hear so many min stories about synchronized growth and shedding cycles, dependence, and initial results followed by a crash. minoxidil without proper androgen surpression is like stepping on the accelerater while the brakes are locked down. The car moves forward until the transmission fries.


yeah, try dutasteride once or twice a week. next step is switching to dutasteride everyday.. then next go to 50-100mg spironolactone, then increase by 50mg at a time. If it still doesn't work at 300mg (I wouldn't go higher than this) then cypro would be next, 25mg, then 50mg.. then finally increasing estradiol dosages, which is what is needed to get into castration range T levels, should be saved as final resort.

Bridgey, Thanks for the gameplan. So appreciated! Do you think adding dutasteride without concurrent T suppression is risky? So many anecdotes around here about dutasteride exacerbating frontal loss (the amount of estrogel im using hasn't given me boobs yet, so it's likely that T may not be lowered much).

 

[bridgeburn]

@bridgeburn ; have you heard of any case where dutasteride 2.5 didn’t work but hrt grew back hairs?

I haven't heard of too many cases of people using that high amount period.. but I have heard of normal amounts of dutasteride not working and then HRT working.

Antydhtor for example used normal treatments like finasteride then dutasteride for a long while before going hardcore and regrowing a ton.

 

[bridgeburn]

bridgeburn

Say, please, how much should one use cyproteron for effect? how much do you use and how often?
and how much I need to take estradiol? What is your scheme? I also want to try. I sat on 4 mg estro and 1 mg duta. how much cyproterone add?

you're probably fine (and also safer) with 25mg but I used 50mg cypro per day.. 4mg estradiol combined with cypro is a proper trans-regimen. fair warning.

In the beginning months i was on low doses E, from gel. 1.5 to 3 mg.. and occasionally some diane 35.

I tiltrated gradually upward with the Estradiol over the course of several months. 4mg to 5mg to 6mg. the highest I took with 50mg cypro was 7.5mg estradiol (6mg estrofem plus 1.5mg estrogel).

however, I sometimes took breaks from cypro though in fear of prolactin producing tumors

 

[bridgeburn]

Shall he take 2 Mg orally or bucally?

buccally

so splitting 2 mg is better then taking a whole 2 mg pil?

for hair splitting is better. for testicles taking it all at once is better