What does inhibiting 5ar activation mean? and to what extent does it inhibit. Also I can't imagine reducing IGF-1 would be in any way beneficial to hair.
My IGF-1 has for some reason gone up as of late and all I can tell you is it has done nothing but cause a nightmare for my skin and hair.
It's not good to have it too low, but my IGF-1 is a matter of points above the reference range and my skin in some ways was worse then during puberty, I never had scalp acne during puberty, and IGF-1 can upregulate hormones that just f*** with hair. I know far better ways to take care of my skin now, so I'm not the mess I was when I was 15, but the scalp acne is a hard one, the estrogel saved me on that account.
5AR inhibition is basically the standard that most people resort to when responding to androgenetic alopecia, it prevents the enzyme from converting testosterone to DHT, which is why some people with whom finasteride works - see a precipitous rise in estrogen because instead that testosterone is in part at least converted into estrogen.
This is why I think finasteride largely works when taken orally, I think that topical finasteride has some other kind of mechanism of action that may be related, but it seems like having the drug applied directly to sensitive tissues just locally blocks the effects of androgens.
Basically I would call the mechanism of topical finasteride basically a controlled application of PFS, which sounds crazy but I do think the accumulation of finasteride in tissues itself where it is not wanted is the cause of PFS, but if you're just applying it to the skin and it is mostly staying there, you're generating the same effect albeit controlled and localized.
It's good to have enough IGF-1, but having too much has been nothing but a skin and hair nightmare for me.
thankfully applying estrogel directly to my scalp seems to have calmed a lot of that down and offset it, but I still have to deal with unreasonably oily skin that that I have to constantly attend to throughout the day, and that is 100% a proven side effect of high IGF-1, I have literally nuked my testosterone and DHT and my skin is still oily because of IGF-1.
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