- Reaction score
- 0
So I've been wandering around the forums for a little while now (about the same time I started on Finasteride) and decided to finally sign up and start talking about my experience trying to fight hair loss. I'll try to update this thread as I continue to do so, hopefully regularly, as from what I've seen most threads just die off without any final updates -- which really sucks if you're looking forward to hear about someone's condition if they're experiencing similar complications.
Feel free to skip ahead down to the "In summary" portion if you aren't interested in the juicy details.
In summary, after taking finasteride, what I thought was a normal shed occurred within two days, and I have been continuing to shed from all over my head and from my body more and more for about 8 weeks now. I had my blood tested and am now waiting on a response. I reduced my dosage from 1.25 mg to 0.625 today to try and see if it'll help.
I'll keep this updated with what happens with my lab results and with the decreased dosage.
With that said, any comments and advice would be appreciated. On top of that, I have a few questions that've been on my mind, which I don't expect to get definitive answers for considering even within the medical and research community, there's not really much to go off, but here goes:
Does hair lost from hyperandrogenicity come back after going off of finasteride? Do hormone levels go back to normal or is the upregulation mostly permanent? Would going off of finasteride at this point be even more catastrophic than keeping to it? I really don't want to think that I induced and accelerated my hair loss and now I'll go bald at a much much faster rate than I would have naturally just because I'm some statistical outlier, but from what I've read online, I think I only found one mention of someone regaining the hair they lost during the time they claimed they had reflex hyperandrogenicity, but their experience very well could have been a misinterpreted shed -- the rest have been negative, the hair was never regained.
Update (9/23/2018):
Okay, wow, it's been a while, but my life got hectic and I just didn't want to think about my hair so I stop coming on these forums.
Anyway, since last time, my doctor told me my lab results came back all normal, except that my vitamin D levels were slightly low, so I started taking supplements for that.
That being said, my doctor assured me that the hair I was shedding will grow back, just that the intense thinning is due to the shed being so much faster than the hair can grow. I tell myself this every day to keep me sane because my hair has only gotten worse. I'm approaching the 4 month mark soon and I the shedding is still just as intense. My hair is just all around thinner. I even have a bald spot I can't hide with my hair anymore. It's not really a bald 'spot' more like a bald 'line.' It's really disheartening especially when I started off with an almost full head of hair.
The hairs that are shedding are short as well as long, which according to my doctor means that hairs that originally shed and are coming back are having their growth phase cut short. That doesn't really sound like a good thing to me.
I tried cutting back my dosage like I said, and I only did it for a day before my mind got all cloudy. As soon as I got back on my normal dose, I felt a lot better. I've been on the normal dose of 1.25 mg since.
But yeah, no good news really.
Feel free to skip ahead down to the "In summary" portion if you aren't interested in the juicy details.
=========================================================================
I'm currently 21. I started noticing the first signs of a receding hairline a year ago, but when I would ask people I know about it, they kept telling me that I'm imagining things, which placed doubt in my head. Maybe I was imagining things? I wasn't. Three months ago, I became confident that my hairline was starting to recede, it just wasn't noticeable to people who weren't around my hair 24/7 like I was. Now, that probably means it wasn't bad, but I knew that the sooner I acted to fight it, the better results would be.
So I went to see a dermatologist and she told me what my options were -- that being minoxidil and finasteride. She recommended that I start using both at the same time for optimal results, which is what most of her previous patients have done and have had great results with.
I decided that I had to try one to make sure it works in isolation before starting to mix in other medications. As I discovered, this would be a smart move. I also decided that I would try finasteride first. This was for numerous reasons, it was easier to take a pill than apply an oil or foam and have to wait for hours without sweating during times I would usually be out walking under the hot sun or at the gym, since it helps stop further hair loss rather than regrow lost hairs it seemed like a better fit for the early stages of hairloss, and I wasn't seeing anyone so I thought if I experienced sexual side effects that I'd rather do so during a time when I'm single as opposed to a some future point in time when I might not be.
I started finasteride on July 14, 2018. I was prescribed a generic for Proscar, a quarter of a 5 mg capsule (1.25 mg) once a day. I haven't missed a day since I started taking it (even having to make a 4 hour round trip so I wouldn't miss a day).
Within a couple of days I started experiencing massive shedding throughout my entire head. I read that this is a normal occurrence -- that the weak hairs are jumping straight to the telogen phase of the hair cycle and so I'm going to have stick with it until it subsides. But something just seemed off with this shed. It wasn't just from the part of my head where I was experiencing hair loss (the front), but from my entire head -- top, back, and, to a much lesser extent, my sides. Plus these hairs weren't miniaturized -- they were stygian black and as thick as the miasma of hell itself. These were healthy hairs falling off my head. Not to mention that most cases of the shed happen weeks, if not months, into treatment, and though is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the shedding can last for a lot months, it seems the consensus is that it should be lasting 4 to 6 weeks.
"Whatever, it's just the shed everyone else complains about. I can get through this," I told myself. But, as I'm sure a lot of you know, it's easier said than done. As the weeks went on, the shedding got worse and worse, and I started to lose hundreds of hairs just in the morning. Heck, one morning, I decided I'd collect the hairs falling off the my head, just in the morning, before I shower, and store them Ziploc bags for each day to see if I'm getting any better. This proved to be more difficult and disheartening than I had anticipated as I was in the bathroom for 45 minutes running my hand through my hair -- there was always loose hair just falling out into my sink every time I did it. At some point, I realized this was never-ending, and that I couldn't realistically continue to do this.
"Okay, but people complain about losing hundreds of hairs while shedding too! What are the chances that I'm an outlier and that this is any different from theirs?" I kept telling myself until one of the days I realized that it wasn't just the hair on my head that was falling off. Hair all over my body was shedding at an insane rate. My chest, my shoulders, my arms, my stomach, my legs, my back, even my eyebrows to a smaller extent. The only places I didn't really experience body hair loss was my facial hair, feet hair, and knuckle hair (at least at this point/to my knowledge). I found some mentions of decrease in body hair while on finasteride attributed to the claim that high DHT is linked to body hair growth and so low DHT would be tied to the opposite, but I wasn't able to come across a case of massive shedding from most every source of hair on the human body similar to what's happening to me.
6 weeks into this nightmare, not only had my hairline receded further back (based on my hairline recession up to the point of starting finasteride, I reached a point in 6 weeks what I believe would have taken me, at a minimum, a year to get to if I hadn't started finasteride, assuming that the rate of recession stayed constant), but the the rest of my head, which had been thick and experiencing no hair loss pre-finasteride, showed evidence of aggressive thinning. Just before I started treatment, no one believed me that I was experiencing hair loss, but at the 6 week mark, people very much starting noticing and bringing it up.
Along the way I came across 'reflex hyperandrogenecity', which due to the rarity of occurrences (taking into account that even though there's plenty of people spouting about it online, that's very much a vocal minority, as someone with no issues with the treatment wouldn't be online talking about it in the first place [many forums seem to have an issue with mostly containing horror stories and failures, so if I ever have any success I'll make sure to post about it in order to provide more of a hopeful dose to those that need it]), I thought I probably wouldn't have. But the more I think about the more the it makes sense that I would be having such a reaction, even if some of the symptoms are hard to pin down. "Hyperandrogencity occurs within a week of starting treatment." Okay, checks out, it started within two days for me. "It causes acne." I had acne on my forehead before. I can't necessarily say if it's worse or not. There's not really acne anywhere else though. "It causes an increase in libido." Well, as a fairly young guy, I've always had a high sex drive. However, just before starting finasteride, for about a two or three weeks, I did have trouble getting it up, and soon after going on finasteride, the thing shot right back up. Now, those two or three weeks could have very well been an outlier due to some other trigger and my sex drive might have come back at the same point in time whether or not I had started finasteride. I feel like the first symptom is the most significant, so I fear I may actually be suffering from this.
So at that I made a it a priority to go see my dermatologist for a followup We had been talking on the phone bi-weekly up to that point, but at this point I felt like I had to see her in person in order to convey the severity of what I was going through. She had only seen me once prior in person, so her memory of my hair was must've been pretty vague, but even with that being the case she could tell that there was definite profuse thinning throughout my head. I brought up the possibility of reflex hyperandrogenicity, and she told me that she never had a patient experience something like that, which lines up with the rarity of the case. She told me that the best next step would be to get my blood tested for any internal issues in regards to my hormones.
It's now been 8 weeks. I took the lab test on Friday and was told it'd take a business week for the results to get to the Doctor. But I hate the waiting. I hate what my hair has become in such a short while. I hate that I have no idea what's going on in my body. There are times where I just stare at my hair in the mirror. I do it about every hour. No matter how much I try, I can't get it off my mind. It doesn't help that every time I fix my hair, a clump of hairs end up on my hand that I then have to go was off in the sink... under a mirror.
I know a lot of people say "Oh well you should wait 3 months before making a decision on finasteride!" And then when people 3 months in complain, the response is "Wait 6 months before making a decision!" And then they talk about waiting a year, and then they talk about waiting two. Here's the thing, I would okay with losing some hair in a shed in order to keep the rest. But I don't know if that's the case. There's a risk involved in this and the fact that my dermatologist seems perplexed by my condition should be a clear warning sign that this isn't a normal response to the medication.
I originally wanted to wait until the lab results before I make a decision on what to do, but I was just so distraught and depressed this weekend that I decided to at least try decreasing my dosage by half from 1.25 mg to 0.625 mg as an experiment to see if it'll help with the possible negative reaction I've been experiencing, with the added benefit that if it doesn't help, I'll have at least started to ween off it earlier. Today was the first day I took a reduced dose. I'll call my doctor tomorrow to ask for her advice on this.
So I went to see a dermatologist and she told me what my options were -- that being minoxidil and finasteride. She recommended that I start using both at the same time for optimal results, which is what most of her previous patients have done and have had great results with.
I decided that I had to try one to make sure it works in isolation before starting to mix in other medications. As I discovered, this would be a smart move. I also decided that I would try finasteride first. This was for numerous reasons, it was easier to take a pill than apply an oil or foam and have to wait for hours without sweating during times I would usually be out walking under the hot sun or at the gym, since it helps stop further hair loss rather than regrow lost hairs it seemed like a better fit for the early stages of hairloss, and I wasn't seeing anyone so I thought if I experienced sexual side effects that I'd rather do so during a time when I'm single as opposed to a some future point in time when I might not be.
I started finasteride on July 14, 2018. I was prescribed a generic for Proscar, a quarter of a 5 mg capsule (1.25 mg) once a day. I haven't missed a day since I started taking it (even having to make a 4 hour round trip so I wouldn't miss a day).
Within a couple of days I started experiencing massive shedding throughout my entire head. I read that this is a normal occurrence -- that the weak hairs are jumping straight to the telogen phase of the hair cycle and so I'm going to have stick with it until it subsides. But something just seemed off with this shed. It wasn't just from the part of my head where I was experiencing hair loss (the front), but from my entire head -- top, back, and, to a much lesser extent, my sides. Plus these hairs weren't miniaturized -- they were stygian black and as thick as the miasma of hell itself. These were healthy hairs falling off my head. Not to mention that most cases of the shed happen weeks, if not months, into treatment, and though is plenty of anecdotal evidence that the shedding can last for a lot months, it seems the consensus is that it should be lasting 4 to 6 weeks.
"Whatever, it's just the shed everyone else complains about. I can get through this," I told myself. But, as I'm sure a lot of you know, it's easier said than done. As the weeks went on, the shedding got worse and worse, and I started to lose hundreds of hairs just in the morning. Heck, one morning, I decided I'd collect the hairs falling off the my head, just in the morning, before I shower, and store them Ziploc bags for each day to see if I'm getting any better. This proved to be more difficult and disheartening than I had anticipated as I was in the bathroom for 45 minutes running my hand through my hair -- there was always loose hair just falling out into my sink every time I did it. At some point, I realized this was never-ending, and that I couldn't realistically continue to do this.
"Okay, but people complain about losing hundreds of hairs while shedding too! What are the chances that I'm an outlier and that this is any different from theirs?" I kept telling myself until one of the days I realized that it wasn't just the hair on my head that was falling off. Hair all over my body was shedding at an insane rate. My chest, my shoulders, my arms, my stomach, my legs, my back, even my eyebrows to a smaller extent. The only places I didn't really experience body hair loss was my facial hair, feet hair, and knuckle hair (at least at this point/to my knowledge). I found some mentions of decrease in body hair while on finasteride attributed to the claim that high DHT is linked to body hair growth and so low DHT would be tied to the opposite, but I wasn't able to come across a case of massive shedding from most every source of hair on the human body similar to what's happening to me.
6 weeks into this nightmare, not only had my hairline receded further back (based on my hairline recession up to the point of starting finasteride, I reached a point in 6 weeks what I believe would have taken me, at a minimum, a year to get to if I hadn't started finasteride, assuming that the rate of recession stayed constant), but the the rest of my head, which had been thick and experiencing no hair loss pre-finasteride, showed evidence of aggressive thinning. Just before I started treatment, no one believed me that I was experiencing hair loss, but at the 6 week mark, people very much starting noticing and bringing it up.
Along the way I came across 'reflex hyperandrogenecity', which due to the rarity of occurrences (taking into account that even though there's plenty of people spouting about it online, that's very much a vocal minority, as someone with no issues with the treatment wouldn't be online talking about it in the first place [many forums seem to have an issue with mostly containing horror stories and failures, so if I ever have any success I'll make sure to post about it in order to provide more of a hopeful dose to those that need it]), I thought I probably wouldn't have. But the more I think about the more the it makes sense that I would be having such a reaction, even if some of the symptoms are hard to pin down. "Hyperandrogencity occurs within a week of starting treatment." Okay, checks out, it started within two days for me. "It causes acne." I had acne on my forehead before. I can't necessarily say if it's worse or not. There's not really acne anywhere else though. "It causes an increase in libido." Well, as a fairly young guy, I've always had a high sex drive. However, just before starting finasteride, for about a two or three weeks, I did have trouble getting it up, and soon after going on finasteride, the thing shot right back up. Now, those two or three weeks could have very well been an outlier due to some other trigger and my sex drive might have come back at the same point in time whether or not I had started finasteride. I feel like the first symptom is the most significant, so I fear I may actually be suffering from this.
So at that I made a it a priority to go see my dermatologist for a followup We had been talking on the phone bi-weekly up to that point, but at this point I felt like I had to see her in person in order to convey the severity of what I was going through. She had only seen me once prior in person, so her memory of my hair was must've been pretty vague, but even with that being the case she could tell that there was definite profuse thinning throughout my head. I brought up the possibility of reflex hyperandrogenicity, and she told me that she never had a patient experience something like that, which lines up with the rarity of the case. She told me that the best next step would be to get my blood tested for any internal issues in regards to my hormones.
It's now been 8 weeks. I took the lab test on Friday and was told it'd take a business week for the results to get to the Doctor. But I hate the waiting. I hate what my hair has become in such a short while. I hate that I have no idea what's going on in my body. There are times where I just stare at my hair in the mirror. I do it about every hour. No matter how much I try, I can't get it off my mind. It doesn't help that every time I fix my hair, a clump of hairs end up on my hand that I then have to go was off in the sink... under a mirror.
I know a lot of people say "Oh well you should wait 3 months before making a decision on finasteride!" And then when people 3 months in complain, the response is "Wait 6 months before making a decision!" And then they talk about waiting a year, and then they talk about waiting two. Here's the thing, I would okay with losing some hair in a shed in order to keep the rest. But I don't know if that's the case. There's a risk involved in this and the fact that my dermatologist seems perplexed by my condition should be a clear warning sign that this isn't a normal response to the medication.
I originally wanted to wait until the lab results before I make a decision on what to do, but I was just so distraught and depressed this weekend that I decided to at least try decreasing my dosage by half from 1.25 mg to 0.625 mg as an experiment to see if it'll help with the possible negative reaction I've been experiencing, with the added benefit that if it doesn't help, I'll have at least started to ween off it earlier. Today was the first day I took a reduced dose. I'll call my doctor tomorrow to ask for her advice on this.
=========================================================================
In summary, after taking finasteride, what I thought was a normal shed occurred within two days, and I have been continuing to shed from all over my head and from my body more and more for about 8 weeks now. I had my blood tested and am now waiting on a response. I reduced my dosage from 1.25 mg to 0.625 today to try and see if it'll help.
I'll keep this updated with what happens with my lab results and with the decreased dosage.
With that said, any comments and advice would be appreciated. On top of that, I have a few questions that've been on my mind, which I don't expect to get definitive answers for considering even within the medical and research community, there's not really much to go off, but here goes:
Does hair lost from hyperandrogenicity come back after going off of finasteride? Do hormone levels go back to normal or is the upregulation mostly permanent? Would going off of finasteride at this point be even more catastrophic than keeping to it? I really don't want to think that I induced and accelerated my hair loss and now I'll go bald at a much much faster rate than I would have naturally just because I'm some statistical outlier, but from what I've read online, I think I only found one mention of someone regaining the hair they lost during the time they claimed they had reflex hyperandrogenicity, but their experience very well could have been a misinterpreted shed -- the rest have been negative, the hair was never regained.
Update (9/23/2018):
Okay, wow, it's been a while, but my life got hectic and I just didn't want to think about my hair so I stop coming on these forums.
Anyway, since last time, my doctor told me my lab results came back all normal, except that my vitamin D levels were slightly low, so I started taking supplements for that.
That being said, my doctor assured me that the hair I was shedding will grow back, just that the intense thinning is due to the shed being so much faster than the hair can grow. I tell myself this every day to keep me sane because my hair has only gotten worse. I'm approaching the 4 month mark soon and I the shedding is still just as intense. My hair is just all around thinner. I even have a bald spot I can't hide with my hair anymore. It's not really a bald 'spot' more like a bald 'line.' It's really disheartening especially when I started off with an almost full head of hair.
The hairs that are shedding are short as well as long, which according to my doctor means that hairs that originally shed and are coming back are having their growth phase cut short. That doesn't really sound like a good thing to me.
I tried cutting back my dosage like I said, and I only did it for a day before my mind got all cloudy. As soon as I got back on my normal dose, I felt a lot better. I've been on the normal dose of 1.25 mg since.
But yeah, no good news really.
Last edited:
