Unless someone uses this stuff incrementally, how would anyone know if it's working? Derelict has almost the optimal hair protocol except estrogen but until his oral minoxidil effects/results are complete/stabilized, I am not sure how he would verify if it's working. Other things like oral minoxidil can be verified almost immediately as in action at least due to eyelash and body hair growth. But derma-rolling for someone already with substantial hair, in my mind, can only be verified by using it on scar tissue. If it heals/removes the scar tissue, then you know it is doing something. I am doing this at one third of a tablespoon which is 3 ml or less; the stuff is cheap but I do not believe this is a hair solution in itself. It is more similar to caffeine meaning it could be worth it if not too much trouble but don't expect too much, which is what Rob at Perfect Hair Health seems to indicate about both caffeine ingestion/shampoos and castor oil and oils in general.
They might be seen more as beauty solutions than regrowth treatments, which I do not think that they are, not in terms of restoring dormant hair but eh, I will see just like you but I am not breathless. If you read Rob's reports, with the except of his own massages, he is generally spot on and he was touting HRT as the only solution to restore a full head of hair back in September of 2017. But I am rooting for Castor Oil to do something related to sheen, growth, anagen, etc., just not hair regrowth which people always confuse with things like extending the anagen phase, which for guys, is probably half of the solution but which meds do that if any? Nobody really knows or this aspect is obscured by calling minoxidil and other things that folks use on here "growth agents" or hair loss palliatives.
Only one thing restores (slightly different from regrowth) hair from everything that I have seen, for people over the age of, well, generally 22, say and that is estradiol. Otherwise, if the follicles are dormant with high DHT levels, maintenance seems to be the goal, together with either anagen improvement or the possible salvation of follicles that weren't presenting but about to die, which might account for "regrowth" among prostate cancer patients and now we seem to have oral minoxidil which might be able to wake up dormant follicles but I don't think anyone knows yet.
This might seem like a tedious distinction but this is the difference between meds working to help guys with diffuse thinning and those with slick bald horse-shoes. The first group has been able to vastly improve, in a male context, hair by thickening the shafts and increasing the anagen phase with Min/finasteride perhaps but for the slick bald guys, these follicles are simply not functional any longer and somehow estrogen either heals them or "turns them back on" in terms of gene expression.
AA's from what I have seen cannot do this without the concomitant use of estrogen and for people over 40, using AA's without estrogen can be dangerous and debilitating to bone structure which is largely produced by estrogens. So what are AA's purported to do in the absence of estrogen? If they are raising E2 and lowering T, then why not use estrogen? I don't get it and Derelict and others have such good other meds that I am not sure that they can distinguish what these AA's are supposed to do. The other thing is that estrogen is natural and endogenous and you can take it for life parenterally without issue. The AA's are all synthetic, including duta, bica, spironolactone, cpa and mpa/provera and then might be either contraindicated if used for life. They also appeared to be highly correlated with sheds on the
@bridgeburn thread. Now sheds might be a good thing in the long-run, especially for MtF's but they could be cataclysmic for cis-guys that immediately stop hormonal treatments because the benevolent estrogen healing is halted all at once and then the follicles have to grow back in a testosterone atmosphere.
Some of this might seem off-topic but the theme of proving or at least establish correlations related to which treatments work and how is very important to the hair loss field. I get that this is involved with prostaglandins but I don't seem to see many people touting their success except in terms of conjecture, i.e., they should work many guys state on here if you follow the intricate connections and flow charts but in actuality, they are not a solution. I took my aspirin this morning and I will take my 3 ml and hope for vague improvements in thickness, sheen or other factors not related to turning dormant follicles back on. Goddess bless as it is Her Spirit, Estrogen that heals while testosterone destroys.