Relax, I'm hilarious's story

[Going2beBald?]

Thank you for you detailed answer, I appreciate it a lot! You gave me a much better feeling to continue using finasteride. What comes about my progress now, I would say jumping from cut to bulk, adding creatine and weight gainer (serious mass, yeah not so good but great price/calorie ratio) I've gained 0.6k-0.7g / week and my goal was 300g-500g. Anyway progress at gym has been also good for last 2 weeks, now I'm training 6 days in a week and I'm quite satisfied with it. I've talked a lot of ppl who has used finasteride on bodybuilding forums, some of them has been on finasteride and droids and the most concern comment from one guy was "I'd been on finstaeride for 12 years before stopping. Eventually the side effects catch-up with you".

Therefore I kinda freaked out and thought is that inevitable in every cases or not.

 

[Relax Im hilarious]

No worries man, exercise is a huge part of my life so it was something i took into major consideration when taking finasteride. With the guy that said he was on finasteride for 12 years before stopping then got sides, sure i reckon it's definitely possible to get sides after that amount of time, however most of the scientific evidence seems to suggest that the longer you take it the lower the side effect profile is, unfortunately for some if your going to get sides from finasteride then your probably going to get them sooner rather than later. Also as i was saying before i think once you start throwing roids into the mix it makes everything complicated, on one hand you got an external source of T which means your body stops making it, then your reducing DHT with finasteride so you've got a build up of E, this means that when you stop the T all you have is excess E floating around which can essentially crash the system and completely ruin the HPG axis in your body. Stick the the usual stuff, basic protein powders, creatine, NOS and i don't think you can go wrong.
On another note have you ever tried cycling NOS instead of creatine. I never really found creatine did that much for me so i tried nitrous (specifically a brand called six star pro N.O fury - stupid name right?) and found that was much more effective for me, gave me better workouts, it did make me a little jittery but i found combining it with a high protein and high calorie diet i made some of my fastest gains whilst on it. I used it for a month and it was great for me. Nice work on 0.6-0.7kg gains in a week thats awesome, i wish i could bulk that quickly, but i've always been lean, it gives me a great physique but really difficult to pack on extra mass, i have to fight for each kilo!

 

[IrishFella]

Hey man, how you been? Just checking in, seeing how people are doing, did you ride out the shed successfully? Hope all is well. I couldn't be happier with how my thinning temple is filling in, wouldn't mind that little bit more, maybe upping the dose to the recommended mg would help .....

 

[Relax Im hilarious]

Hey IrishFella, good to hear from you again! Rode out the shed, it got pretty bad but now back to losing the usual amount per day. Got my hair cut a lot shorter recently as it was looking a bit of a mess and it looks nice and thick which is good. Not much positive growth to report but no further loss which is always a good thing. I'm just kinda waiting for this new l'oreal stuff to come up now and try that out.
Great to hear that your temple is filling in, must be really nice to see it getting thicker how long you been on finasteride now? Doubt upping the dose would make that much difference but you don't know till you try, couldn't hurt to up to 1mg and give it a shot for 6 months, see if it gets better...

 

[HTnewbie]

Relax - are you using a generic form of finasteride or the real deal? Enjoyed reading your post.

Also...I would really appreciate any input/thoughts regarding my post in the side effects section.
http://www.hairlosstalk.com/interac...ide-effects-Considering-stopping-Any-thoughts

I am currently off of dutasteride because the side effects were night and day. I am thinking of getting back on finasteride because I did not experience any sides on it before but really didn't see any results, either. I'm planning on staying off of everything for a good month to flush everything out of my system...and hopefully get me back to my old self. I'm 32 but had a crazy sex drive and constantly had morning wood, daily wood, etc. Now it is pretty much gone completely unless I *make* it happen.

Thanks.

 

[Relax Im hilarious]

Relax - are you using a generic form of finasteride or the real deal? Enjoyed reading your post.

Also...I would really appreciate any input/thoughts regarding my post in the side effects section.
http://www.hairlosstalk.com/interac...ide-effects-Considering-stopping-Any-thoughts

I am currently off of dutasteride because the side effects were night and day. I am thinking of getting back on finasteride because I did not experience any sides on it before but really didn't see any results, either. I'm planning on staying off of everything for a good month to flush everything out of my system...and hopefully get me back to my old self. I'm 32 but had a crazy sex drive and constantly had morning wood, daily wood, etc. Now it is pretty much gone completely unless I *make* it happen.

Thanks.

Hey HTnewbie, i read your thread and i think your definitely doing the right thing getting off the dutasteride. I don't buy what other people are saying by stating just stay on it, it's your body and you know when something is wrong. I'm not completely sold on dutasteride and personally because of it's extremely high rate of DHT blockage (for both DHT receptors) i think it does have far more potential to be dangerous than finasteride. One of the problems i think is that it may mess with your head upstairs which in turn can affect you head downstairs.
If you tolerated finasteride, it's definitely worth trying it out again, if dutasteride worked for you then finasteride must do something it could just be that your hairloss is quite aggressive and finasteride isn't powerful enough to stop it but just slow it down, i remember reading that others have taken finasteride dosages of up to 2.5mg and if you can tolerate it, it may be worth trying out a higher dosage in order to see if that works.
I know some people have stated that they struggle to come off both finasteride and dutasteride because of a hormonal crash and to avoid that i would recommend weaning yourself of dutasteride instead of going cold turkey, perhaps every other day for a week then once every two days for another weeks, then once every three days for another week, then once a week, then stop. You'll be off dutasteride in a month and should parachute down rather than crash. If you then wean yourself back onto finasteride (if you choose to go back on it) that may help with the sides aswell.

As for me, I take the real deal merck propecia 1mg. It's a personal choice but i'll break down why i not only believe in branded drugs but also ordering from proper stockists and not online.
1) First, finasteride 5mg is exactly that 5mg, it's not 1mg and as much as anyone may like to think splitting it into quarters is the same as taking 1.25mg it's not. Pills aren't made that way otherwise they wouldn't make a 1mg version and hospitals wouldn't by drugs at different dosages they would just buy a generic amount and split it. When pills are made they are not made with the active ingredient equally distributed, therefore you could be getting 3.7mg one day followed by nothing, followed by 0.2mg followed by 1.1mg if you split it over four days, consider this is a hormonal controlling drug that requires steady state dosing, my belief is 1mg every day is the best way (or 0.5mg if there are side on 1mg)
2) I got my propecia from lloyds pharmacy (i'm in the UK), it costs me about £280 for a 6 months supply which is expensive, but i collect it from then, it's stored in there pharmacy in controlled conditions at controlled temperatures. My personal feeling is if you are ordering from an online pharmacy your drugs can come from anywhere around the world, aside from legitimacy, transport is an issue, if your package with medication sits in an airplane cargo hold during the flight these get *very* cold, they then may be transferred to a very hot loading area, the fluctuations in temperature are actually quite dangerous to the active ingredient in the pills and therefore could affect it. Given the difference 6 months on 'broken' propecia could make to your hair, it's a risk i am not willing to take, so i get mine from in store and store it at home in an area where i monitor the temperature with a digital thermo to make sure it's never hotter than 30 or colder than 5
3) As bad as this may make me sound, i believe in buying from drug companies because they are the only ones developing new drugs, buying their stuff at an inflated cost over the generic manufacturers helps them pay for the R&D that is needed to make new drugs. I'm not saying drug companies are all good but they are the ones actually making the drugs, generic drugs companies are actually destroying the development of new drugs and that includes the important ones like new antibiotics etc...

Hope this helps a bit

 

[HTnewbie]

Thanks for the reply, Relax. I went cold turkey a few days ago. I figure I'd rather deal with "crashing" than weaning myself off of it and having it in my system longer.

I was not on dutasteride long enough to see if it stopped my hair loss or not. The sexual sides came within days of taking it. I stayed on it thinking my body may just need to get used to it - but after a few weeks I just didn't feel like putting my body through that any more. In the past I was on generic finasteride as well as a local compounding pharmacy with a prescription. Like I said, no real results but no real sides, either. At most I did notice watery sperm once and a while but that really didn't bother me. My sex drive and performance were not effected.

Thanks again.

 

[Relax Im hilarious]

Thanks for the reply, Relax. I went cold turkey a few days ago. I figure I'd rather deal with "crashing" than weaning myself off of it and having it in my system longer.

I was not on dutasteride long enough to see if it stopped my hair loss or not. The sexual sides came within days of taking it. I stayed on it thinking my body may just need to get used to it - but after a few weeks I just didn't feel like putting my body through that any more. In the past I was on generic finasteride as well as a local compounding pharmacy with a prescription. Like I said, no real results but no real sides, either. At most I did notice watery sperm once and a while but that really didn't bother me. My sex drive and performance were not effected.

Thanks again.

No worries, was my pleasure to give any advice i can. For what it's worth i think your doing the right thing, hair is great but staying healthy is better.

 

[Relax Im hilarious]

So it's been a while since i posted here. Many apologies to anyone who actually reads this for not posting. At the end of july i basically moved city, moved house, moved job and moved in with my girlfriend so everything has been really busy at the moment hence the lack of updates. However it's been a full 12 months since i started propecia so i guess now is the time to post some more pictures.


As per usual, most of these pictures are taken with light shining on the head and after the shower with the hair brushed back so the hair is very wet, except for two at the end which show the hair brushed normal and dry. Personally i think there has been a big difference over the course of the year, my hair looks thicker and darker, it is by no means perfect but there are plenty of little hairs growing around the hairline now as well so who knows if these will thicken up or not over time.
I've had no sides as of yet and therefore will keep taking propecia every night until something better comes along. I'll keep posting with new photos now and then because i'm excited to see if the propecia continues to make a positive difference during year 2.
As i've stated in a few of my posts before, i'm going to try the l'oreal neogenic stuff when it comes out and i'll post updates in regards to that, it may be snake oil but if it does do what they claim i'm more than happy to shell out £70 a month on the stuff for the next few years until histogen or aderans or something like that becomes a reality.

 

[Night]

Looking good. Keep posting man.

 

[Relax Im hilarious]

Ok so it's been ages since i posted anything on this site, life has been good and the hair has been getting better hence the reason for less posting.
So it's now been around 1 year and 2 months (ish) on finasteride and everything seems to be going strong, no real change from the last set of pictures that i posted but i'm continuing to make progress. Some days i look at my hair and get frustrated other days it looks great. One of the great things about finasteride is that i'm genuinely seeing tiny little hairs sprouting around near my juvenile hairline.
In my case the problems has never been the hairline per se but instead i've got some diffuse thinning in a kind of NW2A pattern, it's thickened up and also the hairline is proceeding (albeit not cosmetically significant). I'd still like to have my hairline completely sorted so i could pull off any hairstyle i wanted but i'm hoping for some new treatment to do that over the next few years or off to the hair transplant Doctor it will be for me. I hope that if some injectable (like histogen) comes out the little hairs that have resprouted on the hairline thanks to propecia can be thickened up, if so brilliant.

I spoke a lot about the l'oreal neogenic on this thread a bit back and made a decision that i'm not going to take it as i couldn't offer an unbiased opinion because i'm already on propecia. So in my place my dad has been using it. For a little background, he's in his sixties, has diffuse thinning but had a full head of hair until his fifties, he's also not on any other hairloss meds and has never tried anything else in the past. He wanted to try it out as he said going bald is depressing as you no longer see yourself in the mirror but someone much older. I told him that how do you think it feels when that's happening and your in your twenties.... Needless to say, he's a lot more sympathetic to the cause now and no longer berates me for being vain.
Anyway, he doesn't want to post pictures so i'll just keep everyone updated, although i will say from the outset, with not pictures this is only anecdotal, so take what i say here about neogenic with a pinch of salt. So far he's been on it for two weeks, he says it's not that difficult to apply, each application is designed to last one day but he says it can last two for the whole scalp and there has been no change as of yet, he also stated that when it goes in your eyes it stings like a motherf***** (his words not mine).

So that's it for now, i reckon my next post probably won't be until end of november and it will be another photo update at the 1 year and 3 months mark so i can post on my progress, i'll also post on the neogenic experiment although i'm not expecting that much on that front. Until then, keep the faith everyone and watch out for the hairloss conference news out soon about histogen, fingers crossed it'll be good news.