i started losing hair close to being 17 and then started to take finasteride + Minoxidil when i was around 19/20. Didn't even do a blood test to check if dht and testo levels were normal or anything, i kind of casually told my doctor about my hairloss and that i had bald family members, and after talking for a couple of minutes he prescribed me the drugs.
i took it for around 9 months or a little more and, minor side effects aside, i didnt see any improvement at all. i tried other stuff while on finasteride, like putting an oil on my head made of natural ingridients that supposedly help stop DHT, and while i did see some hair growing back, those never really grew more even after months and i still kept losing a lot of hair everyday. despite doing diet, sleep schedule, finasteride, minoxidil, natural oils, derma rolling, massages, supplemetns (vitamin D, saw palmetto, Biotin, Omega-3) and other stuff but nothing helped.
one thing i should note; sugar makes my hair thin a lot. i used to have a diet with almost ZERO sugar (only vegetables and fish or meat) and it still thinned my hair after just 5-10 minutes of eating a small fruit or anything with sugar in it, i also get mildly bloated after eating it.
another very important thing to note: my mother used to "take away" finasteride from me. i mean that she would fake searching for my finasteride's description, hide it from me and persuade me to stop taking it. keep in mind, i was kind of mentally unstable at the time, but thats because everything really sucked back then and it wasnt just the hair (even tho it really did have a huge weight on me) and couldnt get help.
i started by taking the 1mg doses (red pills), but after losing the prescription, the only finasteride i could buy without it would only come on a dose of 5mg (blue pills). i used to split them with a pill cutter in 4 pieces and store them in the pills cutter's non air tight holder (finasteride pills apparently lose effectiveness when the inside is exposed to air). i was really desperate and even tried taking around 1/3 of the 5mg dose on alternate days. no improvements and no new side effects i would say, but i do want to do some tests and get help before even thinking about trying again (now im getting close to 24yo). im really ashamed of myself for this, looking back i still understand why i did things that way and i wished i had the help i needed, my parents only made the situation 10x worse.
i took it for around 9 months or a little more and, minor side effects aside, i didnt see any improvement at all. i tried other stuff while on finasteride, like putting an oil on my head made of natural ingridients that supposedly help stop DHT, and while i did see some hair growing back, those never really grew more even after months and i still kept losing a lot of hair everyday. despite doing diet, sleep schedule, finasteride, minoxidil, natural oils, derma rolling, massages, supplemetns (vitamin D, saw palmetto, Biotin, Omega-3) and other stuff but nothing helped.
one thing i should note; sugar makes my hair thin a lot. i used to have a diet with almost ZERO sugar (only vegetables and fish or meat) and it still thinned my hair after just 5-10 minutes of eating a small fruit or anything with sugar in it, i also get mildly bloated after eating it.
another very important thing to note: my mother used to "take away" finasteride from me. i mean that she would fake searching for my finasteride's description, hide it from me and persuade me to stop taking it. keep in mind, i was kind of mentally unstable at the time, but thats because everything really sucked back then and it wasnt just the hair (even tho it really did have a huge weight on me) and couldnt get help.
i started by taking the 1mg doses (red pills), but after losing the prescription, the only finasteride i could buy without it would only come on a dose of 5mg (blue pills). i used to split them with a pill cutter in 4 pieces and store them in the pills cutter's non air tight holder (finasteride pills apparently lose effectiveness when the inside is exposed to air). i was really desperate and even tried taking around 1/3 of the 5mg dose on alternate days. no improvements and no new side effects i would say, but i do want to do some tests and get help before even thinking about trying again (now im getting close to 24yo). im really ashamed of myself for this, looking back i still understand why i did things that way and i wished i had the help i needed, my parents only made the situation 10x worse.