I am OP.
I was using it for 6 months or so and it was acting effectively at stopping hair loss, but in the last 3 weeks I have began shedding large amounts again.
I have no idea if it is a shedding cycle or the drug has just stopped working as with finasteride I had good results straight off the bat (just like CB), but then began shedding after about 1 and a half months with insane increased itch, and it didn't ever look like slowing down, so after 7 months in total I hopped off (as my hairline had taken a hammering).
CB appears to maybe have followed a similar pattern (albeit after ~6 months this time). And I'm not really prepared to try and "ride it out" as I'm at a point where I can't afford to lose any more hair line.
One thing to note is that I bought seti and thought I would try the stemox on it's own for a week (because I just wanted to be 100% sure that that hadn't been what had been treating my hair loss successfully instead of the CB); and then tried 5% CB (up from 2.5%) in PG/ ethanol for a further week. It was at this point (about 3 days in on the 5%), that my hair started itching noticeably more and the shedding in the shower kicked off.
Since then I have moved back to 2.5% in stemox in vain for ~3 weeks, but the shedding continues.
I think I may focus on seti sodium, PGE2 and SM + .25 mm needling for penetration and see what happens; leaving the CB out of it for now.
2.5 ml BID, 1 ml per application in frontal and temples.
It's not the best but I think this will be enough to see a little change (Or at least maintenance)
Norwood 1 / 1.5 with diffuse thinning. At this point, in a few months I probably go to Norwood 2.
My biggest question arises from the acceleration in the fall. Will it be a shedding? Could it be the hair are not healty and accelerates the process of falling on hairs that are not healthy? Will it be back in a few months with greater thickness? For now I do not know, but I will continue with this experiment for at least a year.
The only sure thing at this point is that when I left the CB for a few days the itching was fierce (Even much greater than I had before starting treatment).
In finasteride I had bad results, I went from an inexistance itch to an itching that wake me up at night !! It was violent. I used it for 6 months, I lost a little density and I left it, I felt a little depressed (it was probably something psychological, I don't want to blame the finas without a concrete foundation), but the most important thing is that I left it because I didn't saw results
Sorry for my English.
I had similar results on finasteride too as I posted in above comment.
One thing to note is I have gut issues (or some similar health concern), and I believe that precipitated my hair loss at 18 and is responsible for these treatments ultimately not being effective.
