Here it is, finally a more complete update on what I've been up to:
Six through Eleven Month Update
Date: 4/24/2012
Topics: Interim Pictures,
Copper Peptides: Folligen & Emu Oil,
Break from Minoxidil, spironolactone, & MSM,
Current Shed,
Return to MSM, Increasing Omega-3s,
Copper Peptides: AHK-Cu,
Updated Regimen
Let me take this chance to give some updates on progress since my last update at the end of month 5. Not much happened between October and March: I tried Folligen, Emu Oil, and took an involuntary break from all the topicals. I’ll provide some details on those topics and discuss where things go from here.
Interim Pictures
Although I wasn’t able to snap pictures as religiously for months 6, 7, 8, and 9, I was able to find a few pics taken by others in which you can see the progress along the way.
Here are three from December, at about the seven month mark:
This one really benefited from low light and low resolution
same day
This was in January, month 8, kind of the opposite: harsh light and a wispy hair day:
I think things were at their peak at about the seven month mark in December, I’ve given up a little ground to shedding (and unrelated stress!) since then, these were in early March, through nine-and-a-half months of treatment:
So that’s about the best picture I can paint with the few available photos from the past few months, now let me catch you up on the treatment developments since then:
Copper Peptides: Folligen & Emu Oil
Last November (month 6), as my regimen had been well rounded out with keto/finasteride/minoxidil/spironolactone/Retin-A and was showing a lot of positive regrowth, I was naturally looking for the next step to take it up a notch. Integrating one of the few SOD-mimetic copper peptide products out there seemed like a natural fit. To sum it up briefly, these products (Tricomin, Folligen, Graftcyte) mimic an antioxidant produced naturally in the body which may help reduce inflammation and fight perifollicular fibrosis, ensuring a healthier substrate for further growth. Each commercially available option has its own drawbacks though: Tricomin uses an undisclosed amount of the active ingredient, Folligen uses an unknown composition of peptides, and Graftcyte is too expensive to be practical long-term.
Seeing no perfect option out there I decided to give Folligen a shot – it promises a larger volume of varied peptides despite not disclosing specifically which peptides nor in what concentrations. There is a long history on the genesis of these products and their founder Dr. Loren Pickart. Sparing you the anecdotes which can be found readily via a quick search, I jumped in to the Folligen game and picked up the recommended Emu Oil to add as a final topical everyday.
The results after several weeks of use: it sucks. I didn’t give it long enough to say whether it helped with anything or not, but the stuff turns your scalp a bluish yellow color and smells like rotting stinky feet, rendering the product too inconvenient to use with respect to its already speculative value proposition. I also hated the Emu Oil – made my hair greasy, thin-looking, and didn’t necessarily make it feel any more moisturized or better in any way. So I scrapped the Folligen & Emu Oil for the sake of convenience – there’s no reason to double the inconvenience of my regimen for a very unclear benefit. It’s not a complaint against the idea of copper peptides in general, just that those products (and I’m going to make assumptions about Tricomin’s suspiciously low concentration as rendering it not maximally effective) don’t offer what I need in a hair loss solution.
That said I still wanted to harness the benefit of copper peptide technology, and was fortunate enough to have access to a group purchase of the mother of all copper peptide formulations – AHK-Cu. I’ll get to that point in a moment, but suffice it to say Folligen as a cosmetic product is
not for me.
Break from Minoxidil, spironolactone, & MSM
I also need to mention my first slip-up in the treatment process. After seven solid months on the treatment plan, in January, I found myself really busy with work and some other business and unable to dedicate the usual amount of time to the hair care system. It’s a problem many of you probably come to at some point in your treatment, and inevitably I found myself there as well. I ran out of MSM and minoxidil and just couldn’t get a shopping list and order together quick enough. I think I had partly grown weary of the twice daily topical regimen also, as I still had spironolactone on hand but stopped using that during this period as well. Surprisingly, about a month went by, between January and February in which I didn’t use any topicals and cut some of the supplements as well, no MSM for about a month and a half and was also out of biotin for about two weeks. Finally, towards the end of February I got it together and got back on the horse again with 2mL of 5% liquid minoxidil twice daily. There was no visible damage at that point, nor would there be expected to be immediately, but, starting about one month later, in late March, I noticed my first major shed…
Current Shed
So I’m currently enjoying my first major shed. I really never got one even when I started treatment…it was nothing for two months then during the third and fourth month on finasteride and minoxidil just TONS of new growth, without an unusually high amount of shedding. Now, finishing my eleventh month of treatment I’m finally giving up some of those initial gains. I suspect it’s related to the aforementioned break from minoxidil, but I really have no way of knowing. I’m keeping a positive attitude about it and staying disciplined in my regimen from here on out, relying on the adage that sheds suck but always come back stronger, so let’s get this over with and bring on round 2 of new growth!
Return to MSM, Increasing Omega-3s
At the beginning of month 11, one month after getting back on the horse with twice daily 5% liquid minoxidil, I resupplied on MSM and went back to the 3g daily intake.
Also, after reading more research on the benefits of Omega-3s EPA and DHA I’ve been led to believe that maximum brain and cardiovascular benefits are achieved between 1g and 2g of combined EPA & DHA intake. People taking it for cholesterol reduction are advised to go up to 3g to 4g daily, but that sounds a little heavy to me at the moment. So instead of taking 3x 300mg supplements daily for 900mg EPA & DHA, I’ve increased this to 1.5g daily from Now Foods’ Ultra Omega-3s, which contain EPA and DHA in a ratio of 2:1, so I’m taking 1g EPA and 500mg DHA daily, plus I eat fish once or twice a week so that should provide additional natural intake of Omega-3s. The only other change to supplementation is the seasonal addition of 50mg zinc picolinate daily as part of the AHK-Cu copper peptide treatment, which I’ll discuss now:
Copper Peptides: AHK-Cu
Being unwilling to compromise on the practicality of Folligen and unwilling to speculate on the therapeutic effect of the unknown concentration of copper peptides in Tricomin, I’ve opted for the slightly impractical but more precise method of purchasing bulk AHK-Cu copper peptides and mixing my own topical solution at 2.5% - 5% concentration. I’m planning to continue the experiment with AHK-Cu for the next six months, from May 1 through October 31, 2012.
There is a large, burgeoning literature on the role SOD and its mimetics like copper peptides play in various biological functions, and a small volume of literature focuses on its benefits for dermal health and hair loss. A study from Seoul National University is circulating the web that showed hair regrowth benefits at a 2.5% AHK-Cu concentration under a variety of alternative vehicles (but also yielded cell death at higher concentrations). That study on PubMed:
http://tiny.cc/3oyadw, and full-text:
http://tiny.cc/pryadw. You can read a ton about SOD on Wikipedia so I’ll spare you the discourse here. Basically AHK-Cu is showing promise for wound healing, skin regeneration, and hair regrowth because of its SOD-like antioxidant effects, which may help reduce inflammation and even reverse follicular fibrosis.
I spent a lot of time looking for a suitable delivery mechanism though. My routine already involves liquid minoxidil and spironolactone cream twice daily, so adding another liquid or cream would be quite a burden. The ideal solution would be to mix 1.4g into 56g (one 2oz bottle) liquid minoxidil to create a 5% minoxidil / 2.5% AHK-Cu solution. The liquid minoxidil I use is based on an alcohol, PG, and water vehicle (Kirkland, Equate), which would be a suitable vehicle if not already saturated – but lately there have been some anecdotes reported about AHK-Cu possibly interfering with minoxidil’s method of action, so I’m going to opt to spread out the application of AHK at least 6 hours from minoxidil.
One option is to make my own vehicle of water, ethyl alcohol, and PG (AHK-Cu is water soluble), but this is a bit unproven and a bit of a PITA. Taking a slightly more expensive but assured route, I’ve purchased a 6 oz / 180 mL bottle of Tricomin ($42.50) to which I’ll add 1.33g of AHK-Cu to each 2 oz / 60 mL (56.6g) of Tricomin, to yield a solution of 2.35% AHK-Cu plus the amount already in the Tricomin, rumored to be in the range of
.25 – 1%. From there I can apply 1 mL of the solution twice daily (or 2 mL once daily depending on the practicality, which I’ll confirm after the initial rounds of experimentation).
Finally, I’ll be adding a 50mg zinc picolinate supplement during the time I’m taking the AHK-Cu, the danger being that the cleaved Cu can accumulate in the body, triggering things like tinnitus and Wilson’s syndrome if the copper-to-zinc ratio goes out of equilibrium. These problems can hopefully be mitigated by keeping zinc intake equivalently high so that the copper-zinc ratio doesn’t stray too far from the norm. Amazon has 180 tabs of 50mg zinc picolinate for $10 which will last my full 6 month course, so the incremental cost is minimal. I’ll monitor things carefully and keep you posted on any changes here.
For reference, here is a thread I started here on HairLossTalk.com about the optimal concentration of AHK-Cu to use:
http://tiny.cc/ulyadw, some good info inside – I’m going to quote one question and my response (post #24) here about AHK and shedding.
jonson said:
I use the ahk For between month or two and yesterday i noticed a little weird bald spot, could it be because the ahk? Maybe it is not good for me?
It is not a bald spot, it's more like my hairloss got worse what mean 2 options:
1)the ahk works and it just the shed of starting a treatment.
2)other thing.
I use it in cream vehicle twice a day 2.5% formula.
I use it between. Month or two.
TheLastHairbender said:
Heck man, I don't know, and further I don't think there exists a man who could tell you with any certainty what might be happening. I wasn't aware a priori that AHK would cause sheds; the study on DPCs was a short-term study that found elongation of the shafts, etc, without ever having gone through catagen to anagen phases, so there was no shedding in their study of what are, effectively, cultured har follicles. I have seen a few other people report something similar though, so let me ask:
Do you also use minoxidil? Have your minoxidil usage patterns changed at all within the last three months or so? I stopped using minoxidil for 2-3 weeks back in late January / early February and my hair has been coming out in droves since mid-March, so there can be a delay of several weeks to several months before the effects of minoxidil discontinuation are apparent.
It's also possible that the usage of AHK-Cu topically has impeded the penetration of minoxidil into the scalp. Several others have reported similar minoxidil-like sheds after using AHK for a few weeks. One hypothesis is that the AHK has some effect on scalp tissue that prevents minoxidil from penetrating as well as it does in the absence of AHK. This could be true even if you wash your hair in between using AHK and minoxidil...the idea is that the AHK is changing something favorably right? But we have no way to rule out that diminished dermal permeability is one way the scalp is changing in response to AHK-Cu treatment. This would imply that it's not a transitory shed you're experiencing, but basically the effects of coming off minoxidil, which means hair loss that will be permanent unless you find a way to once again deliver minoxidil to the scalp, which probably means coming off the AHK and returning to a full-course of minoxidil, then play the waiting game. Remember this is only a possible scenario.
An alternate is that the AHK is actually improving permeability of the scalp and providing more minoxidil to the follicles, in much the way that Tretinoin/Retin-A is thought to do. That would mean your shed is one of the temporary 'minoxidil sheds', a widespread shifting of follicles into their anagen (growth) phase that precipitates an explosion of new, thicker hair. The effect would be synonymous with someone switching up from 5% to 15% minoxidil...many people report an aggressive shed at first, followed by a renewal of new, thick hair from the increased minoxidil dosage. This is obviously the better scenario.
I can't think of any simple observation that can distinguish between these two hypotheses...besides continuing to do what you're doing and see if hair ever grows there again, but I don't know if you're interested in taking those chances. Maybe someone else can chime in. It's possible if you go tell a doctor you've been experimenting with off-label homebrew topicals and now you're losing your hair maybe he'd do a biopsy and assay your dermal papilla...then we'd all get to know the answer!
Well, if you're taking minoxidil, that is.
Last question: Are you supplementing with any form of zinc while you're taking AHK? You really should...the zinc:copper ratio is a first-order relationship that shouldn't get out of whack, some people reported the aggravation of latent tinnitus after several weeks of AHK use, which is indicative of a zinc deficiency and/or copper overload. Here are some other symptoms that would be expected of zinc deficiency
http://tinyurl.com/ckvtk55 or copper toxicity
http://tinyurl.com/6qewhcf, although I haven't heard any of them reported among AHK users except for the tinnitus bit. Monitor carefully for any of that stuff if you decide to continue treatment, and think about popping a 25-50mg zinc picolinate supplement everyday, you can get 6 months' worth on Amazon for $10:
http://tinyurl.com/7rbe3xs.
Unfortunately the only known resource on peoples' experience with AHK has been withdrawn, so there is now a lack of information about even the limited precedent we did have to go on. You poor guys a couple months deep on heavy AHK trials and no shared information resources anymore - I feel for you, nobody said it was easy to be the avant garde of hair loss.
Updated Regimen
I’m still waiting to get my digital camera back to provide some fresh pictures, I tried with a cell phone and laptop camera but they just couldn’t cut it in my bathroom’s small space and harsh light, the comparison to my former photos would not be direct. I’ll have fresh month 11 pics up ASAP. For now, here’s a recap of my updated regimen:
Inflammation
Keto 2% Shampoo, 2-3x/week
*TRIAL: AHK-Cu ~2.5% 1mL 2x/day for 6 mo, May – Nov
with 50mg daily Zinc Picolinate
DHT
Finasteride 1.25mg/day
Spironolactone 5% 1mL 2x/day
Growth
Minoxidil 5% 2mL 2x/day
*ON HOLD: Retin-A .05% ~250mg 1x/day
Supplements
Multi 1x/day
Omega-3s 1.5g/day 2:1 EPA-DHA
Biotin 5mg/day
MSM 3g/day
Future:
Inflammation
-AHK-Cu Trial, more spin traps: PBN, TEMPO/TEMPOL
-Try Aminexil, 6w every 6mo, to reduce fibrosis
DHT
-Replace spironolactone with RU or CB?
-Add Fluridil or ASC?
Growth
-Switch up to 15% minoxidil for one month
-Bimatoprost
-Miconazole
-Adenosine/Adenogen
Or:
Just switch everything to finasteride & Spectral DNC-L and be done with it
Formerly: Saw Palmetto, Nioxin (weak), Folligen (smells)
Feel free to ask any questions, I’ll be around to help each of you reach your regrowth goals any way I can. Thanks again!