It's just an idea, I'm seeing more people complain about thinning/shedding on topical dutasteride than I'm seeing anything about regrowth. Safe? sure, but if it's doing the opposite of what people want to the point where they have to resort to a research chemical anyway, it seems a little counterproductive, no?
Anyway, back on topic. Hopefully we can get more positive anecdotes from people running this, because as stated before, it's been pretty quiet for how long this thread has been going.
I appreciate your skepticism, because we need to stay realistic when exploring avenues like these. That being said:
- The forums are full with people reporting shedding on
oral dutasteride and even oral finasteride, to the point where you'd start believing it's basically guaranteed, even though it never seems to be reported on in any of the studies.
- People haven't been using it for that long yet, despite the length of the thread. Even oral dutasteride/finasteride often takes months to show visible results - if any, because maintenance is another possible and honestly more likely outcome in this case. But more difficult to measure.
- Some of the things people are reporting are just impossible to make sense of or draw conclusions from. The other day someone mentioned that they saw a decrease in shedding, but his hairshafts had lost diameter. All that after a single month.
- Complicating things, people are adopting wildly different approaches. Sonictemples and I for example are adopting the same approach (low doses, building up the effect in the scalp over time, while giving the body time to recover and thus avoid systemic build-up). This approach is similar to Mazzarella's topical finasteride study. As was the case there, if it works, it's going to take a while for any results to show up. And it's more likely to be maintenance. I'm really not expecting regrowth, honestly.
- But not everyone is doing that. Some people use it daily, needle before/after applying it, use huge doses, or are constantly adjusting their dosage/vehicle. Which brings me to my next point:
- And almost noone is actually getting consistent bloodtests. So whatever results they're reporting or will be reporting in the future (be it negative
or positive) will be hard to draw any conclusions from, because it might be the same results they'd have gotten if they were taking it orally.
Considering the above, I'd say that almost everything that's been reported up to this point hasn't been particularly useful. It's just people reporting strange side-effects (the wide variety of effects people seem to be getting from 5ar-inhibitors still surprise me), shedding and thinning. Basically as it is with finasteride/dutasteride in general on these forums. It's interesting, sure, but I've given up on trying to draw conclusions from it.