I've decided to write this tutorial to help all those guys in need. I started losing my hair when I was 14 years old. It was devastating to see my hair go at such a young age and I knew I had to do something about it. While I was reluctant to try any form of medication during my teens, I really didn't do much to help stop the hair-loss for the first few years that I noticed it happening. The type of hair-loss I was noticing was the kind that occurs at the front and slowly recedes, giving most men what appears as a large forehead.
At 17, I started to use 2%
Minoxidil. Unfortunately, it didn't do much to stop the hair-loss, but it did increase my self-esteem knowing that I was doing something to help. I guess how you perceive things
psychologically can have a major effect on the outcome.
Fast track at 21, I started to use Propecia (1 mg). Surprisingly, the first or second day I used this, my hair-loss stopped completely; it was such a victorious feeling. The only downfall was that it was terribly expensive and I could not afford it as a student. By this time, my hairline had receded, but it wasn't visible unless and pulled it back and gelled it slick. Anyways, rather than worrying about the money, I decided to use
Finasteride (Proscar) (5 mg) which technically has the same ingredient as Propecia (Finasteride). Rather than eating 5 mg of this powerful medicine, I used to break the tablet into 4's (1.25 mg) per piece. Where I used to get it, it cost me 60 dollars for 30 pills - a month's supply - but since I would break it into quarters, 60 dollars would get me, well, a four-month supply of this stuff.
After enjoying 2 years of absolutely no hair-loss and thick hair (aww the good old days), my scalp started to itch! Obviously I would scratch where it itched and every time I did that, hair would shed (yikes). It got so bad that I remembered my teenage years when every hair literally started to thin. The thinning now was so bad that I could even see my scalp under strong light! For some reason, the drug's
efficacy decreased and it no longer was doing its job like it did for the longest time. Rather than freaking out, I tried to use
Dutasteride (Avodart), which is a
5-alpha-reductase inhibitor, similar to Finasteride, but a little bit stronger. If you've ever taken the two drugs, Finasteride comes in a solid powder form, while Dutasteride comes in a yellow liquid capsule form. When I tried Dutasteride for the first week, the hair-loss stopped right away. After that 1-week grace period, my hair started to shed once more - now it was even worse. Not only that, the drug was so powerful that it would burn my stomach every time I ingested a capsule. Rather than overdosing with Dutasteride and risking a possible ulcer, I literarily threw away the three full packages I purchased - at that point, I reasoned that I rather be healthy and have no hair, than to be in the hospital with a full set of hair.
Anyways, I quickly reverted back to Finasteride, but rather than using the 1.25 mg dose I used to use, I began to experiment with higher doses. Technically, whenever you want to counter an efficacy issue, you increase the dose (a
pharmacology dogma). I started using a 3 mg dose for the first week I reverted back and slowly made it to 5 mg's a day! Believe it or not, this helped! Feeling confident, I ordered Minoxidil again, but this time a 5% concentration (recall I started with a 2%). Let me tell you straight-up, this was the worst decision I ever made, because as soon as I started using it, I started to develop terrible
dandruff that would suffocate my scalp. Not only that, when you take high doses of Finasteride, a lot of the excess drug is secreted from your scalp, so I think using the medication combined wasn't the best decision. I've also read that high doses of Minoxidil actually restarts the hair-cycle and acts as a
vasodilator, thereby causing the hair you have to shed. My
hypothesis came true and that's exactly what started to happen - man, I should have just stuck with the good-old Finasteride rather than being too confident with my decisions.
Continued ...
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