August 6 2008, 3:36 pm PT | Posted in: Drugs
I been reading that Propecia doesn’t help on receding hairlines. But what does that mean? Does it mean if you are a NW2 which is normal and you start to recede beyond that, Propecia won’t stop that or help you get back there?
My case: I’m 22 years old and am on a little more then a NW2 which is fine with me. But 3cm into my hairline the hair is less full (not obvious but I know) and the hair around the temples are becoming short. So Propecia won’t help me there? I noticed this problem like 4 months ago and just started Propecia. I have no family history of MPB except my father but he was in his 40s when it began.
Directly from the Propecia.com website: “There is not sufficient evidence that PROPECIA works for receding hairlines at the temples.”
It has been shown to treat hair loss primarily affecting the vertex (top of the head) and the anterior mid scalp area (where it sounds like you are having some of your problems). This does not mean that Propecia won’t help you. You need to be on it at least 8-9 months before you see any benefits of the drug. For you, there may be a beneficial effect on the frontal hairline, temples, etc and I have personally seen some wonderful results on the frontal area (including the hairline), although it is not common. Its best effect is on young men who have miniaturization in the frontal area that is not advanced. In these patients, the frontal hair loss may reverse. People can react differently to the same medication. You will also benefit from a miniaturization study to determine exactly which areas of your scalp that are mostly affected, thus determining if you indeed have male pattern baldness.
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Balding Forum
I think it’s more of a scam that they say it will take that long to see results and if it takes that long, how do you know that it actually works? I took it for a while and I didn’t really notice any difference except that I kept having to pay for those pills every money. I don’t really know of anything out there that really works great for hairloss.
Ok,I will exactly explain why propecia less often helps on the frontal zones than in the back of the hair. Everyone can produce somewhere about 8 hair’s on the root of every hair that normally will last for about 5 to 10 years on your head, before falling out and being replaced by the next one. This means that if we all got as old 200, everyone would be getting bald, including women.
The problem which causes (alot of) men to bald to a degree is that this time of 5 to 10 years is speed up by a male hormone called Dihitestosteron. This hormones makes this hair cycle of 5 to 10 years to speed up more and more to shorter periods of time. The cycle will go from 10 years, to 3 years, to 1 year, to 6 month etc. Everytime the hair will have a shorter period to grow and will look thinner and shoter than the one before. Like if your hair looks thinning, you problably have run out 6 of the 8 hairs you will ever get on that location. Because the hair cycle is so short on those hairs, they appear thin and short. So if hairs are becoming shorter, it’s a sign the hair cycle is becoming shorter and shorter.
So long before you actually see yourself balding, you are actually already running out of the 8 hairs on 1 location that you have in stock for the rest of your life.
So then why does propecia work better at the back than the front of the head?
Well that has to do with the differnt WAYS most men loose on their front compared to their backside. Most men RECEIDE on their frontal sides, and (SLOWLY) get THINNER on the back of their heads. This means that on the frontside they have already run out of ALL the 8 hairs they had in stock on that location, while on the back their hairloss is more visible because most hairs have become small and thin because the cycle has become shoter.
Then how does propecia fix that?
Propecia reduces the amount of Dihitestoron in the blood by about 70%, which results in those periods that hair can grow become LONGER. This means those hairs have a longer chance to become LONGER and THICKER, which results in a more covered head of hair. But if you already USED UP all your 8 hairs on that location, there is just nothing more that can grow there
Because most guys run out of the 8 hairs they have in their most frontal zone, before the balding goes further, there are no hairs left when the dihistestron levels are reduced by propecia. They more or less run out of their whole hairstock on that location
Unlike most guys, I now begin getting thinner hair in the front of my hair, while my hairline has not changed yet (it just appears thinner). This means there are still a few or at least 1 hair that has a chance to grow bigger now that I am on propecia. I take it about 6 months now and i notice that the frontal zone does get thicker and longer hair, just as I kinda had predicted. The only downside is that I problably don’t have that many of those 8 hairs left in stock in my frontal area. So eventually I will run out of them and get bald there as well, although I am slowing it down. But as long as I can take propecia this process of running out of your ’stock hair’is slowed down, EVEN in ALL the zones of hair that still look thick and unaffected by balding on top of your head (sides never bald). Before my frontal hair went thinner, I did notice my most frontal
would not become as long as my other hair (I had long hair at that time). I did not know this had anything to do with balding, since I never read anything about balding before I was actually noticed I was starting to bald. So when you even see your hairs getting shorter, I would advice starting propecia right away. This will (for some time) prevend you from balding, even before may actually SEE the result of the balding by getting thinner hair or less at hair at certain regions.