About     Contact     Archives     Videos     Events     Hair Transplant

I read a post on your website that said 0.5 mg of finasteride is %80 as effective as 1 mg. I decided to try it. I wanted to see if I could get the same results with less medicine in my body…and possibly save a ton of money.

It didn’t work. I did it for about 7 weeks and lost ground in the front. I actually used .625 because it was a Proscar pill. I was on 1mg for 6 months doing wonderfully before that so I’m hoping now that I’ve gone back up to 1mg I’ll grow back what I lost since it was only 7 weeks.

Terrible advice!!!

It wasn’t advice! Nowhere in that post you’re referencing did I tell you (or anyone) to change the dosing of your prescription medication. The tidbit about “.5mg is 80% as effective” is something I read about, and not something I ever instructed anyone to try without talking to your doctor first. Changing the dose of finasteride is something you and your doctor need to discuss. I am not your doctor.

When I see a patient where I recommend a lower dose of finasteride, it us almost always because of side effects. I always give the warning that although it may work, it will be less effective than the therapeutic dose of 1mg. Just because I write about what we do for our patients under given circumstances, that does not imply that we are recommending a particular treatment to you personally. If you did it on your own and something goes wrong, don’t point the finger at us.

Hello Doctor,

I find the article on the invention of new molecule QR 678 for stimulating hair growth in one of India’s top newspapers. Here is the link to access the website of the clinic.

Please let me know your view on this. Best regards

There must’ve been quite the media blitz about QR678 in India, because I got a bunch of emails from people in that region asking about this.

First, I don’t like to depend upon a single set of tiny photographs with different lighting to determine hair growth… and that’s what I see in the article. A proper study would have been “blind” so that a placebo group is compared with a treatment growth in a statistically valid protocol. That’s not what this article points to, so I would be reluctant to believe anything that is not done the way I know proper research needs to be done and validated.

In digging a little deeper, one of the creators of QR678 says that there was a double-blind study done and he even summarizes the results on his blog, but as of writing this post, I’ve not seen the actual study nor has it been published in a peer-reviewed journal where it can be evaluated for legitimacy by qualified professionals. Thus, I’m forced to look at QR678 on its own merits and treat it like any other hair loss treatment that I’m asked about.

So many companies and doctors are trying to be among the first to offer a new stem cell treatment (because “stem cells” are great buzzwords right now) and from what I am understanding, that’s what this seems to be. It seems that this is something (stem cells?) injected into the scalp 8 times followed by a lotion rubbed on the scalp. As any regular reader of this blog knows already, I’m a skeptic about the majority of new hair loss treatments announced, and this case is no exception. The evidence is severely lacking that QR678 does what it claims, and so far, I’ve yet to see the proof beyond high praise from the creators of the product itself.

Hi dr,
I know you cannot endorse using Avodart, but I wonder if you can answer this question….

I’ve been using Avodart for several years along with Propecia. I take Avodart once a week because of the long half life. I’m curious to know since you probably hear from many people using Avodart, how often do they take it? I’m mostly curious about the ones who report seeing good results with it.

thanks

No one really knows how to take Avodart (dutasteride) for treating hair loss, but most doctors (for reasons I do not understand) recommend daily doses. The long half life is reason enough to take it less often than daily, but I am not an expert on it and the proper dose hasn’t been published yet. I must remind the casual readers that I’m not suggesting anyone should take Avodart to treat their hair loss at this point as it is not FDA approved for such use.

Off the top of my head, I know of one other patient that reported taking Avodart just once a week with good results, but the emails I get from patients that take Avodart don’t usually say how often they take it. For those that do take Avodart, feel free to post your dosing in the comments.

Hello,
Can a hormone imbalance or a thyroid problem cause hair loss in the form of a severe receding hairline or would hair loss from a thyroid condition or a hormone imbalance cause loss throughout the scalp.

thank you

Low thyroid levels can cause hair thinning and brittle, dry hair (plus other non-hair-related symptoms), but it does not necessarily cause a receding hairline. Receding hairlines are mainly a genetic presentation of androgenic alopecia seen in men.

Hormone imbalance in itself does not necessarily cause hair loss… and there are hundreds of hormones to pick from!

Snippet from the story:

Jambo baldly goes where few chimps in a Brit zoo have gone before - after losing all his hair.

The 28-year-old suffers from the hair-loss disease alopecia.

Read the rest at The Sun UK

I’ve been reading about this bald chimpanzee for many years, so I’m glad to read that he’s still alive and popular with zoo visitors.

I found an article from 1997 about the same chimp that said he was regrowing his hair due because of a “secret cream made from goat’s milk and hedgerow plants” … but obviously that isn’t the case. I wish secret creams worked as well as advertised.