Male Detail

I was about 24 when I first started to really notice my hair loss. It really “sucked” and I felt like I was being cheated out of my youth. There really weren’t any decent hair loss treatments at the time either.

The good news is 20 years later there are decent hair loss treatments that actually work like Propecia and Rogaine. I suggest you consult with a doctor and get a prescription for Proscar (which has the same active ingredient “Finasteride” as Propecia but at 1/3 the cost). It shouldn’t cost you more than $20 a month to stop or perhaps even reverse your hair loss. Now that’s good news.

Cheer up and get on Proscar and get on with enjoying being young.

Best wishes,

Pat Publisher of the Hair Transplant Network and the Coalition Hair Loss Learning Center

1. is it ok to take proscar as treatment for hair loss
2. are they any long term fertility effects on my side
3. what do i do if I’m taking proscar and want to start trying for a baby
4. if the answer to the above is come off the proscar whilst i try. How long does it take to completely leave my system so its safe to start trying.

Proscar, like the FDA approved hair loss treatment Propecia, both contain finasteride as their active ingredient. However, Proscar contains a 5 mg dose of Finasteride, while Propecia has only a 1 mg dose.

Proscar has been prescribled and used for years as a treatment for male prostrate issues. However, researchers noticed that Proscar also had the effect of lowering the hormone DHT, which interacts with bald vulnerable hair follicles and causes hair loss. By reducing the DHT in the patients body the finasteride in the Proscar proved to slow and even stop or reverse hair loss in many men.

However, it was determined that only a 1mg daily dose of finasteride was needed to achieve this hair loss reduction effect. The maker of Proscar, Merck, then sought and got FDA approval several years ago for the use of finasteride as a hair loss treatment. This treatment has been marketed as “Propecia”. However, many patients save money by cutting up the much cheaper Proscar into quarters to create doses of finasteride that are approximately equal to Propecia.

Thus if you divide Proscar into quarters containing about 1.25 mgs of finasteride you will get the same benefits of Propecia at about 1/3 rd the cost.

The side effects of Propecia (1mg of finasteride) have been proven to be very small (about 2% incidence of sexual side effects, which go away within days if the drug is discontinued). To learn more visit Merck’s Propecia website.

My understanding is that it is safe for a male to take a 1 mg daily dose of finasteride while conceiving a baby.

Best wishes for new hair and a baby too.

Pat

You ask a hard question to answer: whether you can regain the “sharpness”. There is a possibility that you can by using finasteride tablets orally and minoxidil topically. You might find it very satisfying to know that you have stopped the progression of balding, if not restored your hairline as much as you like, by using these medicines as well.

It is very important to stop the progression of the balding early as it seems that you have the opportunity to do. It is probably not a good idea to do hair transplant surgery to the leading edge of the hairline of a 20 year old. Doing so means placing grafts that are so far forward that it would be hard to be sure that there is enough donor to take care of all the other areas that are at risk of balding over your lifetime. This could result in an embarrassing pattern of hair growth down the road.

Please feel free to ask for further clarification is I am not clear
enough.

Sincerely,

William Reed, MD - Member of the Coalition of Independent Hair Restoration Physicians