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Hairloss is even more of a head scratcher. I've seen people buy pretty much everything to get back or just stop hair loss, and I'd bet the potential profits are

Hairloss is even more of a head scratcher. I've seen people buy pretty much everything to get back or just stop hair loss, and I'd bet the potential profits are way higher than penis growing pills. There are tons of communities of completely desperate men revolving around hairloss. Yet, a part from minoxidil and finasteride, which are far from ideal solutions and can't really regrow lost hair, there's very little good research and no new products in the past decade or so. It's really a testament to how complicated our bodies are, if even hair growth can be so difficult to reliably control.

hcknwscommenter 5y ago
I started losing my hair at 16. Minoxidil worked, like really well. I grew back robust hair at the bald spots. But I needed to apply it 2x a day and not exercise/shower for at least 4 hours after application. This did not work for my lifestyle. I stopped using it by the time I went off to college. Finasteride wasn't available at the time, and maybe would have been a better option. I did all right in the dating pool after 30, but my 20s were rough. All I would say to my younger self is: you have every reason to consider this a big deal, but at the end of your life (and even by the time you are 40), you will consider losing your hair to be a very very very minor thing.
- rhinoceraptor 5y ago
  Minoxidil twice a day is unnecessary, the half life of topical minoxidil is about 22 hours, so once a day is sufficient. I have a compounded spray with 10% minoxidil, dutasteride, tretinoin and a few others that I apply about an hour before I shower for the day which works quite well. Also, one of the issues with minoxidil is that it is a prodrug, the active form is minoxidil sulfate, and some people don't express sulfotransferase as much in the skin to be able to make that conversion. If minoxidil doesn't work for you, then you want to either use oral minoxidil (the liver will activate it to minoxidil sulfate, the side effect of that is you will have enhanced hair growth through your entire body), or a compounded topical that has tretinoin, since that helps upregulate sulfotransferase in the skin.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > the half life of topical minoxidil is about 22 hours, so once a day is sufficient. I don't have an opinion on how often minoxidil should be applied, but your reasoning here is wrong. If the treatment works when a particular concentration is maintained, you could absolutely need to apply a drug with a half-life of 22 hours twice a day. For example, many anti-depressants have half-lives of a few days, but patients still take them once or even twice a day. The only relationship between half-life and daily dose is initial ramp-up vs sustained treatment. That is, a treatment usually has a targeted amount of a substance being maintained in the body during the sustained treatment, and then the ramp-up and any adjustment needs to be done taking into consideration that the pill you took yesterday may still be 3/4 still in your body today.
rhinoceraptor 5y ago
There is some newer data that show minoxidil in combination with tretinoin and/or microneedling is more effective. Preventing hair loss is pretty easy, just block 5AR DHT conversion with finasteride or dutasteride. The trouble is, once hair loss is visually noticeable you've already lost about 50% density, and most people don't notice their hairline slowly receding.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > Preventing hair loss is pretty easy For some people its not.
  - rhinoceraptor 5y ago
    If every man took dutasteride from puberty, none of them would go bald. We know this from the condition 5-ARD. Obviously that's not a good idea, since DHT is important for fertility and many other male secondary sex characteristics. The point remains though, if you were able to know that you would go bald, and started taking finasteride or dutasteride before noticeable hair loss starts, that would likely be sufficient for life.
sumedh 5y ago
> Hairloss is even more of a head scratcher. I remember Bill Gates in some video said that pharma companies spend lots of money on research to prevent hair loss, grow hair compared compared to research on diseases like malaria etc.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  Bill - who lobbies for Chinese pharma and writes articles for the CCP's 'People's Daily' propaganda paper - Gates? Well if he says it.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Don't forget Bill - don't make the Covid vaccine formula open source, just let my org donate vaccines to them - Gates. And then his alliance of health NGOs of donated, what? a few million doses? For a population that literally needs 2-3 billion in India alone.
    - namdnay 5y ago
      >Both pieces cite a Sky News interview with Gates that ran this week, wherein Gates is asked if it would be helpful to change intellectual property law in order to enable "the recipe for these vaccines to be shared." > Gates answers, "No," which by itself could be interpreted as him standing up for intellectual property law and refusing to share vaccine formulas with developing nations. But then Gates goes on to answer the inevitable follow up question: "Why not?" > The reason, Gates said, is due to the complexity of manufacturing safe vaccines. > "There are only so many vaccine factories in the world, and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines," he said. "The thing that's holding things back in this case isn't intellectual property. It's not like there's some idle vaccine factory with regulatory approval that makes magically safe vaccines. You've gotta do the trials on these things. And every manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way." > Moreover, Gates said getting COVID vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson to share vaccine formulas has already happened — such as the case with India. > "We got all the rights from the vaccine companies," he said. "They didn't hold it back, they were participating."
amyjess 5y ago
There have been several stories from within the trans community of trans women experiencing some amount of regrowth after being on finasteride + HRT. Not growing a full head of hair back from being completely bald, but a lot of trans women with receding hairlines have found their hairlines to have un-receded.

hcknwscommenter 5y ago

I started losing my hair at 16. Minoxidil worked, like really well. I grew back robust hair at the bald spots. But I needed to apply it 2x a day and not exercise/shower for at least 4 hours after application. This did not work for my lifestyle. I stopped using it by the time I went off to college. Finasteride wasn't available at the time, and maybe would have been a better option. I did all right in the dating pool after 30, but my 20s were rough. All I would say to my younger self is: you have every reason to consider this a big deal, but at the end of your life (and even by the time you are 40), you will consider losing your hair to be a very very very minor thing.

rhinoceraptor 5y ago
Minoxidil twice a day is unnecessary, the half life of topical minoxidil is about 22 hours, so once a day is sufficient. I have a compounded spray with 10% minoxidil, dutasteride, tretinoin and a few others that I apply about an hour before I shower for the day which works quite well. Also, one of the issues with minoxidil is that it is a prodrug, the active form is minoxidil sulfate, and some people don't express sulfotransferase as much in the skin to be able to make that conversion. If minoxidil doesn't work for you, then you want to either use oral minoxidil (the liver will activate it to minoxidil sulfate, the side effect of that is you will have enhanced hair growth through your entire body), or a compounded topical that has tretinoin, since that helps upregulate sulfotransferase in the skin.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > the half life of topical minoxidil is about 22 hours, so once a day is sufficient. I don't have an opinion on how often minoxidil should be applied, but your reasoning here is wrong. If the treatment works when a particular concentration is maintained, you could absolutely need to apply a drug with a half-life of 22 hours twice a day. For example, many anti-depressants have half-lives of a few days, but patients still take them once or even twice a day. The only relationship between half-life and daily dose is initial ramp-up vs sustained treatment. That is, a treatment usually has a targeted amount of a substance being maintained in the body during the sustained treatment, and then the ramp-up and any adjustment needs to be done taking into consideration that the pill you took yesterday may still be 3/4 still in your body today.

rhinoceraptor 5y ago

There is some newer data that show minoxidil in combination with tretinoin and/or microneedling is more effective. Preventing hair loss is pretty easy, just block 5AR DHT conversion with finasteride or dutasteride. The trouble is, once hair loss is visually noticeable you've already lost about 50% density, and most people don't notice their hairline slowly receding.

sumedh 5y ago
> Preventing hair loss is pretty easy For some people its not.
- rhinoceraptor 5y ago
  If every man took dutasteride from puberty, none of them would go bald. We know this from the condition 5-ARD. Obviously that's not a good idea, since DHT is important for fertility and many other male secondary sex characteristics. The point remains though, if you were able to know that you would go bald, and started taking finasteride or dutasteride before noticeable hair loss starts, that would likely be sufficient for life.

sumedh 5y ago

> Hairloss is even more of a head scratcher. I remember Bill Gates in some video said that pharma companies spend lots of money on research to prevent hair loss, grow hair compared compared to research on diseases like malaria etc.

trompetenaccoun 5y ago
Bill - who lobbies for Chinese pharma and writes articles for the CCP's 'People's Daily' propaganda paper - Gates? Well if he says it.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Don't forget Bill - don't make the Covid vaccine formula open source, just let my org donate vaccines to them - Gates. And then his alliance of health NGOs of donated, what? a few million doses? For a population that literally needs 2-3 billion in India alone.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    >Both pieces cite a Sky News interview with Gates that ran this week, wherein Gates is asked if it would be helpful to change intellectual property law in order to enable "the recipe for these vaccines to be shared." > Gates answers, "No," which by itself could be interpreted as him standing up for intellectual property law and refusing to share vaccine formulas with developing nations. But then Gates goes on to answer the inevitable follow up question: "Why not?" > The reason, Gates said, is due to the complexity of manufacturing safe vaccines. > "There are only so many vaccine factories in the world, and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines," he said. "The thing that's holding things back in this case isn't intellectual property. It's not like there's some idle vaccine factory with regulatory approval that makes magically safe vaccines. You've gotta do the trials on these things. And every manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way." > Moreover, Gates said getting COVID vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson to share vaccine formulas has already happened — such as the case with India. > "We got all the rights from the vaccine companies," he said. "They didn't hold it back, they were participating."

amyjess 5y ago

There have been several stories from within the trans community of trans women experiencing some amount of regrowth after being on finasteride + HRT. Not growing a full head of hair back from being completely bald, but a lot of trans women with receding hairlines have found their hairlines to have un-receded.