I've been on finasteride for 5 years now and started at nw5 brought me back to nw3 vertex. I take it everyday single day. I've never missed a single dose. I have 2 questions for you. 1.Does finasteride ever just stop working or mainly slowly lose effectiveness but continue to slow my hair loss? 2. If I switch to dutasteride how quickly would take for dutasteride to stop my hair loss once I transfer off finasteride? I don't want to get off fin and lose ground while I begin dutasteride. You know?
July 11, 2024
Answer: Finasteride effectiveness Finasteride is effective in about 95% of patients. It takes a bit of time to see the effects as you may have noticed (no less than 6-12 months) and then the effect "peaks" around 24 month and stabilizes. Finasteride does NOT regrow lost follicles although you may have felt like it did for you. Instead what it does is a) keeps hair in the growth phase longer and b) encourages hair follicles that have miniaturized to cycle back toward thicker, more substantial "terminal" hairs. This second effect is why people think they regrew hair. In fact, those follicles were still there, they were just producing very small, pale hairs and when those hairs became more substantial and noticeable we think they are "new" . So at this point, the finasteride is probably still working perfectly fine but is just at it's peak effect and will keep your hair in it's current state for the foreseeable future, which is frankly, what we expect and the best result we can ask for. Any further "improvement" would need to be via FUE/FUT transplant most likely. On occasion, I see a patient for whom finasteride loses it's effectiveness after 15-20 years and sometimes switching them to dutasteride helps resolve this issue. But in those cases, it's an obvious re-initiation of hair LOSS. I hope this answers your question.
Helpful
July 11, 2024
Answer: Finasteride effectiveness Finasteride is effective in about 95% of patients. It takes a bit of time to see the effects as you may have noticed (no less than 6-12 months) and then the effect "peaks" around 24 month and stabilizes. Finasteride does NOT regrow lost follicles although you may have felt like it did for you. Instead what it does is a) keeps hair in the growth phase longer and b) encourages hair follicles that have miniaturized to cycle back toward thicker, more substantial "terminal" hairs. This second effect is why people think they regrew hair. In fact, those follicles were still there, they were just producing very small, pale hairs and when those hairs became more substantial and noticeable we think they are "new" . So at this point, the finasteride is probably still working perfectly fine but is just at it's peak effect and will keep your hair in it's current state for the foreseeable future, which is frankly, what we expect and the best result we can ask for. Any further "improvement" would need to be via FUE/FUT transplant most likely. On occasion, I see a patient for whom finasteride loses it's effectiveness after 15-20 years and sometimes switching them to dutasteride helps resolve this issue. But in those cases, it's an obvious re-initiation of hair LOSS. I hope this answers your question.
Helpful