ILikeMyHair

I did. See my post here http://www.hairrestorationnetwork.com/eve/188349-finestride-joint-issues.html

Can finestride cause joint pain and clicking? I took finestride for 2 years and had experienced watery semen as a side. Other than that everything seemed fine. Then after 2 years, gradually I started experiencing pain in my joints. Started with my knees at first then, elbows, then wrists and ankles then neck. It started slowly and it seemed like my joints became very prone to injury. I am a very active person and used to work out often and suddenly i started getting injuries from working out. First injured my knees, then injured my elbows on relatively safe exercise which I had been doing for ages. I never connected this to finestride because I thought it's not one of the sides of finestride and why would it happen after 2 years. However, I went to few doctors and a rhematologist and did blood work and everything seemed fine. Except I still had the pain and the clicking noises and I could not even lift 30% of what I used to lift without hurting my joints. So I asked the doctor if it could be finestride, and he said try quitting it for a month and see if it gets better. Well I quit it and it took about 4-5 months before it got better. It did get better slowly over time, but never completely. Basically whenever I don't get good sleep or if I'm stressed out or work out too much, then my joints start cracking. Not one or two, but almost all of them. anyways so recently I heard about h&w topical finestride and how it doesn't have any sides. So I applied it topically for about 5 weeks. I started slowly at first, only applying a little bit and doing it every other day. Then slowly increased the dosage. When I took it to the recommended dosage which is 1pump daily and I did that 3 days in a row, I had pretty bad headache 1 hour after applying it. and also after 5 weeks I started noticing more joint pain and joint cracking all over again that I used to notice. So now I guess I know for sure that I get joint pain and cracking from it. Has anyone else experienced or heard of joint pain/cracking from finestride?

So i did the test and I as I was expecting I got much higher than the average. My result was 22 hair shed during the 60 second combing. I all the way from the back to the front of the scalp and also combed the sides over a white sink so I saw all the fallen hair. I would be interested to see others' results

"60-Second Hair Count Test In the study, researchers examined hair loss in 60 healthy men with no signs of male pattern baldness. Half were between the ages of 20 and 40 and the other half between ages 41 and 60. Each of the men was given identical combs and instructed to wash their hair with the same brand of shampoo for three consecutive mornings. On the fourth, fifth, and sixth mornings, they were asked to comb hair forward over a towel or pillowcase of contrasting color for 60 seconds before shampooing and count the hairs shed. The results showed younger men shed an average of 10.2 per 60-second test and the older men shed an average of 10.3 hairs per test. "When repeated six months later in both age groups, the hair counts did not change much. The hair counts were repeated and verified by a trained investigator, with results similar to those of subject hair counts," write the researchers. Researchers say that low variability between tests over time and across age groups suggests that the 60-second hair count is a simple and practical tool for assessing normal vs. problem hair loss in men. They say the next steps are to verify the test in women and in people with male pattern baldness and other forms of problem hair loss to determine hair count measures. Main Findings: Subjects aged 20-40 shed an average of 10.2 hairs (with a range of 0-78) Subjects aged 41-60 shed an average of 10.3 hairs (with a range of 0-43)" Has anybody done this and seen their results? I have a feeling that I lose too many hair per day than most normal people. I lose about 30-35 hair while I shampoo then during combing I lose about 20 hair everyday. Then randomly I would see 1-2 hair strands in a day just fall off onto my ear or my laptop sometimes. And when I run my hands through my hair I get about 5-6 hair in my fingers, but they don't keep falling out. They stop falling if I keep running my hands through them. The strange thing is this has been happening for 4-5 years since I started keeping track, but my hair doesn't seemed to have changed too much. So I thought maybe it's normal for people to lose this much because of that 100 hair loss a day estimate which came out of nowhere. Now this new test shows that the average for most people is 10 hair a day. However, it did say that some subjects got upto 78 hair falling. All these subjects were supposed to be people with no hair loss and at NW1. So I guess some people do lose a lot more hair than others and still maintain their hair? Or these guys were just starting to go bald. I think it's the former. What do you guys think and did you guys do the test? What were your results?

I used to wear a turban and lost the hair in the front of the head because of traction alopecia. I also used to pull my hair sometimes so that didn't help. I went to a clinic when I was 22, got hair transplant done to fix the traction damage and I am somewhat satisfied at this point with my hair. I'm 26 now. The doctor also told me to go on Proscar at the time because I know I will most likely experience MPB because my dad is bald. Basically he is a NW6. He does have hair on top of his head, but they are very weak miniaturized hair. He hasn't lost all the hair on his scalp, but the hair caliber is so poor that it might as well not be there. It's just very short and thin hair. I do have MPB in my family. My uncles from my dad's side have various degrees of baldness. from NW3-6. My uncles from my mother's side are less bald. Around NW3-4. However, what I don't know is when I will start to experience the MPB. My brother who is 2 years older than me has a full head of hair at the moment. However, his hair seemed to take after my mother's side of the family and my hair seems to take after my father's side of the family in terms of density and hair caliber. Anyways I have been on proscar for 3 years now and recently started to notice significant joint pain and joint clicking in most of my joints. Now I'm otherwise very healthy guy and always been active. I started getting too many injuries in the gym recently. And have random joint pains in my fingers also which never got injured. I did many xrays and blood tests and all came back normal. I am not taking any other medicine other than proscar. I have no family history of joint pains or arthritis. So I am assuming that it's the proscar causing the joint pains because there doesn't seem to be any other cause. I'm aware that joint pain is not one of the commonly reported side effects. However, when I did some research on google, very few people did report the same type of joint symptoms I'm reporting, but their symptoms started 1-2 months after taking it. My symptoms started recently around 6 months ago. I also changed my pharmacy from which I get the medication 6 months ago and that was around the time the symptoms started to show up. Even though I ordered proscar from them too. Could there be different versions of medication that is prepared by different pharmacies for the same prescription? Anyways I'm stopping the proscar for 6-8 weeks to see if the symptoms get better. If they do, then I'm stuck as to what I should do regarding my hair loss treatment. I mean should I start topical finestride? I live in Canada so I can obtain it, but there hasn't been to much testing on its efficacy or its side effects. Or maybe I should start Rogaine instead because I know that my hair loss when it begins will occur in a diffuse pattern on the top of the head and the crown so rogaine might help keep it at bay. I don't even know if my MPB has started already but proscar was the one not letting me notice and was saving my hair. That's my main concern. Hopefully I haven't started losing hair yet like my brother and can wait it out till I'm 30 when it will start and then maybe start taking medicines. My dad started losing his hair at around 25-26 though so I can't be too hopeful. Too much uncertainty. How long would it take for me to notice the hair loss once I go off of proscar if I do have MPB? My dad's hair loss occured by becoming thinner on top everywhere over 5-10 years of time.

I asked my family physician and he said any medicine could cause any type of side effect. He just said stop it for 6-8 weeks to see if the symptoms get better. I was just not sure if the proscar could be doing this. Just wanted to see if other people have ever experienced this side effect from proscar. I did stop it 2 days ago and will stop it for 6 weeks. Not sure why it would start now though after taking the medicine for 2 years and seeing no side effects. Maybe it just took a while before I had noticeable effects and it was just making my joints worse slowly and gradually. So hard to tell.

Any 4 month update on side effects or effectiveness?

What kind of side effects have you been having? Did you not notice these sides before for 8 years and started only 2 years ago? I have been taking proscar for 2.5 years and did not notice any sides until maybe 6 months ago. However, the sides are not what other people experience. I have been getting a lot of joint clicking and joint pain in most of my joints. And I can't exercise like I used to. I'm only 26 years old and have no family history of any sort of joint problems. My blood work is fine and xray reports on the joints came back fine. So the only thing I could attribute it to is the finestride. I'm not taking any other medication. I thought if you don't get side effects when you start finestride, then you won't ever get any sides. I was also thinking of starting topical fin from Hasson and Wong, but it's a recent drug and not FDA approved so somewhat scared if it might behave weirdly with the body because of the different delivery mechanism.

Has anyone ever experienced joint pain and cracking joints because of Proscar. I started Proscar 5mg 3 years ago. I cut it into 4 parts and take 1 part every other day. So basically I'm taking proscar 1.25mg every other day. I didn't notice much side effects from it. Maybe just less slightly semen volume. Other than that everything was OK. I don't know what the problem with my body is now, but for some reason I have been having tons of joint cracking and joint pain in most of my joints. Elbows, wrists, ankles, knees, neck. They all crack and some of them have dull pain. I am 26 right now and too young for arthritis. I got xrays done on most of my joints and reports came in OK. Doctor can't figure out why I could be having this. I don't have a history of arthritis in my family at all. Never heard of any family member having joint issues. If it was one or two joints, I could attribute it to injuries, but it's everywhere, even some fingers are cracking and have a dull pain. So not sure if I should try to cut the medicine for a few months to see if they get better or if I should switch to a 0.25 mg dose. I think my dose is already pretty low. I surfed some online forms and there are some people reporting joint pain because of finestride, but people usually blame finestride for everything so I'm not sure. I mean I'm completely healthy and active person other than joint pain, but now I can't be active anymore because exercise is hurting my joints. Played tennis yesterday for 1 hour and came back with knee pain and ankle pain and back pain.

Yea I had thought that too, but I think it maybe from traction alopecia because wearing a turban puts pulling force on the crown hair as well and I was worse off than I am now when I first took off the turban, then it started to fill in. I didn't get any HT done on the crown. Hopefully, it's not MPB.

I just want to make clear that I'm not bashing or blaming Dr. Wong in this thread. Dr. Wong and his staff were very professional and offered to do 2 free touch ups without me asking them. I was just not happy with the density of it, but I am happy that I did the HT anyways because the hairline looks better than before. I had just thought that the hair wouldn't be see through which they are on the right side and that's what I'm not entirely happy with. I don't really expect Dr. Wong to do anything more for me because I know that results vary among patients and you don't always get what you expect. Also Dr. Wong ended up adding 1000 more grafts than what I paid for so he was very generous with me. I don't know whether the see through look is because the density is missing or because my hair is naturally fine. Dr. Wong said that there is no more space to put more grafts in there so that probably means that I just have fine hair and that's why it seems a bit see through.

Pictures are attached. Let me know what you guys think. I would have liked a bit more density, but at least there is a hairline now. Please leave comments on what you guys think. HT done by Dr. Wong from HassonAndWong.

OK so I cannot get any final verdict on this. I'm trying to figure out if it is normal for some hair on your head to be thinner than others if you don't have MPB. I have some hair that fall out which are thinner than other hair. These thin hair are not small hair which did not fully grow, rather these are long hair that are thin. My head seems to be have stayed the same thickness overall that it was 2 years ago. So I cannot conclude whether I have MPB or not. Basically I'm trying to figure out whether I have MPB or not and if I do, then I would include rogaine and nizoral in my hair care routine which is expensive. I would like my hair overall to get thicker as I have naturally fine hair as it is and if some hair are even thinner than others then that's a cause of concern for me. I am already on Proscar 1/4 tablet every other day, but it did not seem to make all my hair strands have the same thickness. I know it can take a while before you start to figure out that you are losing hair due to MPB and I want to find out as soon as possible.

I'm from Vancouver, BC, Canada and I was wondering if anyone residing in Canada knows any cheap places to get generic rogaine. The last time I go rogaine which was a few years ago, it cost me about $40 a bottle which I think lasts a month. I had poor knowledge of how it works so I stopped using it within a month thinking that it doesn't work. Haven't tried it since because of the high price, but I read on this forum that someone posted that it costs him $8 a month for minoxidil+proscar which sounds like a good deal to me. I'm taking proscar which is pretty cheap, but I also wanted to try rogaine to see if it can make my hair thicker. I don't know where to get it from cheaply. Anyone knows?

Well it's OK I guess. I just had higher expectations seeing how my hairloss wasn't too advanced and seeing how other people with similar degree of hair loss and similar number of grafts done had much better results as if they never lost hair. I still look like I have thin hair and can only go for a combover haircut. I was thinking I could live a normal life without having to worry about hair at all like most other 25 year old. Now i still gotta worry about the see through look when the wind blows, under the sun or if hair gets wet.

I was just wondering if rogaine can grow hair or just helps keep the existing hair that you have. Does it work by blocking dht or some other mechanism? Does it make the weak hair strands thicker? I was trying to find out if I should use it. Would it work on someone with traction alopecia? I lost my hair to traction alopecia by wearing a turban, but never tried using rogaine on it before. I took off the turban 7-8 years ago and was wondering if those hair I lost can still grow back? I also have some thin hair here and there, but I can't tell if that's from MPB or if everyone has a few hair that are weak. I noticed a few thin hair fell out when I was scratching the back of my scalp that's resistant to dht so from that I assumed that the few strands of hair at the top that are also thin are just natural and not from MPB.

The latest pictures I posted are 1.5 years after the 2nd touchup.

Here are some new pictures 1.5 years after the last touchup. You can see that my hairline on the left is still thinner than the left side and I have to do a combover to hide it. After 2250 grafts being placed into the hairline, here are the final results. First picture before any HT Final pictures after 2250 grafts. I am going to Dr. Wong's clinic tomorrow to show him the results and hopefully he'll take pictures there that I can post. I still feel like getting the hairline more denser with another 500 grafts, but fear that I may lose more hair in the future because I'm only 25. Don't know what to do. When comparing my results with other people that had similar level of hairloss and similar number of grafts placed, mine seems to be a poor result. I think 25-35% of grafts did not grow. I don't know what happened. Maybe I should've used rogaine after HT to bring more blood flow into the grafts. My hair looks better than before, but I was hoping I wouldn't have to use haircuts where I would have to hide the hair loss. Oh well.

I'm seeing him this Wednesday. I'll have to ask him that.

I had traction alopecia from wearing a turban and had to get HT done to fix the hairline. Dr. Wong did the HT for me and he recommended that I go on proscar. He wrote me the prescription. Basically I was wondering if I should also go on rogaine and revita etc just in case I have MPB started. I want to catch it as early as possible and in case proscar doesn't work for me then I would switch to dutasteride.

I had traction alopecia and had a messed up hairline. So I got HT done to fix the hairline. About 2250 grafts were placed in total over 3 HTs. My first HT, I had 1550 grafts done, but the right side barely grew so the doc placed another 450 grafts there and still it was not looking good. So finally he put another 250 grafts. Anyways I'm only 25 right now and I know I will probably have MPB in the future since my dad is NW5 even though the rest of my extended family went upto only about NW3-4. Anyways I was wondering if I started losing more hair in the future and was destined to be NW4-5 then what options would I have? Basically I'm wondering what is the best possible way to extract the most grafts from the back of my head and put them where needed. Should I get another FUT for 3000 grafts and then do a FUE for 2k grafts? The way I think about it now is that FUE can excract hair from a much wider area of the head than FUT so doing FUT first and then FUE would maximize the yield. Is that correct? PS: I'm taking proscar 1/4 tablet every other day just in case.

I can't tell if I have MPB yet or not. I don't see any visible sign on my head of thinning or receding hairline, but I do see that when my hair falls out some of them are thinner than others. Some are a lot thinner than others and barely visible. Is this normal or is this a sign that I have MPB, but is not too aggressive. My dad is NW5 and his MPB started around age 25-27 and I am age 25 right now. I'm taking proscar 1/4 tablet every other day. That's about all I do at the moment to make sure I don't lose my hair.

I did not see any improvement in my hair quality since my MPB has probably not started yet. I'm just taking it as a precaution because half the people in my extended family have MPB to some degree and my dad is NW5 at age 55. I had lost my hair due to traction alopecia from wearing a turban and I had to get an HT done to repair the hairline. The doctor told me to start taking finestride. I'm not sure if he thought I was thinning or why. So I just started taking it because I don't want to lose the remaining hair that I have left. Now that I think about it, it might have gotten a little fuller than before, but it's hard to tell.

I am 25 now. Started when I was 23. Didn't notice any sides other than maybe slightly reduced semen volume earlier on which by now I think has more or less come back to normal.