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All these denials feel like self-denials, almost like I'm watching something like "Being John Malkovich," but the title is "Being Jake Gyllenhall." I did post the topic title with a question mark for a reason. What we're seeing here could be be a bad interplay of lighting, varying hair angle growths, hair lengths. But if it was me, I'd be taking this as a wakeup call and getting a professional microscopic analysis to confirm.

He was born in 1980 so that makes him 41-42ish currently. Looking like he needs some finasteride. The screens below are from his new movie on Netflix called "The Guilty" where he's sporting a buzz cut. At the beginning in his first scene he's in a bathroom with harsh lighting. The hair gods are indeed brutal. I wonder if he's stopped taking it for granted and started to notice?

Its not about developing "resistance" or 'losing effectiveness.' Finasteride lowers DHT by up to 70%, Dutasteride by up to 90s% range. If that's not enough suppression to overcome your personal genetics in the long run, you're going to continue to lose ground. Hopefully at a much slower rate. There is an unfortunate minority out there that are just too sensitive to DHT. But for most guys it will either halt the loss, or slow it down enough so that hair transplants can more easily make up for the lost hairs that were the most vulnerable. The best you can do for now is keep a photographic record of your hair for reference, in conjunction with HT doctor consultations to monitor your progress and help you decide on medication changes and when to get hair transplants. And stay hopeful for better new treatments in the future.

So just to clarify, by interest do you mean female companionship in general? or more specifically the desire to have sex but you can't achieve a sustained erection during sexual acts? If its just the erection part look into sildenafil, aka Viagra. It could not only help with that but recent research is indicating it can help protect against old age-related dementias. https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59546948 https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/viagra-associated-reduced-risk-alzheimers-disease Something else to consider is how much does your hair help with your confidence and general attractiveness to the opposite sex? It would suck to get your libido back and then have extra difficulties attracting the ladies. Just more reasons to make sure you rule out other lifestyle factors before risking your hair.

About six more weeks and your hairs are really going to start sprouting in high gear. Along with the dafodills and other various spring flowers!

However his eyebrows look real. How many hours did he spend in the chair getting them styled like that?

Before throwing away 20yrs of effort make sure you are in good shape, getting regular exercise, eating good, sleeping good, managing any life stressors well, not mildly or severely depressed. Once you go off the finasteride your hair loss is going to fast-forward to where it would have been had you never started taking it. Minoxidil is just a growth enhancer, it doesn't help you hold on to anything. Once the follicles have been destroyed by the DHT they'll be nothing left to enhance. Since you've been taking it for over 20 yrs, this is probably actually due to some combination of natural aging and bad lifestyle habits catching up to you. As far as finasteride is concerned, I wouldn't do anything more than tweek your dosage or maybe try the topical, if that. Are you quartering the 5mg Proscar, or taking the whole pill? Generic 1mg finasteride is relatively cheap too and that would reduce your dosage from 1.25mg dosage from quartered pills to 1 mg.

Saw an interesting video on female hair loss recently posted below. The lady in the original video interview above, from this screenshot looks like she's got loss from the issues they're discussing.

The forum has a search function in the top right, results come back like these

Generic finasteride does the same job and will save you alot of $$$ over your lifetime. I took Propecia until Merck's patent on finasteride expired, and as soon as it went off patent and the generics were available I switched and haven't looked back. Its the same drug, same dosage, didn't have any kind of shed. Every once in a while you might come across some random story from someone claiming they had a shed. Not saying its impossible, maybe someone got a bottle from a bad batch, etc., but more likely its just another BS story that the internet is full of.

Here are some more related topic links to help in your deliberations.

When it comes to shaving your head back down after a bad transplant, I'd be more worried about 'ridging' than cobblestoning, especially along the hairline. Its not as common as it previously was, but factors for preventing it still cannot be perfectly controlled for. Its going to come down to your doctor's skill, tooling, and how well your body's repair processes handle the surgery trauma. And the scarring in your donor area is going to come down to similar factors, and how much contrast there is between your normal skin tone and the tone of your scar tissue. Typically the darker your skin tone the more visible the scars will be. If you're already shaving your head, willing to continue doing that in the worse case scenario, and have very limited financial resources, I'd just keep shaving your head and forget about HTs. There's some topics below with pics that show guys trying to address ridging:

I received your private message about the time order of the pictures. Posting an updated layout below based on that for everyone to see and be able to comment. You'd already healed pretty well by the time the #2 pic was taken so I can't really tell where he put the grafts. Did the doctor take any pictures right after the procedure they can email you? Again 1500 is a relatively small procedure anywhere on the head, particularly in the crown area. Because of the way hair is angled and layered in the crown area it takes more grafts to get good coverage compared with other parts of your head. In your original post you say that you still see no new growth. But looking at #3 compared to the others, at 8 months you do appear to have somewhat better, though still inadequate, coverage. What was your goal with this procedure? To just thicken the crown a bit or fully restore it? Any chance the doctor wasn't clear on your expectations?

The time order of your pictures is not clear. Numbered them below to help clarify. What's the order?

1100 is not that large of a procedure, especially for the crown, but you should be seeing some growth by now. Saw Palmetto is an extremely weak DHT inhibitor compared to Propecia/Finasteride. Not worth taking really. And as long as you eat a decent diet you don't need to take Biotin supplements. And it doesn't inhibit DHT at all. If you're continuing to lose existing hair because of DHT that could explain why your crown area doesn't appear to be gaining hair. Especially if you still have a decent amount of existing hair, which I assume you do since you are getting a procedure so relatively small. Before/ after/ current pics will help.

If you've got no where to start, there's a site here with recommended clinics by country/city. The company does marketing work, etc for the SMP industry. There's educational stuff for people to learn about SMP too. https://www.teammicro.com/smp/clinics/

Look at the title of this thread and the name of the guy that started it, a bastardized spelling of Machiavelli. For the uninitiated, Websters dictionary: Essential Meaning of Machiavellian : using clever lies and tricks in order to get or achieve something : clever and dishonest Even if someone doesn't read the replies, just the topic title is crafted to maximize the spread of paranoia. The effects are not only here, they are "finally" here. And if you read on he gives no supporting evidence for that declaration. He's just an everyday guy like you and me, and he's "talked" to his doctors. And instead of starting with addressing his bad lifestyle issues and doing diagnostic blood work, the doctors just tell him to chuck out the finasteride. And then he sprinkles in some of that 'permanent' life ruining language typical of the fringe online anti-finasteride crowd. Sorry to read the sincere replies from good members trying to be helpful. But there's just too many red flags, this is about putting a little nagging thought in the back of every guy's head that is thinking about starting finasteride. And even the ones that have been taking it for decades! For those that are sincerely looking for help and reading this, start with actually talking to your doctor. Optimize your lifestyle habits and get bloodwork done. And remember that around the time hair loss really starts to get bad for alot of guys is also when their bodies naturally start falling apart and having performance issues. Especially if they haven't been taking good care of themselves. Which is very common in parts of the world where guys have the luxury to worry about hair loss.

If you're suffering from hair loss, have naturally thin hair, and don't want to bother with styling it, you should consider just shaving it to a buzz length or all the way off. Maybe get on finasteride if you want to pull off the buzzed look for as long as possible. Hair transplants never match your original hair density, they just provide enough to create the 'illusion of density.' So viewing distance, angle, and lighting become your constant enemy. Styling products, concealing products, and even additional hair transplants help maintain the illusion. So again, if you want to go back to the days when you just jumped out the bed out the door on your way...buzz it or shave it.

People primarily come here to get help, and alot of them are already pretty stressed out about their hair loss. Reading what-if worse case speculations without sufficient evidence on one of the few treatments that actually work isn't being helpful. If you want to have a how-you-doing-in-general conversation, send him a private message or start a new topic about that.

Are we really curious? Or just wanting to bump a topic that can be used to help spread unhealthy paranoia about finasteride? Along with being off topic, someone's personal experience with a drug is worth what? Unless the person asking is their identical genetic twin. According to the ALS Association, approximately 5,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with ALS each year, which averages to about 15 new cases each day. It is estimated that up to 20,000 Americans have the disease at any given time. https://alsnewstoday.com/als-facts-statistics/ ---- And yet we have all these millions of guys year after year, myself included, getting finasteride prescriptions, all the way back into the early 1990s when it was first FDA approved. You would expect there to be a corresponding explosion in people coming down with ALS if there was anything to this topic. Fear mongering topics like this hurt more people than they help.

Tagging @DrTBarghouthi, maybe he can provide some input on this.

It sounds like you are planning on administering the injections yourself? I'm no medical professional, but using the forum search someone asked about this way back in 2006. Topic is linked below, and below that if you don't click on the topic I've pasted the actual reply post screenshot where someone notes those injections have to be done carefully to not cause additional problems. Before you try to do any injections I'd reach out to some doctor offices for clarification. Maybe someone knowledgeable on the forum can chime in too

At 24 years old you want to be hanging on to every hair for as long as possible, not hoping they'll fall out to make room for transplanted hair. You're still very young in hair loss terms, if you lose too much more and don't start on medication, or don't respond well to medication, you could find yourself in a position where no ethical doctor will accept you as a patient. And by medication I primarily mean finasteride, since it attacks the underlying cause of the hair loss. Minoxidil by itself is not a long term solution to keeping your hair.

Awesome result. Like he said in the previous post it varies depending on each person. And getting touchups are more about 'want' than 'need.' How much fading is acceptable comes down to personal preference.

Googling 'minoxidil beard' will get more results. Here's some more: