Evidence of donor area being "DHT Resistant "?

[Rashid36]

I used to trim my donor hair down to number#1 on a clipper then when i posted pictures it looked like it was faded in I was advised to grow it out when i did it all looked good and plenty but when the doctor done some tests he found high miniaturisation in the donor area so the hair was not faded it was not resistant. How much this will progress i don't know I will have to stick with the meds stuff and then be reassessed.

 

Whatever the case i feel i'm one of those people who would have to stay on fin for a long time.

 

I looked at my brothers donor and he has thinning all over he has never had any meds so i don't know how mine will end up. The hair that does grow grows quick due to been resistant to dht.

 

Seems like it's more of a chance/ risky if whatever is taken from the donor area if it's not resistant to dht.

 

One thing that is going my way is i'm responding well to the meds

[mahhong]

Mahhong - you raise an interesting point, and one I've not actually considered. When I made the decision to take progesterone it was on the basis that it was not a synthetic drug. I hadn't actually considered that the potential sides that may occur are actually byproducts of the 5-AR inhibition process, rather than something in the drug itself. I see online that you can get progesterone cream which I suppose could be applied topically, much like minox. I am unsure though as I am taking mine orally.

 

Now that I think about it what you are saying it definitely makes sense, although I do not know for certain if you are correct. It may very well be the process that causes the sides and not something in the drug itself. I would be very interested to hear from someone who has a medical background or knows more than I do. It's also very hard to determine as I would imagine there are a large number of variables. From the top of my head I can think of a couple:

 

- Is there something in the fin/proscar chemical structure itself that can cause sides?

- How does the body absorb/metabolise/expel (if at all) the active chemical which is a 5-AR inhibitor in fin?

- How does the above occur with progesterone?

- What is the half life (which inevitably affects how often someone doses) for fin and for progesterone? If one has a longer HL than the other, one would inevitably need to take less of the drug in order to maintian the same effect

- Progesterone is a master hormone, and the root of a number of other hormones (incl estrogen and testosterone). How would the body convert this (if at all) to various other hormones in the chain and, if so, in what percentages? If a conversion is taking place, how much progesterone remains in order to block the DHT conversion?

 

Unfortunately, these are questions I cannot answer and I can only go on my personal experience.

 

In my experience, I have had no sides whatsoever. I am fairly certain that there is a percentage of men who, after hearing about potential sides, have a negative thought planted in their head. This ends up growing as a recurring negative thought that ends up manifesting itself physically. I personally believe that penile function and sexual performance are very much determined by mental state and frame of mind and, for some, planting the seed is enough for them to start questioning themselves and ultimately believing they are being negatively affected. As such, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps I was just lucky and my lack of sides is just the same as many men who take fin and have none. Perhaps there is something else in the fin/the absorption/secretion process that causes the sides, or perhaps they are inevitable whenever you are trying to inhibit 5-AR - I don't know.

 

EDIT: I've been doing some google searching and, interestingly, many of the neg sides of fin (erectile dysfunction, low libido etc) are actually symptoms of a lack of progesterone. It seems completely backwards that a deficiency of a natural 5-AR inhibitor (progesterone) would cause these things if they are inherent to the process of inhibiting 5-AR in the first place.

 

You make some good points. It's clear that finasteride can cause, even if in rare circumstances, sexual dysfunction and low mood/cognitive side effects. Although I believe the incidence of this is probably higher than the 1-2% found in studies, I do also agree with you that many men probably worry a great deal about taking the drug after reading and researching online, and that this stress and uncertainty can contribute to or even be the sole cause of their problems. I would say the incidence of finasteride side effects has "boomed" the last few years, but that has correlated with a general increase in the discussion and caution regarding the drug found on forums such as these. It's hard to tell which is the chicken and which is the egg - has increased finasteride usage revealed more men are susceptible to side effects, or has more daunting discussion about the potential effects of the drug causes men to become scared and hyper-sensitive to the drug?

 

Either way a small number of men swear finasteride has caused a serious, long-term impact on their sexual and overall health. Whilst it's impossible to know for definite how true this is, and how serious or long-term the effects are, I do think more investigation is warranted and I myself am admittedly a little cautious of the drug.

 

I'm also interested in many of the questions you raised. I do believe it would be in the interest of men to check their hormone levels before starting any hormone altering drug. One of the "drawbacks" I perceive with finasteride (and I say this as a layman, I have no real knowledge of this area) is what seems to be to be an arbitrary lowering of DHT levels by about 70% (assuming 1mg of finasteride per day), regardless of the baseline. We know that men's testosterone levels and, by extension, DHT levels, can vary quite dramatically from man to man. It would seem more prudent to me to know what a man's baseline hormone level is and to devise a dosage around that, looking to find the best balance between lowering DHT whilst maintaining enough of the hormone to allow men to function normally.

 

I don't know if this is really a factor, but the common sense part of me says it must be - if a man has low DHT and lowers it by 70%, that must surely be different to if a man has relatively high DHT but also lowers it by 70%.

 

I think ultimately this is why "natural" 5ar/DHT inhibitors don't, on the whole, seem to work very well. Chances are they just don't lower DHT by very much and if you take enough of it to significantly lower DHT, well then to my mind it's no different to taking finasteride (I'm not convinced whether you do it "naturally" or "artificially" matters). That's why it always amuses me when some men are dead against fin but are ingesting huge cocktails of natural DHT inhibitors.

 

The progesterone angle sounds interesting, and one I had never heard of or considered before. Perhaps it's a case that progesterone inhibits 5ar//DHT in a different way and thus produces less side effects. Perhaps it inhibits less than finasteride, but still a significant amount, hence the balance between DHT reduction and side effects management is better? Perhaps you are just not prone to side effects - even by the gloomiest statistics the vast majority of men won't get sides on fin, so it's not necessarily surprising.

 

I think the main concerns for me regarding finasteride are long term usage (what does 30 or 40 years on the drug do... possibly nothing, possibly something?) and also the relatively "blunt instrument" dosage of it, whereby it's essentially a case of blindly giving all men the same dose without monitoring hormone levels or other markers. I do think a more tailored approach to each individual would be good and I'm surprised there aren't lower dosages available. Certainly it seems a fair number of men who can't tolerate 1mg every day can do 1mg every other day, or 0.5mg per day or every other day, and can still get some benefit from the drug. Similarly other men claim quite a serious adverse reaction to even tiny amounts - I guess we just don't know for definite how it all works!

[Spanker]

I just feel bad for armpit hair-head. Doesn't there come a point of acceptance in hair loss before you transplant armpit hairs onto your head?

 

There is still no scientific evidence of "DHT-resistant" hair follicles on our heads, until there is I've lost interest.

 

There is tons of evidence that follicles moved from your donor are dht resistant. Like I said, look at the repair cases of plugs from the 80s, where the hr looked ok back then and then they lost it all but the plugs. Notnsure why you keep repeating the falsehood that it is not DHT resistant. You really should lose interest because you're not a good candidate at this time. A good patient understands the what HTs can and can't do, and you're not there yet.

 

That said, many people have some miniaturization in their donor. Some have 5 percent, some 20 and even more (these are not good candidates), but very few patients are going to have 100 percent ropelike hair. That's why some doc's document ffs for fine follicles. They work well in the hairline. But most people are going the have the majority of their occipital donor last the majority or their life if not all of it, whether the follicles are placed on top of their head or remains in the back.

 

If you can prove otherwise, you should give it a shot.

[Melvin- Admin]

There is a really good discussion going on here, I had created a thread last year about progesterone, the only person I knew who tried it stated that it actually ramped up his sex drive quite drastically, it could have been due to a spike in testosterone or other factors. Topical progestrone sounds a bit inconclusive, another interesting thing is that progesterone is also an anti-estrogen. In the end, I think more studies need to be conducted, it sounds very interesting though, TJ i'm fascinated to hear more about your experiences with it.

 

According to Dr. Orentreich in an Article "Biology of Scalp Hair Growth"

He stated the following on progesterone and how it works:

 

"Local Therapy {...} Progesterone was found to be a natural and significant 5aR inhibitor when tested in vitro, in the human skin microsome system, a rich source of 5aR, and in human scalp hair follicles. When a solution of progesterone in alcohol was applied to the pubic skin of normal males, it caused an average decrease of 75.2 per cent in 5aR activity after 24 hours of treatment.

 

"Moreover, while less DHT is made, more dihydroprogesterone (DHP; 5a-pregnane-3,20dione) is made. DHP competes with the residual DHT for the cytosol-nuclear binding protein for a further reduction in the amount of DHT interacting with genetic material.

 

"Progesterone works in reducing DHT production locally by competing for the active site of 5aR and would need to be present at the active site continuously because of the reversible kinetics. Treatment lapses result in the resumption of DHT production from testosterone.

 

"Since progesterone only partially inhibits DHT production and since DHP only partially inhibits binding of residual DHT, local progesterone at best can only ameliorate androgenetic alopecia and not arrest it."

 

I also had my donor area checked yesterday for miniaturization with Dr. Mohebi, my first real microscopic evaluation where I could see my follicles magnified on the screen, I had no miniaturization at all, the region checked was the mid occipital region. I began looking up hair loss myths and came up on a recurrent theme "blood circulation", I'm sure many of you have heard the old wives tale that wearing too many hats will cause hair loss, or that standing upside down will help hair loss due to blood circulation, well that's pretty much Zhairs argument, its not hard to see that his arguments have no real scientific backing at all. In fact, what we do know is that hair loss is hereditary and comes down to genetics, you can live your life upside down, if you have the Male Pattern Baldness Gene you'll see the hairs fall off your head like a tree's leaves in the fall.

Edited August 16, 2016 by Melvin-HTsoon

[osmosis]