My 4 year hair loss progress (no procedures, medication only)

[stephcurry30]

Story/background:

Photos taken on 5/30/2016 my senior year of college (22 years old):

 

https://imgur.com/dRGg6Ww

https://imgur.com/QvFJrqR

 

At this point I was roughly 1-2 months on 1 mg finastiride daily. I tried rogaine for a total of 3-5 months but I saw no regrowth. Around the summer of 2017 I decided to start dutastiride after realizing how finastiride isn't as strong as dutastiride and dutastiride is more effect (especailly for a young guy is was already heading toward norwood 3 at 22 years old).

I've been on 1 mg of finastiride a day for 4 years and 0.5 mg of dutastiride a day for 3 years. I purcahse dutastiride from alldaychemist and still take finastiride just as a insurance policy if the medicine if bad. (made in India and shipped to the US).

Here are my photos taken today:

 

https://imgur.com/TI3kePS

https://imgur.com/YBPcIkF

 

Do you think I've halted my hairloss? I'm going to keep on taking the meds and hopefully when I'm 30-32 years old I can get a hair transplant. I want to be extremely conservative and make sure I have halted my hair loss. I will noit get a procedure if my hair loss is not halted. even if it's slowed down I don't want to continue to get 4-5 procedures to fill in areas every 4-5 years. I'd rather have 1 big procedure in the hairline and then if the medicine starts to taper off in effectiveness after a few decades then I can get 1-2 additional hair transplants to fill in areas. 

 

I have also dabbled in thee idea of adding a derma pen or RU or topical finastiride but unsure of effective these treatments may be over what I am currently using. Do you think I should add anything into my regime? I would love to fill in my temples but I highly doubt I will be able to until I get a hair transplant.

 

Any advice and thoughts would be appreciated. 

 

[1978matt]

Different lighting but it looks like success to me.  With DUT and FIN I would not bother with anything else: these are the gold standard.

Maybe you could go to a hairdoc to see which areas are (/were) thinning, just to get a feel for what your NW pattern might have been.

[stephcurry30]

1 hour ago, 1978matt said:

Different lighting but it looks like success to me.  With DUT and FIN I would not bother with anything else: these are the gold standard.

Maybe you could go to a hairdoc to see which areas are (/were) thinning, just to get a feel for what your NW pattern might have been.

Yeah that's the one thing I use I did is I took better photos from better lighting all I have are these:

(I think they are all neutral lighting)

ANy thoughts and opinions would greatly be appreciated it. 

 

[Gabreille Nelson Mukhia]

1 hour ago, stephcurry30 said:

Yeah that's the one thing I use I did is I took better photos from better lighting all I have are these:

(I think they are all neutral lighting)

ANy thoughts and opinions would greatly be appreciated it. 

 

Kudos to you. You've done a marvellous job of maintaining your pre existing hair. It looks great. Keep up with the same routine. Baldness is highly progressive till the 30s. It slows down a little from the 30s till the 40s. After the 40s it really slows down.

[Mycroft]

As someone who is also messing around with non-surgical treatment (with decent success) my biggest piece of advice would be to add one thing in at a time and wait 6 months to see if you're seeing any additional benefit. Rinse and repeat. This way you will know what is working and what is not because most of these treatments work gangbusters for some people and do nothing for others.

Have you tried Minoxidil at all?I Idon't see it mentioned in the original post but that would be a fairly simple thing to add in and experiment with. If you're a responder you could see a decent amount of additional growth. Might not hurt to add in Ketoconazale shampoo as well in case Minoxidil irritates your scalp (it's also a mild anti androgen). Past that you are getting into more experimental territory and if I were you I would want to have investigated those two options before looking at anything else.