Anyone had any luck microdosing 1/8th or 1/16th a mg of oral finasteride in terms of no side effects or regrowth?

[hair4tomo]

1/4th of a milligram seems to be quite popular for many looking to fight MPB who want to play it cautious with sides, but according to the DHT inhibition curve (https://archive.is/SP2n3), 1/8th or even 1/16th milligram looks as though it could be doable, especially if most of the DHT inhibition is in the scalp and not in the serum/plasma, or if the hair responds more sensitively to DHT than the rest of the body.

Have any of you had much luck taking such small microdoses? Perhaps at least maintaining your hair without any significant sides? I'm looking to start myself.

Edited November 12, 2020 by hair4tomo

[1978matt]

Someone on reddit had a bit of regrowth on 1/4 x Mon, Wed, Fri.

Trying to cut to 1/8 is not worth the effort in my opnion.  Just try 1/4 every other day instead.

[hair4tomo]

1/8th and 1/16ths is pretty easy to cut if you have a pair of dog claw clippers. They cut cleanly, and without the tablet flying across the room (unlike cutting with say a stanley/carpet knife).

 

Edited November 13, 2020 by hair4tomo

[ciaus]

1 hour ago, hair4tomo said:

1/8th and 1/16ths is pretty easy to cut if

Up to a point the sharpness of what you are cutting with will help, but then there's the pressure to make the cut and the cohesiveness of the materials inside the pill that cause powdery chips and dust to break off. I cut 5mg pills into 1/4s with this aircraft aluminum, twin blade, blah blah overkill cutter to make sure I minimize crumbs and maximize clean cuts, and occasionally there is still a little powder and crumbing even with this sharp cutter. I would expect 1/8s to be a good bit more messy and 1/16s to probably look almost like you just crushed the pill.

You might be able to get some kind of custom dosage through a compounding pharmacy in your area, but I have doubts about how much of a benefit these small dosages will actually have for you, especially if your hair loss is fairly aggressive or even just moderate.

 

And this screenshot below of the cutter, the pill is not the right color but looks to be the same size as a 5mg finasteride pill, here in the USA anyway. So its not like you have some big vitamin tablet-sized pill to slice and dice down.

 

Edited November 13, 2020 by ciaus

[hair4tomo]

 

14 hours ago, ciaus said:

I cut 5mg pills into 1/4s with this aircraft aluminum, twin blade, blah blah overkill cutter to make sure I minimize crumbs and maximize clean cuts, and occasionally there is still a little powder and crumbing even with this sharp cutter. I would expect 1/8s to be a good bit more messy and 1/16s to probably look almost like you just crushed the pill.

I think there's something about the shape with the dog claw cutter (curved edge to follow the pill's contour, meeting edges, 30 degree edge taper, and of course extra sharp) that really helps to pin the accuracy down. Also thanks to the strong spring on the pair I have, there's a hefty weight to the squeeze action which helps to get a lot of force applied to only a tiny amount of 'squeezing distance'. Lots of torque!

 

Here's a photo. This was my first attempt cutting Propecia 1mg. I'm sure with practise I could do better. The four bits at the top of the photo are eighths, and the ones below are sixteenths. Yeah, the 16ths were definitely trickier to cut (made a bit of a mess there), but I did a very good job of the eighths. I kept all fine crushed dust/bits in the shot so you can see how much was wasted too:

 

Thing is, even the 16ths are inaccurate, it all averages out over the week. So if you take slightly over a 1/16th one day, and slightly under 1/16th the next day, you'll get about the right amount. When you think about it, taking an 1/8th EOD is sort of like super inaccurate cutting of an 1/8th where by you cut the 1/8th to make 16ths so badly that it remains the full eighth for one day, and zero the next day. So slightly inaccurate 16ths won't be any less effective than that.

------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: I tried to cut the remaining 1/8th pieces also into sixteenths. Overall, I think a did a pretty good job for first go:

Edited November 13, 2020 by hair4tomo

[Future Hair Doc]

If you're worried that much about side effects, try a topical solution of finasteride and minoxidil in a liposomal delivery stem. You won't get side effects and will have good growth/stunt of loss. It all depends on the concentration of the solutes.

[hair4tomo]

2 hours ago, Dr. Suhail Khokhar said:

If you're worried that much about side effects, try a topical solution of finasteride and minoxidil in a liposomal delivery stem. You won't get side effects and will have good growth/stunt of loss. It all depends on the concentration of the solutes.

There's very little research done with topical fin in comparison to oral fin, especially at around the 0.2mg dose mark. And around that level, you need to dilute it with ethanol or something (is water acceptable?), and store it with risk of the substance potentially degrading over time. Then there's the inconvenience of applying it, since it'd need to be over quite a wide area. Will it smell? Obviously we want it to be socially acceptable. Finally, I know of very few places in the UK where I can purchase topical fin, and I'm not sure I'd be able to trust the source.

I'd be happy with one or two of these drawbacks, but in combination, they compound. Maybe I can get the topical fin validated by a third party chemist or something for a fee?

[Al - Moderator]

There are filler ingredients in pills, so if you start cutting them too small you may end up with some pieces not having any of the active ingredients in them. You are better off cutting them into quarters and taking it every other day. You can cut down slightly more by skipping two days once a week. For example take it every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so you'll be skipping Tuesday, Thursday, and then skipping both Saturday and Sunday. These methods are probably much better than trying to cut pills so small that you get powder all over the place.

 

 

[hair4tomo]

2 hours ago, BeHappy said:

There are filler ingredients in pills, so if you start cutting them too small you may end up with some pieces not having any of the active ingredients in them.

Do you have more info on this? How evenly distributed is the active ingredient? I've heard the reverse, that it is smoothly distributed through the pill. Maybe someone else can help confirm what you're saying.

As for powder, mot much as you can see from the photos, and I'd do a ton of pills at once, and just clear up any debris afterwards making it a quick and efficient job.

Edited November 15, 2020 by hair4tomo

[ciaus]

8 hours ago, hair4tomo said:

and I'd do a ton of pills at once

I would just cut them as you need them, one pill at a time, that's what I do. Just in case any of the ingredients degrade faster when they are exposed to oxygen, etc, because you are cutting through the pill's protective coating, you don't want to potentially lower the potency.

Edited November 15, 2020 by ciaus

[Mr Sinister]

On 11/13/2020 at 6:52 PM, hair4tomo said:

There's very little research done with topical fin in comparison to oral fin, especially at around the 0.2mg dose mark. And around that level, you need to dilute it with ethanol or something (is water acceptable?), and store it with risk of the substance potentially degrading over time. Then there's the inconvenience of applying it, since it'd need to be over quite a wide area. Will it smell? Obviously we want it to be socially acceptable. Finally, I know of very few places in the UK where I can purchase topical fin, and I'm not sure I'd be able to trust the source.

I'd be happy with one or two of these drawbacks, but in combination, they compound. Maybe I can get the topical fin validated by a third party chemist or something for a fee?

I’d like to know the answer to your main q as well.

I have had experience with topical fin. I used a 0.1% gel as that was the lowest strength option, but got pretty bad side effects after 1 month. Worse than oral. But having done some research since, I think 0.1% strength is still equivalent to 1mg oral. Don’t quote me on that. It’s just so hard to find that info out. Annoyingly I binned all of the gel before trying to lower the dosage/frequency. So keen to know if lower doses actually deliver results.

some answers to your other questions on this... it doesn’t smell, my gel was more of a cream/gel consistency so no ethanol, although there are liquid versions out there. I’d apply it once a day before bed. Like minoxidil it’s going to leave your hair a little sticky and harder to style/add wax/gel too. It has a shelf life of about 6 months.

Dr bisangas clinic Bhr provide a prescription and have the gel compounded for you. Its not the cheapest, I paid 200 euros for the prescription, 3 month supply and postage. but it’s reputable.

Also Matt dominance has done some excellent vids on YouTube regarding this topic, so worth a watch.