I've been told by Freitas clinic to take Minoxidil Oral 5mg every day starting from 3rd day after transplant. Is this really necessary? How is Minoxidil related to a FUE-HT?

[Hashi]

Hello, I had a hair transplant on the 9th and 10th of January in Valencia Spain with Dr Freitas.

One of the post op instructions is that I need to take Oral Minoxidil 5mg starting from the 3rd day, every night. The problem is that this medicine is not available in my country (Sweden). I've tried 3 different doctors and all pharmacies and they all say this medicine doesn't exist in Sweden and they won't order any from abroad.

I was thinking I'd go back to Spain and buy the Minoxidil from there and then come back, but my question is..

Is the Minoxidil really essential to the success of the operation? Do I really have to keep taking it for the transplant to not fail? I've noticed other clinics don't have it as part of their post-op care, so why is it important?

Freitas' clinic also mentioned that it's ok if I'm a bit late in starting Minoxidil, even if I do it after 2 weeks it's fine. But would it be fine to skip it completely? I rather not go all the way back to Spain just to buy a medicine if the medicine is not neccessary. How is Minoxidil related to hair transplant?

 

Please help ease my worries. Thank you.

[drawdownfx]

oral minoxidil has some really good before and after results and the medicine clearly works. It's still not as important as finasteride/dutasteride but its the next best thing. Have you tried alldaychemist? I am not sure if it will deliver to sweden but that is where I get it from and the medicine works because I had puffiness in my eyes for the first 15 days before my body has gotten more used to it now. How did your surgery go? I had mine with Dr Freitas just a month before you

[Hashi]

20 minutes ago, drawdownfx said:

oral minoxidil has some really good before and after results and the medicine clearly works. It's still not as important as finasteride/dutasteride but its the next best thing. Have you tried alldaychemist? I am not sure if it will deliver to sweden but that is where I get it from and the medicine works because I had puffiness in my eyes for the first 15 days before my body has gotten more used to it now. How did your surgery go? I had mine with Dr Freitas just a month before you

The surgery went really well actually, everyone was so nice and I was comfortable throughout the whole procedure. The only thing that has me worried is what I wrote just now in another post I made. I've always been really impressed with Dr Freitas' work.

 

But so, I'm not saying oral minoxidil is in anyway ineffective, I'm just wondering if it's absolutely necessary. Is it worth making a quick trip to Spain for like ~100 euro just to buy it?

[Marlo]

1 hour ago, Hashi said:

The surgery went really well actually, everyone was so nice and I was comfortable throughout the whole procedure. The only thing that has me worried is what I wrote just now in another post I made. I've always been really impressed with Dr Freitas' work.

 

But so, I'm not saying oral minoxidil is in anyway ineffective, I'm just wondering if it's absolutely necessary. Is it worth making a quick trip to Spain for like ~100 euro just to buy it?

No, it's not absolutely necessary to take oral minoxidil for a hair transplant to be succesful. There have been way more people that have done hair transplants without taking oral minoxidil than the other way around

Of course it's highly recommended to be on a some hair loss preventition treatment to minimize further hair loss (finasteride/dutasteride), but that won't have much impact on how your hair transplant grows in.

Edited January 13, 2023 by Marlo

[Fue3361]

I was given the same thing.  2.5 in my case.  Having spent over 10k USD… I’d never consider not following my doctor’s post op instructions.

 

Even if it is not necessary, do you really want to forever wonder “I wonder if the Minox would have given me a bit of a more dense result…”

[deeznuts]

8 minutes ago, Fue3361 said:

I was given the same thing.  2.5 in my case.  Having spent over 10k USD… I’d never consider not following my doctor’s post op instructions.

 

Even if it is not necessary, do you really want to forever wonder “I wonder if the Minox would have given me a bit of a more dense result…”

Every drug has risks associated with them. It's up to you to accept the risk profile or not. I've heard discussion about minoxidil and it's effects on collagen production for example and maybe that's not worth it to you

 

The inverse is also true where you develop say... Wrinkles and you think maybe i shouldn't have taken oral minox. 

Edited January 13, 2023 by deeznuts

[shiba1985]

This question is difficult to answer but i will try. 

Oral minoxidil is not necessary for surgery itself to be successful. a good surgery should stand alone by itself without minoxidil. 

If you take minoxidil your results will look more "wow" since it will beef up your hair both the transplanted and existing i.e. Each strand will be thicker. so for eg. let us say your average hair shaft is 65 um, with minoxidil it maybe 75 um. this small difference can result in a big visual difference cosmetically. Also more % of follicles will be in Anagen phase. 

However when you stop taking the minoxidil, it will go back to the way it was going to be without minoxidil. Meaning if you dont want to take it forever, no point in taking it and stopping. 

5 mg is a hefty dose. I would not take it forever. but that is just my personal opinion. 

Medications are more a strategy to combat further hair loss. That is the main use for them, not so much for the success of surgery. 

Edited January 13, 2023 by shiba1985

[drawdownfx]

58 minutes ago, deeznuts said:

Every drug has risks associated with them. It's up to you to accept the risk profile or not. I've heard discussion about minoxidil and it's effects on collagen production for example and maybe that's not worth it to you

 

The inverse is also true where you develop say... Wrinkles and you think maybe i shouldn't have taken oral minox. 

Have you got some more info on collagen production stopping? I definitely noticed the wrinkle around my eye was a bit more prounounced. Is it too much to ask for more hair whilst keeping my youthful skin lol

[Hashi]

56 minutes ago, shiba1985 said:

This question is difficult to answer but i will try. 

Oral minoxidil is not necessary for surgery itself to be successful. a good surgery should stand alone by itself without minoxidil. 

If you take minoxidil your results will look more "wow" since it will beef up your hair both the transplanted and existing i.e. Each strand will be thicker. so for eg. let us say your average hair shaft is 65 um, with minoxidil it maybe 75 um. this small difference can result in a big visual difference cosmetically. Also more % of follicles will be in Anagen phase. 

However when you stop taking the minoxidil, it will go back to the way it was going to be without minoxidil. Meaning if you dont want to take it forever, no point in taking it and stopping. 

5 mg is a hefty dose. I would not take it forever. but that is just my personal opinion. 

Medications are more a strategy to combat further hair loss. That is the main use for them, not so much for the success of surgery. 

They actually didn't specify how long I'd need to take it for. But definitely at least 3 months, since I got a prescription for 90 tablets. I've been on Finasteride since October 2021 and absolutely nothing else. My initial plan was to simply resume Finasteride 10 days post-op and not take anything new, but now with all this Minoxidil and Dutasteride talk.. I don't know. Would it hurt to take Fin/Min/Dut for 3 months until the 3 month checkup, and then stop everything except Finasteride? I get what you said about noticing a difference once I stop taking Minoxidil, but stopping won't make it worse than before I start Minoxidil.. right?

 

Thing is, I absolutely don't want to do anything to make the transplant in any way not go as smoothly as possible. So if Minoxidil and Dutasteride are a must, then I'll definitely take them. But honestly if they have NOTHING to do with the transplant or the survival of the transplanted hairs, then what's the point? I'm perfectly fine on my Finasteride treatment..

[deeznuts]

1 hour ago, drawdownfx said:

Have you got some more info on collagen production stopping? I definitely noticed the wrinkle around my eye was a bit more prounounced. Is it too much to ask for more hair whilst keeping my youthful skin lol

I've only heard discussion in passing. Minoxidil never interested me given that it's a "bandaid" measure of sorts in that it doesn't address the root cause so I can't say more than that. Though maybe oral minox is different in that regard idk. 

 

Try google? 

[shiba1985]

52 minutes ago, Hashi said:

They actually didn't specify how long I'd need to take it for. But definitely at least 3 months, since I got a prescription for 90 tablets. I've been on Finasteride since October 2021 and absolutely nothing else. My initial plan was to simply resume Finasteride 10 days post-op and not take anything new, but now with all this Minoxidil and Dutasteride talk.. I don't know. Would it hurt to take Fin/Min/Dut for 3 months until the 3 month checkup, and then stop everything except Finasteride? I get what you said about noticing a difference once I stop taking Minoxidil, but stopping won't make it worse than before I start Minoxidil.. right?

 

Thing is, I absolutely don't want to do anything to make the transplant in any way not go as smoothly as possible. So if Minoxidil and Dutasteride are a must, then I'll definitely take them. But honestly if they have NOTHING to do with the transplant or the survival of the transplanted hairs, then what's the point? I'm perfectly fine on my Finasteride treatment..

in your case, i would just stay on finasteride and that is it. not sure why you stopped it for surgery. that is not needed. 

Dont over think this. the only way i would consider starting minoxidil is if you plan to use it life long like u use finasteride. otherwise it wont make any difference if you hair transplant succeeds or fail.

 

[shiba1985]

from personal experience, i have noticed more hair loss from starting stopping meds. then staying on some consistently or not starting them at all.  They say if you stop you go back to what you would have been if you did not take it at all, but how can one truly measure that? whether you were going to progress all the time you were on meds... or not progress.. ahh too complex to explain but get what  i am saying?

[Hashi]

On 1/13/2023 at 8:55 PM, shiba1985 said:

from personal experience, i have noticed more hair loss from starting stopping meds. then staying on some consistently or not starting them at all.  They say if you stop you go back to what you would have been if you did not take it at all, but how can one truly measure that? whether you were going to progress all the time you were on meds... or not progress.. ahh too complex to explain but get what  i am saying?

Yeah no hard to explain but it makes sense, I get what you're saying! There's no way of measuring that really, and even if they tried there's too many factors in play..

And I definitely don't want to take minoxidil for life and since it's doesn't affect transplant whatsoever, I'll just stay on finasteride.

What about dutasteride? Is it the same that I should only take it if I plan to use it life long - and that it'll be noticably bad once I stop it? Or would it be ok to take duta two days a week for 3 months like the clinic recommended?

[shiba1985]

3 hours ago, Hashi said:

Yeah no hard to explain but it makes sense, I get what you're saying! There's no way of measuring that really, and even if they tried there's too many factors in play..

And I definitely don't want to take minoxidil for life and since it's doesn't affect transplant whatsoever, I'll just stay on finasteride.

What about dutasteride? Is it the same that I should only take it if I plan to use it life long - and that it'll be noticably bad once I stop it? Or would it be ok to take duta two days a week for 3 months like the clinic recommended?

Yes definitely don’t start Dutasteride if you don’t intend to stay on it. You will gain and then lose it all. 
 

KISS - keep it simple 

 

stay on finasteride and if you want add topical minoxidil. 

[Hashi]

6 minutes ago, shiba1985 said:

stay on finasteride and if you want add topical minoxidil. 

Understood! But is it not the same with topical minoxidil?

[shiba1985]

Indeed. Same with topical minox. So if u don’t see yourself using it forever no point on going on it temporarily.  Then finasteride alone. 
 

tbh if I had to just pick one med to be on for hair loss finasteride would be the one. So you are good. 

[Hashi]

Alright, thanks for the helpful insight.

[iKelia]

Foof for thought, people grow beards on topical minoxidil which stays after the medicine was discarded.

[Rafael Manelli]

It's not necessary for the transplant specifically but it's good for hair in general.