The jury is still out on topicals from everything I’ve read.
The rap on finasteride is overblown and, most doctors think, anecdotal/power of suggestion. That and aggressive lawyers who smell class action. Everyone who has an erection fail who is on finasteride immediately thinks that’s the cause.
The sides from dutasteride are seemingly more real- makes sense, as it’s like 95% DHT shutdown vs 65% (if memory serves). Still, again from hair loss forums, seems most don’t have problems with dutasteride and see better results than with finasteride. Again, /tressless has great information and motivational before/after/in between photos.
Frankly, only a hair transplant is going to give me back the “W” recession area in front. Still, before doing so, I’ve considered giving the all out assault of: dutasteride, loniten combo with weekly microneedling (with the rapa, metformin, ECGC topical) and, for good measure, low level laser light therapy as well.
Truth is, ALL of these are proven to work to varying levels (except for the rapa concoction). How additive are they when all used aggressively together? idk. However, I imagine, except for modest improvement, I’d be spinning my wheels because the area I am targeting is the front- where only hyper responders really get back any significant amount (If you are a hyper responder though, the results are unbelievable).
Now, if I had lost a lot on top, I would definitely take this aggressive approach, as I believe it would make a noticeable difference. Younger men tend to do better, but, as we’ve seen from @Agetron crown area, just loniten filled things in nicely. I don’t recall him even being on finasteride (?).
The whole protocol is pretty cheap and the iRestore type laser products have 6 month return policies- so, why not.
