So I went to my first derm appointment on October 2024, my bald spots were really bad at the crown and she prescribed 1mg oral Minoxidil for 2 months, which gave me some side effects I did not like at all (racing heartbeat and mild liquid retention) but I pushed through until I finished the bottle, coupled with dandruff shampoo, topical Nanoxidil from DS Labs and Revita Shampoo from the same brand. I saw excellent results in 3 months time, I was confident enough that I stopped having to fix my hair with my hand every five minutes. It was pretty amazing how quickly the bald spots had covered up and I even stopped shedding almost completely for a while. Long story short I went on vacation to Costa Rica in January and didn’t take my Nanoxidil with me for ~12 days when I came back my hair started shedding again and the bald spots came back even worse. It’s been 3 months since I restarted only the topical Nanoxidil and I haven’t seen any progress, I also got dutasteride mesotherpay with my derm and started self-medicating 0.5mg oral dut daily, been on that for 16 days and the shedding is probably the worst it’s ever been. I have seen little to no results and wonder if I should stop the dut and go back to my original regime or push through and see what happens. Loosing almost all of the progress I had has left me feeling pretty depressed recently.
Dutasteride often causes a shed early on and takes a few months to start showing any benefit. Stopping it now wouldn’t really give you answers either way. If the minoxidil side effects were tolerable, dropping to 0.25 or 0.5mg might still work without being as intense. Weekly microneedling could help too, and it’s worth checking iron, vitamin D, and ferritin since deficiencies there can quietly mess with regrowth. You’re not doing anything wrong, it’s just a slow and annoying process, and inconsistency with topicals can set things back more than expected