On crucial details and pitfalls of formulating topical minoxidil

Treatments Minoxidil
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Explicit Legal Disclaimer: Do NOT home-compound the topical minoxidil. You (very probably) are NOT a pharmacist. I cannot put here precise instrucions on how to compound topical minoxidil or I may risk legal problems, although unlikely. So, I am listing a few mistakes that people may do, crucial yet important details.

Pitfalls to avoid:

Never weigh any minoxidil powder on top of your sensitive scale directly. Always use something else eg. glassware.

Do not work on porous surfaces or with porous labware, use stainless steel trays and glassware rather than plastic bullshit.

Magnetic stirrers do NOT create enough torque for dissolution of the raw minoxidil powder regardless of the RPM it runs at but good for making a Ethanol-PG-DW mix.

Ethanol takes time to dissolve minoxidil raw powder. With PG-heavy solutions, it is faster but not exponentially so. You are looking to 1 hours at the minimum end for dissolving the topical minoxidil and 2 hours for the maximum end. During the time, you either have to use a stirring rod or an overhead stirrer for continuously stirring the topical minoxidil solution. Since ethanol can only dissolve 29mg/mL of minoxidil while PG can do it at 71mg/mL, ethanol heavy solutions may NOT work. Though, they likely would work, even if mathematically they should not be supposed to dissolve it. It may look as if it is NOT dissolving, do NOT get fooled on the looks and keep stirring at max speed your arms allow you. At 1-1.5hr mark, you will see that the solution is almost perfectly transparent with perhaps some slight white-ish tone. It does NOT end there, after you pour it to the bottle it still has some dissolving left but do NOT worry, as it just needs some time rather than mixing. After 24hrs of preparing topical minoxidil and relocating it to a proper container, it will dissolve almost 100% with crystal-clear transparency.

Minoxidil powder should NOT be utilized in scenarios where it has to be manipulated extensively. There is a good chance it may aerosolize and given that it is a vasodilator, you won’t want it.

A P100 filter full face mask+Nitrile Gloves+Safety Goggles are Necessary. Half face masks are also said to work but I had heard anecdotal accounts on them “leaking” and thus won’t take the risk. If they don’t, you can go with them. Some may say overkill, but better be way overkill than underwhelming.

Ethanol and Propylene Glycol are generally safe for adults, unless you consume a ton of it. They are not powders at the room temperature and do not aerosolize easily to the same extent.

Handle all types of interactions in regards to transferring the raw minoxidil powder inside a glovebox. Avoid handling ethanol inside the glovebox especially if electrical sparks or other elements that may set the ethanol on fire or create an explosion are present. I REPEAT AGAIN, AVOID HANDLING ETHANOL INSIDE A GLOVEBOX.

Aerosolization of raw minoxidil powder is the last thing you would ever want. Have an appropriate air purifier inside with a HEPA-14 filter inside the glovebox and initiate contact with raw minoxidil powder as minimally as possible and handle it slowly and carefully to avoid it mixing with air.

Never use ordinary funnels, I don’t know how powder funnels would work in that regard but ordinary funnels suck for topical minoxidil. Raw minoxidil powder bulks up very easily and is a mess to get through funnels, a very real mess. 4-5 minutes are required at the very least for moving 10-15g of powder, time just spared for it.

Operate by QS logic of pharmacy. Do not pour minoxidil powder to base solution instead pour the solution to minoxidil powder, preferrably on a class A graduated cylinder so you can measure the precise volume that it occupies. eg. 250ml for 250ml solution. Powder funnels may be required beforehand for transferring minoxidil to a 250ml graduated cylinder in the first place though. Plan and operate in a way to avoid aerosolization as much as possible, inside gloveboxes if possible.

50mg/mL is impossible to obtain realistically. 48-52mg/mL is more realistic. I had compounded a ~48mg/mL variant. It will surpass 50 slightly probably as ethanol evaporates.

Gloveboxes are needed if you want to minimize aerosolization if not then you can risk aerosolization. Nothing happened to me, but no guarantee it won’t happen to you too.

Forgot to mention, for all minoxidil-powder handling, use a glovebox + air purifiers inside gloveboxes. No, that is not an exaggeration. Prevent as much aerosolization as possible.

Preservatives (eg potassium sorbate) may be needed, legality of it though is not something I know and pH adjustments eg. through citric acid solutions might be needed. At this level it becomes a shelf product rather than a compounded drug. Also I don’t know whether p. sorbate would be appropriate for this purpose. Oxidization of minoxidil can sometimes produce yellowish color, maybe BHT could also be used and the list goes on.

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Awesome guide, what was your motivation for formulating your own topical when it’s so readily available generally?

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Readily available and affordable are not the same things.

I don’t live in a region where minoxidil is cheap. In Turkey, minoxidil for some reason is overpriced. Its raw material is cheap. Ethanol is cheap. Propylene Glycol is cheap. 240ml of topical minoxidil runs me for 6.67 USD. Let’s make it 7 or even 8. No, let’s make it 10!. 10 USD. Plus the operational costs eg. erlens/stirring rods or graduated cylinders etc. breaking etc. This happened to my volumetric flask but not when I prepared the solution but afterwards of washing it, so it is safe but creates a cost for me nevertheless.

You can get minoxidil from legit chemical firms for about 25$ per 50g or for 12$ if you order online. It is commonly used in Turkey for as a beard serum.

For ethanol you can use denatured ethanol with IPA inside or just IPA for alcohol. Both cost roughly the same around 500 TL, which is 12 USD for 1 liter. Both dissolve minoxidil and finasteride from my research. It may dissolve slower compared to ethanol but would probably be dissolved nevertheless. You only need roughly 30ml of ethanol which is like 0.4 USD, or 40 cents for a 60ml batch. You now understand?

Now the kind of topical minoxidil that is sold in pharmacies run for 83 USD for 240ml. 60ml*4.

I can formulate the same with all costs accounted (including shipment/transfer fee and operational costs) for about 10$. Let’s make it 12$. 12$ VERSUS 83$.

See the difference? If you know turkish or can use google translate, you could check it yourself, these values are real-legit numbers. Keep in mind, 240ml is not a large number for twice daily application of topical minoxidil with 4ml in each application for a diffuse thinner.

But what is worse is that, you cannot know whether the minoxidil you are getting is legit or not. Even if it is legit, it may be diluted because their caps are easy to take off. When you do it yourself, you know what goes into it, this is not to say that one should do it himself but it is better to you know do it yourself for cheap when you know what you put into it rather than to get an overpriced variant that may not be up to the standards. There is no rogaine or kirkland here, all generic.

Disclaimer: The links here are for illustration purposes only. The author makes no warranty as to legitimacy of the chemicals the links above refer to.

Update: I had to remove the links to prevent it from getting flagged as advertisement.

Check the price of minoxidil 5% topical solution here yourself, for Turkey. All the prices are same, irrelevant of brand. It is 25$ for 60ml. 100$ for 240ml, prices had been increased it seems from 82$.

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Keep in mind that this is also not a guide. If you can get legit topical minoxidil, proceed as such if you are prescribed. I don’t support doing this, just what I had to do. Calling it a guide may be legally problematic and also this is not a precise instructional text on DIY compounding. There is not even an ingredients list. Nowhere had I EVER included the solution I used. Do you know how much PG/Ethanol/DW gone into it? No :slight_smile:. You can take a guess but that is it. That is why I called it “on crucial details and pitfalls of formulating blabla” rather than “how to compound topical minoxidil at home DIY”. People make errors and that may cost them heavily, so if they want to do it nevertheless, they should do it at least safely. Believe me, the real compounding is far more complicated than what is told here. In particular, the surgical precision you need to have to avoid creating a mess. Mess = (potential) toxicity, in chemistry :slight_smile:

(Potential) Toxicity, even for relatively safer things (compared to messing with say HCI) like preparing a topical minoxidil. Minoxidil causes the hair growth the same way it affects blood pressure and you don’t want excess of that stuff.

Also I issued a request to have my old account gone with posts there to help people but for some reason @craggg is not acting as such. I had sent you an email from the account prior to deletion. The first 2 letters of my email account are “to”, to further confirm it. Please comply with my request, thanks. I won’t reply to new emails to that address as I had deleted it too but I had sent an email and contacted you on this site on deletion of the @baldbutnotbold.