Pausing finasteride for blood donation, effect on DHT question

General Basic Questions
1

Pausing finasteride for blood donation, effect on DHT question

Hi yall, so I’ve started 5mg oral min and 1mg oral fin for MPB for about a month now.

I normally donated plasma / platelets every 2 weeks but since deferral for fin is 1 week in Australia (thankfully not a month as seen in most places), I made the balanced decision to drop donations to 1x per month, so that I have 75% of the month covered by fin and less DHT recovery overall.

My question is, to what extent will this 1 week per month off fin affect my treatment? Has anyone had any personal experience or info on this?

During that time I will supplement with 320mg Saw Palmetto + 1g pumpkin seed oil for the marginal DHT blocking effects, something is better than nothing im guessing.

In the future I might convert to 3-4x whole blood donations per year which is the limit, which still contributes to the blood supply but has significantly less time off fin. However if the monthly option doesn’t make a huge difference, it would be nice to be able to do that also.

2

Pausing fin for a week monthly might cause a slight DHT rise but probably won’t significantly affect hair loss if the rest of the month is covered. Saw palmetto and pumpkin seed oil have minimal DHT-blocking effects, so don’t rely on them too much. Reducing donation frequency to whole blood 3-4 times a year will help maintain fin coverage better than monthly pauses.