What should I start with? Advices are welcomed

General
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Yo guys!

I’m 35 years old and I’m looking forward for some advices what I can do to prolong or even help the regeneration of my lost hair if possible.

I’ve never tried any of minoxidil or fenasteride (heard for this I will need a prescription) at least here in Romania.

The only thing I’ve done is microneedeling for about 1 year (some time ago).

Should I take into consideration a visit to Turkey for hair implant? Or should I try first with some minoxidil and or without fenasteride?

Cheers

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Only under the strict advice, prescription and supervision of doctor and while keeping in mind that NONE of this is a medical advice;

  • 1)You should consider hopping on the dutasteride (0.5mg) and minoxidil (5% topical with tretinoin or oral at 2.5mg-5mg). Why dutasteride? Because dutasteride yields better results than finasteride, though finasteride typically at 1mg is also applicable/suitable. If you choose to go for the topical minoxidil add the tretinoin into the stack, that shit boosts its efficiency significantly. Also get blood pressure, ecg readings before hopping on oral minoxidil and check for any heart palpitations or chest pain, shortness of breath etc. Oral minoxidil while in low doses is usually safe, at higher doses is a potent anti-hypertensive medication. It literally widens your blood vessels, which is NOT something I would recommend if you respond to topical. I take oral because cannot afford to lose time with topical, but if you respond well to it, then go with it.
  • 2)You should NOT consider transplant yet, and wait for the treatments above to gain you as much ground as possible. Remember you, or anybody else for that matters does NOT have infinite grafts, there is only a limited amount of grafts on your donor area. You cannot find 20.000-25.000 grafts for instance, that may provide the NW7s with a denser hair than the elvis presley but at most you will get 10.000 if you are lucky. Keep in mind this is in theory, even if you had 20-25k of grafts then it probably would still had required a great deal of expertise (good surgeon) and extreme luck to look like presley. HT is almost always never a substitute for native, raw good hair genetics in practice.
  • 3)I am not an expert but in my opinion you would need about 6000-7000 grafts get a good density at this point, see how you would respond to meds, given you are a diffuse thinner with crown thinning in particular noticable I would advise you to see how meds work for you in the initial stages of treatment eg. 12-24 months. Wait 1-2 years and go for HT depending on your response. Diffuse thinning, anecdotally, seems to respond best to the medication for some reason. Crown thinning responds good too, my assumption is that if the hairline is intact eg. there are no bald spots/areas like you know any widow’s peak or bald spot at the back of your head (crown) and that you have began losing hair in 1-2 years where follicles have not gone full dormant yet, then you will probably respond well.

ps: also if you are coming to Turkey, keep in mind that you canNOT find a good quality topical minoxidil solution 5% here and if you find they are expensive as hell and that oral minoxidil is NOT available here. I had no problem sourcing topical fin, propecia, proscar, avodart etc. with prescription here but sourcing loniten is hard. You may get oral compounded from local pharmacies in Istanbul like I do but keep in mind that they are not original loniten/lonolox. I always perform chemical tests to verify the contents inside. Also, you can consider making your own topical minoxidil, you would need ethanol, pg, raw minoxidil powder, a magnetic stirrer, an erlenmeyer with a cap and perhaps a beaker (though you have to calculate the evaporation rate etc if you want to heat, which i don’t.), not straightforward but doable.

OR YOU COULD SKIP ALL OF THIS ps above AND BRING MINOXIDIL (EG ROGAINE/KIRKLAND) YOU BUY THERE OTC. Maybe even oral minoxidil :slight_smile:

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Big thanks for your time you took to write this!
Appreciate

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I assume dutasteride its only given with a prescription as far as I saw (here in romania). Given your experience/ expertise do you recommend from a particular producer? (Zentiva, Avodart)

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well i don’t like advertising and usually speaking what matters is a)for dut to be soft gel capsule b)for it to contain active the active ingredient of dutasteride. but in my opinion avodart has a good reputation and that is what I use. though always refer to a doctor if possible, this is not like shopping around you are literally taking meds, even if they are in general safe for adult men :slight_smile:

ps:I don’t know about “zentiva” but if it is in soft-gel capsule form and is a registered firm then it is probably good to go. I use locally produced versions of ketoconazole (yeah not 1-1 substitute, but still) and it seems to do the trick. you may get your dht tested if you don’t believe that it is working. though af you want like the standard dutasteride people talk about and use you should opt for avodart. zentiva could do the trick too though, if in suspicion you can get a DHT test and up the dose eg from 0.5 to 1 under a doctor’s prescription.