From: rgt74
I have been reading some of the people's experiences about shedding and finasterde. I was going to get on proscar/propecia, but now I am a bit concerned to say the least. I WAS going to get my pills from an internet pharmacy with out a prescription, but now I am going to a dermatologist to get it. This way I can ask the doctor about this shedding and if it's normal. I can also ask him about hair growth/falling out cycles in general. You know, it is normal for hairs to grow awhile, then fall out, then grow back, etc., etc., etc. Oh yeah, trying to contact pharmisudical (spelling I know) companies will get you no where. FDA law prohibits them from discussing products with the general public. Your best bet would be to demand answers from your doctor. You may be less "in the dark" about some of the concerns. Another thing, wouldn't this drastic shedding have been noted during the year long trials of the drug? If the shedding occured say during the second or third YEAR of taking finasteride, that would be one thing, but within the first couple of weeks or months? Also, guys that suffer with hair loss are more obsessed about their hair and are more inclined to notice some shedding. I hope this shedding experienced is just hysteria and not a reason to pull the carpet out from under guys suffering from hair loss. But remember Phen-fen?
From: Lawman
I've been reading a lot of these threads and I feel that I must post a caveat to all of you.
I am nearly 30 years old and I used Propecia (couldn't get hold of Proscar and a pill cutter) for 6 months, basically between July '99 and January 2000. I also applied Minoxidil 5% whenever I remembered to. Hairloss hit me particularly hard because as a kid, my claim to fame was that my scalp could not be seen even with my hair parted because it was that thick and I was a nightmare for all the barbers. Now, my top scalp hair density appears to be about 5% of what it once was. Anyway, I cannot say how effective the treatment was while using Finasteride because I covered up using lashings of Toppik throughout and that stuff kicks serious ass and I kept growing my hair long. I kept complaining about hairloss and people asked me why, considering that I appeared to have a head full of hair! Things came to a crunch before christmas 2000 after getting a serious haircut and having discontinued Propecia and Minoxidil for nearly a year. There was nothing there to cut and my whole scalp had a baldman's shine to it!! I looked 20 years older in the space of 30 minutes and even the Toppik couldn't cut the ice without looking totally artificial. I am so depressed, upset and desperate that I have ordered 18 months supply of Proscar (after it is cut). This is despite the devastating after-effects of Propecia and the reason I write now.
While using Propecia, I experienced none of the so called standard contra-indications. It was only 6-7 months after discontinuing that a nightmare I had hitherto never experienced in my life showed up.
Basically, and this is embarrassing, whilst having sex with my now ex-girlfriend, I climaxed and rolled over, only after my erection had subsided did any semen emerge. I thought that this was a one-off and thought no more about it. After several such occurances, even my girlfriend started to notice and it became an issue of trust since she thought I was purposely climaxing outside because I didn't trust her regarding birth control. The problem was so bad that she eventually ran off with my best friend!!!
This got so worrying that I was obliged to carry out a series of masturbation tests. All my life when I climaxed, I experienced strong vascular contractions in the groin area which propelled my ejaculate a considerable distance (usually 10 - 30 centimetres). However now, I climaxed and nothing came out until I squeezed the base of my testes when I climaxed and then it all trickled out. I don't think there was a reduction in the quantity. As a further test, I abstained from masturbation for a period of 10 days since I thought that there was a likelihood that this problem was due to an insufficient volume of semen being present in my testicles. At the end of that period, I induced ejaculation once again and only a few drops of sperm trickled out and that was all that was willing to come out until I squeezed the base of my testicles and the immense balance of abstinence shot out but with no force, it simply just trickled out in great wads. I have repeated the same test twice with longer abstinence period and with the exact same end result. It seems that my prostate gland no longer provides the peristaltic effect it once did and requires manual manipulation to provide the same effect. During intercourse, this is extremely difficult if not impossible to do and leads me to think that becoming a father will be a very difficult job. Has anyone else experienced anything similar? And why the hell has Merck Sharp & Dohme not documented this? Is reduced seminal volume the one and the same thing as what I have experienced?
One more thing of interest is that a Lebanese friend of mine who was totally bald up top surfaced recently with a head full of healthy voluminous hair. He claimed that he got some stuff from South India called 'Karadi Nhey' or Bear Ghee which is an illegal substance since people known as 'Udyavastanmar' need to be hired to go into the wild and shoot the bears, squeeze the ghee from some unspecified organ, gland or skin of the animal. For this privilege, they charged him around $400 for a tiny bottle of the stuff to be applied topically and as far as they were concerned, it represented a total cure for hairloss which they claimed was known for centuries. Considering that it had only been four months since I last saw him, and I checked him out thoroughly for tell-tale signs of a hair-transplant. I am no expert in hair transplantation, but by all accounts, 4 months is not enough to regrow all your hair after a megasession procedure like what this chap would have required + I know for a fact that he could not afford a 15 grand procedure as that would really be the base of what was required to restore his hair. I wanted to get hold of some of this stuff, but there is no information whatsoever about it on the internet or medical literature and I am not 100% sure about the ethics of travelling to India and hiring these guys to go out and shoot a poor animal for the sake of my paltry vanity. Does anybody out there know anything about this?