Is Finasteride the Right Hair Loss Remedy for You?

Are you worried about hair loss? If so, you’re not alone. Roughly 9 out of 10 guys admit that male pattern baldness is something that’s a source of stress and anxiety. By virtue of being here, however, you’ve taken more action than a lot of men have regarding hair loss – you’ve started researching ways to prevent, stop, or reverse male pattern baldness.

Are you ready for some good news? Treatment is more effective than you think. In fact, fighting hair loss is easy and effective for the vast majority of men experiencing androgenetic alopecia. All you need to do is be patient and willing to commit to a long-term treatment program.

You might be wondering why there are so many men walking around with significant hair loss, especially considering there are a number of remedies out there that can slow down or stop male pattern baldness completely. The biggest reason is a lack of education about which hair loss treatments actually work. There’s a lot of misinformation out there regarding hair loss remedies, and most of it’s from armchair experts who boldly claim that their all-natural, homeopathic methods are guaranteed to promote hair growth and stop baldness (spoiler alert: they don’t).

This makes finding reliable information a challenge, and to further complicate matters, successful hair loss treatment doesn’t come in the form of a quick fix. It’s something that takes time to work – usually a couple of months – and requires consistency and dedication. A lot of people simply quit because they don’t see major results in the first couple of weeks and assume that the treatment doesn’t work .

How Finasteride 1mg Can Help You Keep Your Hair

Finasteride, also known as the brand name Propecia, is a pill that is FDA approved to prevent hair loss. But don’t confuse this for being a miracle cure for baldness. There’s no such thing as a magical cure that stops male pattern baldness. However, finasteride can be an effective way to prevent your hair from thinning because it prohibits the conversion of testosterone into DHT (dihydrotestosterone). DHT is a powerful hormone that causes hair follicles to miniaturize and eventually stop growing hair. You get this benefit as long as you take it properly and consistently as prescribed by your doctor.

One of the best things about finasteride is how convenient the treatment is. It comes in a 1mg finasteride pill which is normally taken once a day – that’s it. As long as you’re willing to take finasteride over the long-term, the medicine will take care of the rest.

Finasteride is one of the few hair loss treatments to be clinically tested, FDA approved and proven to work for the majority of men. In fact, 83% of the men who take the medicine have successfully stopped male pattern baldness and kept the hair they already have. And 65% of the men who take finasteride have even experienced a noticeable regrowth of lost hair over the course of three months.

So, what’s the catch with finasteride?

While there is no catch, finasteride doesn’t completely cure male pattern baldness. Instead, it blocks the hormone linked to hair loss in men (DHT) and is only effective for as long as you take the medication. No matter how successful your treatment is and regardless of how much hair you’ve managed to grow back, if you stop taking finasteride abruptly, you’re not going to like the result. More often than not, the hair you grew back will fall out and the balding process as a whole will resume where it left off.

Think of finasteride as a way to put male pattern baldness on pause. Still, it’s an incredibly effective tool in the fight against hair loss and the only prescription treatment approved by the FDA for male pattern baldness.

Let’s talk side effects

There’s no such thing as a drug that’s without side effects completely. However, finasteride isn’t as harmful as some of the other types of medicine on the market. In fact, such a small percentage of men experience side effects at all, making the medicine effective and safe. With that said, there are a few things that you should know about the drug before you start taking it.

Here's what you might be wondering about: unwanted sexual side effects. Remember that finasteride works by blocking DHT, and DHT is a male sex hormone and is also a form of testosterone – this sex hormone just happens to also be linked to hair loss, unfortunately! In clinical tests, approximately 2% of the people who take finasteride reported unwanted sexual side effects like decreased libido, difficulty getting or maintaining an erection, and trouble ejaculating. Of that 2%, half of them reported that the side effect went away after taking the medication for three months, and everyone reported that the side effects went away as soon as they discontinued the medication. Still, that leaves less than 1% of guys taking finasteride with a chance of developing persistent sexual side effects.

Again, this is something that you should talk to your doctor about so you can go over the various risks before you start the medication. If you do happen to experience these side effects, make sure that you consult a physician before continuing further.

The Final Say on Finasteride

As you can see, finasteride is no miracle pill that solved male pattern baldness. But it is an effective way to stop hair loss. You can even use it with a variety of other hair loss remedies, like minoxidil, DHT blocking shampoo, and hair vitamins such as biotin.