The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I would start with just finasteride, the sooner the better. It prevents the conversion of testosterone to DHT in your blood. The hairs on your head miniturize and eventually die in response to high levels of DHT. Once the follicles are too far gone, you can't bring them back. There are potential side effects, but they are almost always reversible if you stop taking it.
The reason to avoid other treatments like Minoxidil at first is to see if the finasteride is working. You may not need anything else if you respond well enough. On the other hand, if your hair continues to get worse on just finasteride it might take stronger anti-DHT medication such as dutasteride.
People who only use Minoxidil usually see a temporary improvement in hair thickness, but because it doesn't address the root cause of thinning they keep losing hair. Think of it as a multiplier for the number of living follicles left on your head.
Edit: Getting finasteride is very easy these days through online pharmacies, although you can probably get it cheaper if you go to an actual doctor. But you might have bad luck getting a doctor to prescribe it. Many don't think baldness is a serious problem so they think any chance of side effects is a reason to not prescribe.
I've been taking it daily for three years now, and I haven't noticed a slowdown (on the bright side, I didn't experience any side effects). I'll look into dutasteride, thanks.
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