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Study: Male Hair Loss Drug Propecia Making Men Impotent

02.12.2012 in Uncategorized

A recent study suggests that the drug used to fight baldness is damaging men’s sex lives.


Guys, would you rather lose your hair or lose your sexual prowess? Sounds like a pretty rotten deal, but a new study shows that men who take medication for hair loss risk losing something particularly valuable in return. Don’t Settle For Low Sexual Libido

The research, which was published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine this month, says that 5 to 23 percent of men who took the prescription drug finasteride (sold as Propecia) may suffer impotence, low libido, erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation and an inability to orgasm. Specific Hormone Replacement Can Boost Libido

While side effects are common to many drugs, these symptoms may persist for months after stopping treatment. Dr. Michael S. Irwig of George Washington University’s medical school interviewed 76 men aged 21 to 46 to find that their symptoms lingered for at least three months after they stopped taking the medication. Some even felt the effects for up to 10 years. Female Sexual Dysfunction IS A Real Disorder
A number of participants developed problems after taking the medication for just a few days. On average, the men had been taking the drug for 28 months and experienced problems afterward for a mean of 40 months. The persistence of their symptoms is especially troubling giving the irony: once you stop taking the drug, you’ll soon start losing your hair again, but your libido may not be so quick to return.

In the U.K. and Sweden, the drug comes with a warning label for potential sexual dysfunction, but this hasn’t been the case in the U.S. But before you exchange your drugs for a toupee, we should note that the subjects weren’t completely random. The researchers selected them from a website especially for problems with finasteride.

Take it from us, though. We’d rather see our men bald than suffering from a loss of libido, so grab that razor and embrace the super-sexy Bruce Willis look.

For treatments that work without any side effect read:

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

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COMBAT HAIR LOSS: How To Grow Your Hair Back (Part 9)

01.12.2012 in COMBAT HAIR LOSS

Another group of products increases cellular oxygen levels and stimulates increased Mytosis (hair cell production); again the growth benefits appear helpful.

The largest group of products are those derived by sheer chance, the “Empirical” group, and they are in very good company, very many of our best known pharmaceutical drugs were originally found empirically, in other words, by guess work, or more frequently, complete chance, i.e. it was noticed that they worked.  Many of these products have been shown in trials to exert a hair growth effect and, providing a realistic expectation is assumed, these products can be very helpful.

It is undoubtedly true that as more basic research into hair biology and structure is undertaken, more compounds will appear, possibly with greater efficacy than those at present available.

One must also consider the “placebo” effect, the amount of growth effect you can produce with a dummy lotion, a pretend product, and against which all the growth products have to be measured when they are appraised in clinical trials.  The placebo effect for hair growth products is astonishingly high, 30 to 35%, and any product claiming to have a growth effect will have to have a measurable growth response higher than 35%.  Many quite promising and technically interesting products have failed at this hurdle.

We all want to have a hair growth product and we want to grow our hair back and look younger.  In some cases you can do this, but where the base cause is genetically determined, where the gradual degeneration and hair loss have already been set in stone before birth (or, to be precise, encoded in our DNA sequences – all six billion molecular pairs), the overwhelming force of events is in a set direction and moving against that force, in the opposite direction, is extremely difficult to achieve.

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

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Male Hair Loss Treated Success Story

30.11.2012 in HAIR LOSS [ PHOTOS ] TREATED, MALE HAIR LOSS

For many men, losing hair is something will have to be faced as part of the aging process. Common hair loss can be treated with preventative hair loss treatments and products. If this is happening to you, you are not alone, as a simple walk down the street will show you. About 25 per cent of men begin losing hair before they reach 30 and two thirds before the age of 60. Sometimes men can begin losing hair in their teens and can reach their early twenties with very little, if any, hair left on the crown of their head. Usually, however, the hair loss is gradual, developing over a period of twenty to thirty years.

The most common cause of hair loss in men is genetic:

Androgenetic alopecia (male pattern baldness) has a characteristic pattern of hair loss; it begins with a slight recession at the front hairline and is followed by thinning on the crown of the head. The hair above the ears and at the nape of the neck is unaffected. This hair loss results from a complex chemical reaction when the enzyme 5-alpha-reductase converts the testosterone in the system into DHT or dihydrotestosterone. The hair follicles are genetically predisposed to be oversensitive to the DHT and become smaller and smaller with time, leading to the eventual hair loss.

For treatments that work without any side effect read:

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

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COMBAT HAIR LOSS: How To Grow Your Hair Back (Part 8)

30.11.2012 in COMBAT HAIR LOSS

However, many chemical agents are known that can induce hair growth, although many remain completely impractical.  Massive systemic doses of oestrogen for men, for example, will certainly induce hair growth, but the additional feminisation of the male concerned would be generally completely unacceptable, although this technique is used in male to female sex change operations.  The oestrogen supply swamps the testosterone present.

A more elegant approach involves the inhibition of di-hydroxytestosterone (DHT) production, the more potent form of testosterone, and a number of products have been developed to achieve this aim.  Finnasteride (Merck & Co) is a DHT inhibitor, taken orally and marketed as “Propecia”.  The clinical evidence suggests some re-growth for men (the product is contra-indicated for women), although after the initial two years, the reversal appears again, until after about five years the hair growth pattern has reverted back to its original position.  The product does assist in slowing the onset of Androgenic Alopecia but one must bear in mind the side effects, although only a small percentage (1 or 2%) are severe.

There are a number of naturally occurring DHT inhibitors, of which the herb Saw Palmetto (Serenoa Repens) is probably the best known.  Not surprisingly no comprehensive clinical trials have been undertaken but the anecdotal evidence remains strong.

The best known of the “growth” products is of course Minoxydil, applied topically in strengths of 2% to 5%.  Minoxydil certainly assists but is better in some cases than others, and all cases suffer from the drawback of hair fall when treatment ceases.  Minoxydil is a potent vasodilator; it increases the blood supply locally, although its precise mode of action is unknown. 

 A number of other products use a vasodilator technique and the idea of increasing the blood supply, and hence the nutrients carried in the blood, to the dermal papilla and the hair root seems eminently sensible.  However, the hair growth benefit from these products is not so clear cut.

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

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