Hair loss treatments: Propecia - how it works?

As men around the world become more motivated to restore their natural hairline and correct male pattern baldness, interest in hair loss treatments continues to grow. For this reason we've decided to further detail all the different hair loss treatments available.  If you're a regular BattleAgainstBald reader you probably know a lot about surgical  hair restoration, but sometimes we feel like we neglect some of the other treatments. After all, complementing your hair transplantation with another baldness treatment can—most times—add to the success of your hair restoration efforts. To kick off BattleAgainstBald's hair loss treatment series I'd like to start with the popular hair loss drug Finasteride, otherwise marketed as Proscar or Propecia.

We get a lot of questions asking if Propecia works. Put simply the answer is yes, Propecia/Finasteride does work. However, how well it works differs from patient to patient. Additionally, Finasteride is proven to stop, as well as prevent, hair loss from happening and does not claim to regrow previously lost hair. That said, a new study shows that 20 per cent of men taking Finasteride experience moderate amounts of new hair growth after a year of using the drug.

Manufactured by Merck with the intention of correcting enlarged prostates in men, Finasteride/Propecia was approved by the FDA in 1997 as a safe and effective treatment for hair loss. As the only FDA approved pill proven to stop hair from falling out, Finasteride is a popular choice for men in the early stages of hair loss, before the bald spots become more transparent—like in the case of myself and Torrance.

Here are few interesting Propecia facts:

• Like surgical hair restoration, it takes a minimum of three months for Propecia to show results. In some cases it takes upwards of one year before significant results appear.
• On the downside, Propecia has a number of potential side effects including:
  • Women, especially pregnant women, are not supposed to touch it as handling the pill while pregnant can result in infant birth defects
  • In some cases men taking Propecia experience erectile dysfunction. Don't fret—there are drugs available for that as well!
  • Most recently, Finasteride has been found to interfere with prostate cancer tests

Stay tuned for next week's part 2 of BattleAgainstBald's hair loss treatments saga: Minoxidil, otherwise marketed as Rogaine.