TRT and Finasteride Opinions?

Pharma TRT
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I am 36 , 6’1 225 and a former heavy AAS user. (mostly tren / test cycles) for 10 years. Alot if my cycles were trial and error. Done recklessly, under the influence of douchebag military guys in my 20s. Since i have had my daughter i cut out the heavy cycles. I figured going from 160 pounds to 220 was good enough.

I have crashed my E2, given myself and recovered from gyno, survived insane episodes of madness caused my tren. Basicly every bad side affect a dummy could have but I have NEVER experienced pattern baldness even during these reckless days.

I have been on trt for about 2 years at 100 mg test E Per week sub q and didnt have any problems with hairloss that i know of.

My life took some economic turmoil During covid-19 and i decided to up my test to 500mg per week and hit the gym hard! as a way to cope.

Gains are good. Diet is good. But i started noticing baldness at the crown area. I was shocked! I am also 2 weeks in on a tren ace cycle that was planned on lasting 2 months just to give me a good body for summer.

I just decided to dump the tren Based on reading it can cause other factors for balding and go back to my 100mg test cycle while adding 100mg finastride and using topical rogain and as well as miz shampoo

I underatand the side affect risks of fina. I took it once Foolishly out of fear 10 years ago when i wasnt even losing hair.

I am wondering if this makes sense to use on TRT, and also if the tren ace should have more exit time than its halflife before starting the fina.

As much as i love the feeling and look of being ON , currently id rather just focus on an athletic lifestyle and keeping my hair if possible. And give it a good year to see if it corrects. If not i will just go balls to the wall and accept baldness.

No need to scold me on past mistakes. I know how foolish my AAS use was when i was 25-30.

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Never ever touch finasteride no matter what. Even the topical forms can penetrate deep enough into the blood stream and cause hormonal issues.

Testosterone will accelerate hair loss if you are prone to it, of course dose dependent. About tren I havent heard it to cause hair loss in another mechanism, but if Im not mistaken it is regarded more androgenic so it is quite possible the process is stronger there.

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It’s makes no sense when one considers the newer long term data of finasteride users not even taking into account the usual PFS cases.

Why not go back to your previous protocol that didn’t cause baldness so you don’t need the endocrine disrupting medicine. You could also try lowering your dosage.

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Use Topical Dutasteride, it doesn’t go systemic. I have used it for 8 months now. Completely stopped my hair loss and zero sides, unlike topical finasteride or oral finasteride.
I have measured my DHT levels constantly.
Also, it won’t protect you against T, only DHT. You need daily 50mg of RU for that.
In conjunction you will pretty much stop any related hair loss from T and DHT.

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I just added the rogain this week. I am going back to my protocol and if it gets worse i guess i will add the finastride. I feel a bit lost when i ask, what is RU?

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Yup fuck fina man. Get on RU, search youtube.

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Ruthenium?

Are you trying to say RU486?

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RU588… Just search RU and hairloss

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First off, is that an error in your original post? 100 mg of finasteride is a hell of a lot. Even at an extreme dose for guys with severe BPH, the dose rarely goes above 5mg/day.

Contrary opinion here. It’s going to ruffle some feathers, and I have not desire to argue it. I offer it to you because you asked and this is MY OPINION based on MY EXPERIENCE. There’s lots of finasteride bashing in this and other forums, but little data to support long term side-effects as some suggest. They hang their hat on a study that supposedly shows long-term suppression of gene expression in post-finasteride patients. However, if folks actually took the time to read the full paper and understand the study, they would see how flawed the design was and the conclusions that were drawn. Not to mention that the study was funded by a group dedicated to stopping finasteride use. Enough said.

On the dark side of finasteride, there is ample evidence to show that taking finasteride without TRT (i.e., in normal men) can and does cause sexual side-effects, some severe. this is because the intent of the drug is to lower DHT levels, and DHT is about 10X more androgenic than testosterone and is very important to male sexual performance. However, when you are on TRT, your DHT levels will more than likely exceed the upper end of the normal range. In my case by a substantial amount.

My personal experience having started finasteride approximately 2 years ago and monitoring my DHT levels for over 3 years, is that you need to titrate the dose to bring your DHT levels back into the normal range. This means that you actually have pre-finasteride DHT labs to document that your are above range. If you are not above range, I would not recommend messing with the drug.

For me, my pre-finasteride DHT levels (after numerous tests) ranged from around 110-250 ng/dL with a normal range of 30-85. After titrating an oral dose using the eye dropper method, I found that approximately 2 mg/day is an optimal dose to maintain my DHT levels in about the 75th percentile of the normal range.

There are a few studies (8 to be specific) that show that topical use of finasteride brings a higher concentration of the drug to the scalp where you need it and with less systemic absorption. The studies are limited in that they were fairly small studies and there is much heterogeneity in the methods, but they all generally showed positive hair growth with topical use. In one of these studies, they actually measured DHT levels while administering the drug topically and orally and compared these to baseline (no-finasteride use). They demonstrated that approximately 20% of the topically applied drug is absorbed systemically.

Using this data, I am now working on fine tuning my dose. I take 1.2 mg orally and about 4mg/day topically (which equates to about 0.8mg/day systemic topical absorption). Therefore, the total oral equivalent dose is about 2.0 mg/day. I am on a pretty standard dose of TRT (125mg/week in an E3D protocol). My HCG use is a bit higher than the typical guy on TRT, I use 1050 IU per week in an E3D protocol. Bottom line is that I’ve observed no detrimental effects on sexual performance and my DHT levels are where I want them (~75th percentile of the normal range).

You need to make your own informed decisions as to whether or not to use finasteride, but I wouldn’t let the dark cloud that hangs over this forum stop you from doing the research and listening to all opinions, both pro and con.

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