Cure for male pattern baldness given boost by sugar discovery

> Findings from the study show that the deoxy ribose sugar is as effective at regrowing hair as Minoxidil - an existing drug used to treat hair loss

Minoxidil is barely effective, especially for something that became widely available. It got approved in the 80s as a topical version of a hypertension drug, and IIRC the McStudy that supported it was funded by the original patent holder.

I don't think anyone had much of a problem with it, as the market was previously 100% snake oil, and this sort of thing happens even with drugs for serious diseases. If you benefit from the placebo effect and stop stressing out about it, then maybe the drug really "works"?

Since the discovery in the article is pretty much a mirror of the story of Minoxidil, I would default to being skeptical of the claims.

The 5-alpha-reductase (5ar) inhibitors [1] like finasteride and dutasteride do work. The 5ar enzyme converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone (DHT.) Over time, DHT causes sensitive follicles to shrink further and further and the hair growth phase to get shorter and shorter, until it reaches zero. People whose skin is genetically less DHT-sensitive go bald later in life or not at all.

However, the inhibitors have systemic reach, and their long-term consequences are hard to study. It is (was?) believed that DHT is not practically useful in adults, but this was partly based on research on people who are 5ar-deficient due to a genetic mutation. They also have a less-than-pretty clinical picture [2] because they had no DHT when it mattered (in the womb) so the safety argument has always been rather tentative.

If you're balding, you should ask yourself how much it really matters to you. Are you willing to take a serious drug for decades, with less-than-well-understood systemic consequences? No one will really be able to answer your what-ifs.

Some people really stress out about it, and I'd say they are good candidates. But if you don't really care all that much, you're much better off letting Darwin take the wheel on this one.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_5α-reductase_inhibitor...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5α-Reductase_2_deficiency

If you take a high enough dose of estrogen, generally referred to as estrogen mono therapy, it will knock down your T levels. But high estrogen levels have some risks as well, and different doctors have different preferred approaches. My doctor is willing to do estrogen monotherapy, but I would have to switch from oral pills to injections as the higher dosages taken orally would be hard on the kidneys. Before switching to injections, I just wanted to see how finasteride worked for me. It is okay, but not perfect.

It is hard to tell if what I am experiencing is a side effect of the finasteride unrelated to my T levels, or it is due to some reduction in the effects of testosterone because of the mechanism of action of the finasteride. If it is the latter, switching to injections and doing monotherapy to lower my T could have the same effects. The fact of the matter is the penis functions better with testosterone in my system but testosterone also leads to hair loss, so trying to get both is somewhat of an imperfect balancing act.

But hey, I'm having the best sex of my life and the people I am attracted to think I am hot as hell so I don't mind a little experimentation to see what works best! Actually its super cool what we can do with a little hormonal alchemy.

I think estrogen increases my risk of breast cancer to that of a cis woman, but decreases some chances of testosterone related cancers. I really don't know much about this, but in general it seemed like I did not particularly have increased risks.

Maybe you're 100% right but I remember reading this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/health/minoxidil-hair-los...

It seems to suggest that oral minoxidil can be at least moderately effective

I suspect the only reason we don't hear about this more is that the patent expired and most docs only know what is marketed to them by drug reps

I've always held the position that the further back my hair recedes the shorter i will cut it.

what I discovered was, this means I spend MORE on haircuts. because shorter haircuts require more frequent haircuts to maintain their neat look.

I'm pretty much at a point now that I'm just going to buy one of those head shavers to run over my head every morning. If it can work for Picard i can make it work for me.