Do any of you out there have suggestions for tapering finasteride so that I minimize the risks of PFS? I have sides already and want to quit but am too afraid based on the stories I hear. Any help would be appreciated.
I quit cold turkey the first time with generic finasterIde and after about 3 months I went back to normal but it cause a very bad increase in balding and shedding…The second time I tapered off name brand propecia and kept waiting for the big change to hit…It never did…I got pfs and became so sick now its un real the symptoms…So it seems to make no difference or their is no patteren in different people wether they quit or taper so IDK…Finasteride gives the same effect at a very, very low dose as it does at 1mg…
Nobody knows if tapering actually helps.
You’re probably better off just quitting right now but if you really want to do it you’d have to buy topical finasteride to get the drug in the small doses and then look at a finasteride DHT chart because a 0.02mg pill inhibits just as much DHT as a 5mg pill.
Ok, thanks. Yea and it seems logical that the longer I remain on the drug the higher the chance of getting PFS.
But if it was you what would you do as you’re about to quit fin? Would you sleep a lot, would you fast, would you take something specific to try to increase your dht?
It depends how long you have been on it. If you have been on it for many, many years, then I would taper off over a period of 18 to 24 months. First cut the dose more aggressively, then very gradually - since the dose response is not linear. For example, you can cut the dose in half immediately and stay on half a dose for 2 months, then cut it in half again and stay on 1/4th for 3 months, then do 1/8th for 3-6 months. That’s 8-11 months total for the high doses. Then do 1/16th for 6 months and 1/32th for another 6 months. You can accomplish this by both cutting the pill and skipping days. Taking it every 4th day is probably is as infrequently as you can do it without producing drug concentration fluctuations that are too abrupt. If you have been on the drug for a shorter period of time it makes sense to taper off faster - i.e. you probably don’t want your tapering period to exceed the time you have been taking a standard dose.
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Thanks Sibelio. That’s helpful.
Sibelio’s information is awful lol, he’s saying stay on it for another 2 years. He also doesn’t know anything about the doses. 1/4 of a pill is the same as 1/2 of a pill.
I am saying that’s how I would do it, given everything I know about this particular drug and pharmacology/biology in general. Most people’s idea of tapering off meds is way too quick, even when they think they are doing it slow. Three months is not a slow taper when physical changes in the body need to occur. The body takes longer to adjust than we like to think. I could probably device a slightly better schedule if I would read all available studies again. The schedule would also be different if I had a finer way to dose the drug. Also, 1/4 of a pill certainly doens’t have the same effect (on either DHT concentrations or hair regrowth) as 1/2 of a pill, or a whole 1mg pill, or a 5mg pill for that matter. But even if these doses were equivalent, my schedule decays them relatively fast as the dose is halved in more or less equal intervals during the first half of the taper. Ultimately, this is an argument about the exact dose response curve. There are studies about dose-response. Dig them out if you have the time and make an argument. The other thing that matters is how long it takes for the androgen receptors to adapt. I am sure there are fewer studies about that but we know it is a slow process.