Realists or pessimists?

On this site it seems most people (or those who can be bothered posting) are very pessimistic or some might say realistic on the subject of treatments?

Fist impression on this forum, It seems:

Rogain :- Makes all your hair fall out irreversibly! or might just give you an irritated scalp and mild case of depression.

Fin/Pro :- Gives you bitch tits, impotence, testicular pains, low volume of spunk, low labido and I could go on ....

Spiro :- just doesn't work nor does Retin-a.

and (understandably maybe) the herbal options are dismissed instantly.

The only success I have come across is HT's or keeping your hair after having a HT. Has anyone on here actually just followed the "big 3" and had any success without a HT?? Just curious.

As a fellow sceptic and only having experienced one treatment (minox 5%) unsuccessfully restoring any hair, infact probably doing more damage. This does not give me any confidence in trying anything else..

A succsess story would be nice. Any chance?

Finasteride is the only thing that could possibly work. I have seen a couple of success stories from finasteride (Spex and Tommy2), but they are exceptions. The best you can hope for from finasteride is that it will prevent further loss - cases where hair is actually re-grown are rare and even then only in the crown/mid-scalp areas. If you have lost hair at the front, a HT is the only way to get your hair back. Some get sides from finasteride, some don't (I don't believe that it is only 2% of users that get sides as they claim but there are plenty of guys that say they don't have any sides from it). I had sides from it but was pretty much against it anyway - I don't want to take pills that are messing around with my hormones for the rest of my life, especially when they are a ridiculous price and aren't guaranteed to work.

A HT with a surgeon like Dr Feller is certain to work, haven't seen anybody without results. I had a HT, got enough hair to be happy with and don't use any hair meds or crappy anti-hair loss shampoos/useless minoxidil that just make you balder. A HT actually works out cheaper than paying for crappy meds and snake oils for the rest of your life.

I agree fin is the only thing that I've seen to halt hairloss, its the reason why Spex and Tommy two only needed HT's in the front third. Without it I would say that both of them were headed for a big degree of hairloss nw5/nw6.
As for the non surgical treatments to restore hair if they really worked the surgeons would be out of business, and these products woulkd be the biggest selling items in any chemist. The manufacturers would be able to afford huge avertising campaigns on TV and there would be very few bald guys in western society.

The results with Fin are, on average, pretty good. We have robust data from long-term (5yr) clinical trials that shows a significant difference in hair counts between men treated with Fin and placebo - see the graph. Side effects only present in a small minority of users. I've seen a reference to an 80% plus success rate with Rogaine foam, but haven't checked it out personally. For success stories with different hair loss regimens, see - http://www.hairlosstalk.com/discussions/vi...9f3925b92320541