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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

Can you tell us more about your experience? Right now, this is just a drop in the anecdote bucket, with almost no context.

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Not OP, but I took finasteride from ages 26 to 29. One day, around the time I quit, I realized that I couldn't remember my last sexual thought or impulse. That part of me had slowly but completely shut down during the time I was on the drug.

In my case, things never really went back to normal. It's been about seven years since I quit. A few years ago, the labeling was updated to say that sexual side effects "could persist even after stopping the medication."

I can't say for certain finasteride was to blame. Many people take it for many years with apparently minimal side effects.

Isn’t a drop in libido also associated with aging? (Also being less fit?)

I’m definitely not the same as I was when I was 25, and I never took such medicine.

Well, I'm 46 (male) and haven't seen the aging effect on my libido yet.

Just a counter anecdote. I have this same issue and I have never taken any medication.

I’m 29 now and my sex drive is so low that it’s causing problems in my relationship.

Maybe you should see a doctor

Get your prolactin levels checked.

Have you tried lifting weights? Deadlifts, specifically.

Is there something special about deadlifting that achieves this effect over, say, squats? I'm a skinny distance runner but deadlifting is my favorite strength exercise and it does seems to increase libido. I just attributed it to feeling pumped. Wouldn't any heavy weight workout produce the same effect?

In theory squats should be the same (I think engaging the leg muscles has the most effect on testosterone), but for me deadlifts worked better as well. Doing climbing using a lot of power is even better.

Finasteride is a 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor. Basically, it works by preventing the conversion of Testosterone into its more potent form, Dihydrotestosterone. Without DHT a lot of the effects of Testosterone, including maintaining your libido, are significantly reduced. I was on it for about a year to speed up my hair recovery and it definitely worked wonders, but that was along with replacing my testosterone with estrogen, so the "side effects" were actually the intended effects in my case.

Finasteride has potential side-effects on the libido. Not the parent, but I stopped using it because it seemed to give me something akin to ED; took my system about a month to recover, and that month was embarrassing, humiliating, and horrifying.

Finasteride is a prostrate drug, so side effects are probably sexual in nature.

Probably. I asked about a hair transplant before and was told you’ll need to take these drugs or your new hair will fall out.

That’s what the article isn’t telling you. You’ll soon be more easily be able to get new hair but you’ll also need one of these potentially dangerous drugs for the rest of your life...

Or you’ll simply go bald again.

Even if there were no side-effects, you are basically choosing between learning to accept yourself and the aging process vs. looking at yourself as having a problem and forever worrying about it. Reason enough to think twice about forever-medication.

Why would you choose to accept the aging process?

If men were meant to fly,…

Because it's the only choice you have in the matter.

AFAIK this isn't necessarily true. The transplanted follicles will not suffer the same fate as your original follicles, so the "new" hair won't just "fall out". The thing about transplants is that, depending on how much existing hair you have, the transplant is really only used to fill in missing spots. This means it's essential to stop any more of the existing hair from falling out, or you'll need another transplant later to cover up the new spots. The reason most people are prescribed finasteride/minoxidil is to slow/prevent any of that existing hair from falling out.

> you’ll need to take these drugs or your new hair will fall out.

Not really true, male pattern baldness is generally caused by non-resistant DHT hair follicles which nearly always occurs at the top of the head. New transplanted hair is taken from the "safe" DHT resistant hair follicles at the side + back of the head. Successful transplanted hair follicles still have different yields from various factors, but they're typically not susceptible to the same cause of baldness as the rest of the follicles in the MPB area.

You're recommended to take drugs to prevent/reduce further hair loss and avoid your new hair from looking like a patch infront of a balding area. But if you have good density/elasticity (to maximize harvest) and a mild pattern of baldness you can get away with not needing to take any drugs.

When I got implants they told me to take minoxidil and finasteride. I didn't take the finasteride, and the implants are fine. They eventually told me I could stop the minoxidil, which made me wonder what the point was.

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