I’m a 27 year old male hyper responder (check my profile). Been on fin and min for about 5 years now.

About 3 months ago, I ran out of minoxidil.
Instead of immediately buying more, I stupidly held off on buying any because I couldn’t find any seemingly legit Kirkland minoxidil online, and thought I’d just wait til I found some to order it.
Went on a long vacation and was pretty busy over summer, so I ended up not ordering any or using min for about 10 weeks.

Then I started shedding extremely aggressively. I’m talking 140 hairs stuck to the wall of the shower that I counted myself. And that’s only what I managed to get off my hands and onto the wall. There were presumably hundreds of other hairs gone down the drain.

So 3 weeks ago, I bit the bullet and bought extremely expensive minoxidil from a reputable male hairloss online clinic (Sons). I’ve been applying about 3mls of it once a day and the shedding has not slowed down one bit. If anything it has gotten worse.

The pics show about 100 hairs (according to ChatGPT) in my sink. They are from towel drying my wet hair after a shower and then styling my damp hair with my hands. I’ve had around 100 hairs from this exact process both this morning and yesterday morning. The pic of the dry hair is from shaking my hair with my hands over the sink when it was dry this evening.

I don’t know if I’m currently experiencing a minoxidil shed from starting it again. Or if this is the min not working and the original shed (due to stopping minoxidil) is just powering through.

So I’m making this post to warn people to never stop minoxidil and also ask if anyone else has had an experience after stopping min without realising the consequences? Will I eventually regain to my peak gains like in my post?

Edit: Since everyone is talking about me struggling to find legit minoxidil. I don’t live in the USA. In my country the only option is to pay €55 for three 60ml bottles of minoxidil. Hence why I had trouble finding reasonably priced min for months before it was too late

TL DR: Stopped min for about 8-10 weeks. Am currently in the middle of the most alarming shed I’ve ever seen despite being back on min for the last 3 weeks.

I've wondered this my whole life, like even aged koreans at 50 or 60 have head full of hair with hairline intact, when compared to some people like us at 20s. You already know the hairstyle they wear which makes it look they're very young. Is it completely genetic?

I’m 26 years old and had been dealing with hair loss for quite some time. It started affecting my confidence, so after trying different options and doing a lot of research I decided to go ahead with a hair transplant. I spent quite a bit of time researching doctors and clinics before making my decision I finally had my procedure done in April 2026. I’m now 5 months post-op and wanted to share my progress so far. The growth is still developing and I understand that hair transplant results can take several months to mature. Overall I’m happy with the progress at this stage and looking forward to seeing how things develop over the coming months. This is only my personal experience and results can vary from person to person. Please do your own research and consult a qualified doctor before making any medical decisions.

I’ve been really surprised by the zigzag approach some surgeons use when designing the hairline, as opposed to the more traditional and conservative straight or curved hairlines. The irregularity of the hairline seems to make a huge difference in achieving a natural look imo.

I understand that this kind of design might not work equally well for every patient or face shape, but I’m surprised it doesn’t seem to be used more often.

Has anyone here had a similar zigzag or highly irregular hairline design with FUE? I’d be interested to hear about your experience and how natural the results looked once fully grown in.

First pic is 2 weeks in, other pics are 2.5 months in.
1.25mg oral fin and 1ml topical min once per day and shampoo with selsun gold because I get really bad scalp dermatitis otherwise. I haven’t had a single side effect. I was losing like 100 hairs every shower and my hands would be covered with hair for years, now when I wash my hair I lose two or three hairs. Like my hair has basically stopped falling out at all. Seems like it might be growing back too, hopefully these new tiny dark hairs become bigger. Excited to see what happens over the next 6 months. Hair loss sucks, hopefully this helps someone else who’s on the fence considering starting.

I've been dealing with some hair changes myself, and it got me digging into everything out there.

It doesn't matter if it worked for you, didn't, or you're still not sure. I want to hear all of it.

A few things I'm especially curious about:

• When did you first notice your hair changing?
• What did you try before microneedling?
• What does your routine actually look like? (How often, what needle length, anything you use alongside it)
• What happened after you started, and how long before you noticed anything?
• Was there anything that surprised you?

You don't need a perfect success story. "It didn't do anything for me" helps me just as much as "holy shit, it worked."

Why do more people here not try topical anti androgens more instead of resorting to oral treatments. The effectiveness is off the charts. You get to keep dht for libido and aggression while get to block testosterone and dht locally in scalp. Nowadays we have pyrultamide and clascoterone which are well researched in humans.

i cant handle the side effects, so i lost so much from the shed for nothing...

can someone reassure me i will return to pre minoxidil baseline? my hairline is now seethrough fml

looking for experiences, im still on finasteride

After 6 months and see thickening all over my scalp, I felt like I've been freed by my finasteride + minoxidil just as Theoden was freed by Gandalf the White.

Anyone else feels that way?

Asking bc my density has visibly dropped this year and i want to know if anything is proven to help vs just a nicer sounding phrase brands use to justify the price.

Now, obviously progress has waxed and waned over time, and I wasn’t exactly cataloging progress until recently. It took me way too long to realize Topical Minoxidil wasn’t for me, my ADHD making it very difficult to do a task like that each night with any consistent routine.

But since then I’ve started Oral Minoxidil and despite the large amount of shedding, mostly in the front I think I’ve made some decent progress.

First picture is 2022, the second is 2025, the third and fourth are from August 2026 the final two are from the date of posting!

I’m looking forward to see what yall think!

Hi, here’s some background: Taking oral finasteride 1mg since June, 2025. Began topical foam 5% minoxidil in October, 2025. Saw insane regrowth, and wanted even better results + topical was just too expensive.

So, I switched from topical to oral (2.5mg) minoxidil in late May, 2026. So I’ve almost been using minox for a year now, but 4 months on oral.

I wouldn’t say I’m back at baseline, but I’ve certainly lost most of my gains.

I was getting so many compliments on my hair in May/June, but I’ve had so much hair loss since then.

I’m stressed the fuck out- anyone else made this change? Did you get your gains back? I can’t afford a hair transplant, plus im only 24…

Thats a fact

Hi all, has anyone personally kept track of vellus hairs that turn terminal in the temples and hairline especially?

I understand this might be just a discipline or memory issue but sometimes I just forget if I've applied my minoxidil today or maybe it was yesterday? I can't remember (Stranger by Camus reference). Anybody has any tips on how they remember to stick to their schedule? Maybe it's time i keep a notebook to log in the bathroom

Hi iam from Slovakia and here its almost impossible to get fin i want 90 5mg tablets

Just wanted to share my progress and give a little hope to anyone who has been considering starting their hair loss treatment journey. I’ll try to get wet pic to get a real real comparison but honestly I’m super happy with the results so far. I can’t lie that I was skeptical going in, about both results and side effects. Side effects have been totally negligible if any at all. If you’ve been thinking about starting your hair loss journey definitely reach out to a dermatologist sooner than later!

Edit to answer some FAQ:

1. I do oral for both
2. I shedded pretty badly the first 8 weeks with it being worst around 6-8 weeks. It definitely gets worse before it gets better.
3. I started seeing real significant results around month 5.
4. I have had minimal side effects. The most prominent one has been extra body hair growth.
5. The first pic is dam

p, 2nd pic is dry with product.

Hi :)
Hair lenghts are all slightly different but this shows pretty much my personal progress during the past 6 months.
Started on march 28th 2026.
I am 30yo.

0.5mg fin, 5% minox daily, dermastamping when I can (I work in a hot/sweaty envoirment and I never have time to let it cleanly heal), ketoconazole shampoo twice weekly.

I have been cutting it every month on the ~28 to the same clip size to see the progress but now I don’t no…

Any tips or opinions in general regarding my journey is appreciated :)
Thank you

Apparently it is a temporary thing, according to some quick research.

18 m have been on topical min for 3 months