Welcome to The Hair Loss Show, where two
of Australia's leading Hair Restoration surgeons dr. Russell Knudsen and dr.
Vikram Jaya Prakash discuss issues relating to hair loss and the medical
and surgical treatment of hair loss in both men and women. Hi everyone and welcome to The Hair Loss
Show: episode number 41. Today's episode we're going to go back to some Q&A. We
did a Q&A on finasteride and had a lot of great feedback and further questions
and we'll do another one on that soon but this time what we thought we'd do is
we do a Q&A on Minoxidil. So I've got a list of the, sort of, top questions that
that have been asked on the YouTube channel, once again, thank you
very much for watching, if you like the channel, please subscribe, like the
channel as well and leave a comment or any questions and we'll get back to
you as soon as we can. So the first question that we have on Minoxidil is
Hi, how long can you leave them and how long do you have to leave the Minoxidil
on? So if you're using topical Minoxidil effectively, it absorbs relatively
quickly, within 20 to 30 minutes. I generally say to people look, if you can
leave it on for 30 to 40 minutes, most of its absorption has been done. So at that
point you can wash it off or go exercise and sweat it off or whatever. So but
generally speaking most of the time, I would tell people look, if you're trying
to build it into your routine, maybe use it at night before you go to bed. So if
you pick an area, just apply and remember if you're using a topical Minoxidil, be
it the foam or the liquid, just gotta apply it to the skin. If you apply
it to the hair, it does nothing to stimulate hair growth because this part
of the hair is actually dead, the only the live portion is underneath the skin.
So apply it before you go to bed, go to sleep, wake up, you can wash it off.
But generally speaking 30 to 40 minutes is adequate for it to absorb through the
skin. It probably absorbs faster but I think as a general rule, 30 to 40 minutes
and you are quite safe. Alright so I hope that answers that question.
Second question: How often do we need to use Minoxidil?
Well we addressed this question when we were, when we did the
original video on Minoxidil and if you recall, Russell was part of the group of
doctors that did the original studies on topical Minoxidil and those studies were, the
protocol for the studies were to use Minoxidil twice a day. So if you look at
5% Minoxidil, Regain, Rogaine, on the bottle, it will say to use twice a day
but we actually know from subsequent studies on the pharmacokinetics and
dynamics of the medication, that it actually it has, it lasts longer than
80 now so it has a half-life of over 18 hours in the system so, probably twice a
day dosing is probably a bit overkill and so generally both Russell and myself,
we just recommend once a day is absolutely fine and you're
going to get the same benefit, you're not going to get extra benefit, a significant
benefit, from using it twice a day so once a day is perfectly fine, you reduce
the amount that you're going to use and the bottle will last longer. So hope that
hope that answers that question. Question number three: where can you use
Minoxidil? Pretty much anywhere that you want to to
stimulate hair growth. I wouldn't use it on the eyelash, I think using it too close
the eyes is probably going to cause irritation especially the liquid so I
would avoid that absolutely, so don't try and apply it to the eye or the eyebrow, I
think is a very limited benefit. So anywhere really on the scalp will be
fine. Again you have to apply to the skin not to the hair, if you've got a
significant amount of balding or a significant amount of thinning, then
you've going to be limited in, to the benefit that you're gonna get, so choose
the area carefully and what I mean by that is that, you know, look at the area
and be assessed prior to that and whoever's assessing could probably
give you good advice on where you're probably going to get the best benefit
from using that Minoxidil. It can also be used on the face to good effect to try
and stimulate beard hair as well. Alright so hope that answers that question.
Question number four: what happens if you stop the Minoxidil therapy? So as we've
discussed previously, Minoxidil acts as a stimulator, so it stimulates the hair
through a number of different pathways, increases the blood flow to the area,
increases the growth cycle of that hair in that area. So you
can use Minoxidil, you don't have to use it all the time, you can take breaks from it
but if you do, understand that effect will slowly wean off, this cycle
will shorten and you'll probably get more shedding in that area but then you
can always restart at whatever point you wish. So you can start and stop as
frequently as you wish, the only caveat that I would add to that
is that if you are stopping and restarting the Minoxidil, what you're
probably going to go through is that shedding phase
soon after restarting the Minoxidil where you lose a lot of hair in that
initial phase and that's basically because it's stimulating the new growth
of the new hair underneath which is pushing that existing hair out. So you
lose that hair and then there's a dormant phase for about three months and
you're waiting for that new hair to pop through so always, you know, when anyone
uses Minoxidil and they experience that, that's always very perturbing but if
you're gonna stop and start then you're gonna spend a lot of time in that sort
of shedding zone so to speak. So I would, you know, I would, it's not something I would
advocate but if you do stop and start be wary of that. But look if you miss
it for, you know, three or four days even if you miss it for up to a week, you're
not going to go through that, that doesn't matter you know and
occasionally missing a dose like that it's not going to make too much of a
difference, you just get back on to things and and start the process again.
Alright, question number five: which is better the oral version or the topical
version? So a few episodes before, we've gone and talked about oral Minoxidil and
the pros and cons of oral versus topical. In essence, there's no difference
it's the exact same active ingredient. The benefit of the oral version is that
you're probably going to get higher levels systemically, so you're gonna
probably get a better outcome, more stimulation. The downside is that it
can have effect on the blood pressure so you gotta be careful but also it will
stimulate hair growth everywhere so, body hair everywhere so be mindful of that.
The benefit of the topical version, be it liquid, be it foam is that you can
localize the effect to where you want it to work. So if you're not keen on
stimulating hair growth everywhere and you're just worried about a particular
area at the front or in the crown and you just want to concentrate the
effect of the therapy in that area, the topical version gives you
better control of that. As I've mentioned before, the the topical version comes as
a liquid or the foam, I generally personally recommend the
foam more than I do the liquid, only because the liquid, the active ingredient
is something called Propylene Glycol and it causes more scalp irritation more
frequently then say the foam version. So I think the foam is better
tolerated from that perspective, also with the foam, it's a bit more malleable
and therefore you can actually control where you apply it a lot more easily. So
I hope that answers that question and the last question which kind of relates
to a question that we had before, can it be used to stimulate beard growth? Yes
alright, so you can apply a topical Minoxidil to the beard to stimulate
beard growth, you could take the oral tablet as well and again, that will
result in stimulation of the beard. Just be mindful and
remember that if you ask someone that doesn't have a lot of beard hair, if you
don't have hair in the first place taking Minoxidil or applying Minoxidil is
not going to make you grow new hair. You have to have a hair follicle, a hair graft
there in the first place to be able to stimulate. So just temper your
expectations I guess is where I'm going with that and but you can stimulate that,
particularly facial hair, to grow very well alright. So and that's pretty much
it for today's Q&A, hope that answers those questions, I've gone through them
quite quickly, feel free to watch the video again but hopefully that address
that's basically some of the questions, most frequently asked questions that
we've had from the Minoxidil episode so hopefully that answers those and then
we'll see you again on the next episode. Thanks very much bye.
Cant wait till he talks about the ass cheek hairs
I'm not a doctor but this video has some of our questions answered.
I think this video should be pinned or put in the FAQ.
Yes, I always wash it off after an hour or so. Works fine so far!
TL;DW?
Shame there was nothing about fast and slowgainers.
So, do we have hair grafts in our bald patches? Because there’s a lot of people on here that still grew beards but had no hair on their face? Kind of confused at why he’s saying minox doesn’t grow new hair
Very informative! Now if only there was a video about derma rolling for beards, and how often you should do it!