Welcome to The Hair Loss Show where two
of Australia's leading Hair Restoration surgeons Dr. Russell Knudsen and Dr.
Vikram Jayaprakash 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 38. Today's episode is, we're going back to some medical
therapy again and we're going to cover Minoxidil but this time we're going to
cover the oral form of Minoxidil, it's a question that we've been asked quite a
bit on the channel. Topical Minoxidil, Rogaine, Regaine freely
available over-the-counter and a lot of people use it, wildly advocated, it's 5%
topical minoxidil exists as a solution or you can get the foam version of it as well. But
some people don't like using it, they don't like actually having to apply
something physically to their scalp and leaving it in. So people have asked well,
can you use the oral form of Minoxidil and the answer is absolutely yes.
So Minoxidil and we've covered this in a in a previous episode, Dr Knudsen was
talking about how Minoxidil was initially used to treat blood pressure
and they found in studies that a large proportion of the people that were
treated with blood pressure also had increased hair growth and so that's
where the role of a topical version of Minoxidil came to play. So but
you can still use an oral version of Minoxidil, it works in exactly the same
way but this time it's got a systemic effect so you just want a small dose of
the Minoxidil and how does it work? Well it works through Potassium
channels but in essence what it's doing is it acts as a hair stimulator. It
doesn't address the underlying cause of why people, why men, certainly with
Androgenetic Alopecia are losing hair in the first place, it doesn't address why
the hair is miniaturizing but what it does is effectively stimulating that
hair to grow, increasing the growth cycle of that hair. So you can take it in
a topical version or you can take it in an oral version and what it will do is
it will stimulate hair, but the thing with the oral version
is that it will stimulate hair everywhere, all right, so body hair, beard
hair and also scalp hair, you might find will increase in length and thickness.
It's tolerated extremely well, you don't need a large dose, Minoxidil, certainly
here in Australia, comes in 10mg tablets, you don't need that sort of dose
at all, you really only need like a one or two, two-and-a-half milligram dose. What
we do sometimes with our patients over here is we prescribe the 10 milligram
tablets and we get them to cut them into quarters, that's two and a half milligrams.
So two and a half milligrams a day is usually sufficient to give you that
stimulation. You're still going to get the same sort of effect that you
have with the topical therapy. So there is a shedding phase in that initial
three to four weeks and after that the stimulation will kick in. But unlike
the topical version which is well localised to an area where you apply it,
the oral version will stimulate hair everywhere. The thing that you
have to be careful about and we wouldn't necessarily recommend it to say, the
elderly, it can cause variations in blood pressure so you have to be a little bit
careful with it but in most people who are young, fit and healthy, you have no
cardiovascular history then I'm quite comfortable in prescribing it to that
population. So it can be very useful again, you can use it in combination with
blocker therapy, so Finasteride, you can combine, you can either take them as two
separate tablets or some people get it compounded into one capsule so
Finasteride and Minoxidil and that can be done. So oral Finasteride is a good alternative to the
topical if you don't like applying something directly into the scalp, some
people don't like the greasy effect that the topical Minoxidil will give
but it can be used on a regular basis with good effect and so I hope you
find that information on oral Minoxidil useful. Thanks again for watching, I hope
you're enjoying the content. Please remember to subscribe to the channel and
give us a like and we'll see you on the next episode, thanks very much.
