Propecia – How Does It Work?

Propecia (Finasteride) is a medication for a common condition that is called male pattern baldness and shows itself as the hair thinning, receding or falling out in certain areas of the head. This is predominantly the men’s problem, however small percentage of women suffers from it too.

The culprit of such baldness is in abundance of testosterone in a man’s body and the fact that sometimes it is being too extensively converted into DHT, an enzyme that piles up in the blood cells of the hair follicles in the scalp, and prevents the hair growth. The treatment can be done in several ways.

First, it is possible in many cases to reduce the causes of such abundant conversion (those can be hormonal imbalance, stress-related conditions, and other pills’ side-effects). It often helps, but sometimes an additional treatment is necessary, and the modern pharmaceutics is trying to do its best to find the problems’ solution.

Finasteride is a powerful steroid that binds up testosterone and prevents its conversion into DHT. Thus, it is only efficient in the case of above-mentioned male-pattern baldness and is not helpful in treatment of thinning hair on the temple, or in women and smaller children, because their problem is not testosterone-connected.

For the same reason that both the cause and the cure have a close connection with hormonal balance or misbalance in the man’s body, there are (in rare cases) some side-effects, also connected with the same area. In some men, the intake of propecia may cause the decrease of their libido, erectile dysfunction, painful feeling in the testicles. These symptoms are not permanent and will go away after you stop taking the medication. It only happens in two per cent of the patients, while nine men out of ten confirmed that the falling of their hair stopped and it gradually became thicker again.