Fighting Hair Loss at the Root: Is Propecia the Answer?

It’s easy to see losing hair as a cosmetic concern, but like other prominent features on your body, it’s part of how you see yourself. If you’re dealing with thinning hair or losing patches of it over time, it can affect your self-esteem and even lead to depression. 

With so many products promising hair restoration results, it’s hard to know who or what to trust, but Propecia® can do more than just promise more hair. 

Drs. Michael and Alister Meshkin, along with our team at Meshkin Medical in Newport Beach and Glendale, help patients throughout Southern California with a variety of hair loss problems through multiple approaches, including Propecia.

To better understand how it helps, let’s look at some reasons for hair loss, how Propecia works, and how long results can take to show you what it can do for hair growth.

Types of hair loss

The process of shedding more hair than grows back is called alopecia, and it happens in a variety of ways:

Androgenic alopecia

Also called male or female pattern baldness, this type happens most frequently, affecting up to 80 million people in the United States alone. Propecia is FDA-approved exclusively to treat male pattern hair loss.

Alopecia areata

This is a form of hair loss on your head or anywhere on your body due to an autoimmune condition.

Telogen effluvium

This condition is a rapid shedding of hair in a short period due to stress or hormonal changes.

Anagen effluvium

Another form of rapid hair loss, anagen effluvium is a side effect of medical treatments like chemotherapy.

Other causes of hair loss include thyroid conditions, fungal infections, hairstyles that pull on hair, nutritional deficiencies, and family history.

How Propecia works

This prescription-only oral drug treats hair loss in men by slowing the shedding and allowing thinning hair to thicken. This also stimulates dormant hair follicles, allowing them to grow, but it doesn’t regrow hair in areas with permanent hair loss. 

Propecia is the brand name for the generic drug finasteride 1 mg, which inhibits the enzyme 5-alpha reductase, preventing testosterone from converting to the stronger androgen DHT (dihydrotestosterone), which leads to male pattern baldness.

Testosterone promotes hair growth as you develop into adulthood during puberty.

When to expect results

If you follow instructions and take Propecia daily, you can expect changes in three months. Full results can take longer, but once you start, you must continue with daily doses to maintain them. Otherwise, you could start losing hair again within the year. 

Up to 80% of people who take Propecia don’t experience additional hair loss and have a higher chance of hair growth within a year or two.

Propecia can help you regain self-esteem that you lost. For more information about this treatment and other hair restoration options, schedule an appointment with the Drs. Meshkin and our Meshkin Medical team today.

We serve the Los Angeles area from our Glendale clinic, and Orange County, California, from our Newport Beach clinic.