So far, I’ve made two attempts at creating new hair follicles. I used chemical peels for abrasion, and oral gefitinib for EGF inhibition. Details are below.
Background: Late 30s male, been on finasteride/dutasteride for around 11 years. I’ve managed to maintain almost all of my hair, but the hairline has gone back ever so slightly. I am a 1-ish on the Norwood scale. I can post pics if that would help.
Attempt 1:
About 6 weeks ago, I used a 30% TCA peel on my original hairline. Since I am also losing eyebrow hair, I treated both eyebrows as well, but I used salicyclic acid (SA) for that instead of TCA. Since past experience with Scalpicin on my eyebrows showed that my brows peel fairly quick (quicker than than peeling would occur with TCA), I applied the SA to my brows several days after I applied the TCA to my hairline - the goal being that both the hairline and brows would start to peel at the same time.
Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out as planned. I got a very uneven peel at the hairline - some spots peeled well, others spots didn’t really peel at all. Also, my hairline started to peel before my eyebrows did, which means the windows would be different for both. Given that gefitinib is such a nasty drug, and that I planned to take it orally, I decided to abort the mission rather than get an imcomplete result, and thus have to take another round of gefitinib, which is something I really wanted to avoid. So, attempt 1 turned out to be a dry run. I just let everything heal, and I didn’t take any drugs.
Attempt 2:
On Thursday night, September 18th, I did another 30% TCA peel on my hairline. Two days later, I did a SA peel on my eyebrows. Peeling commenced the following Monday (22nd). Tuesday the peeling kicked up, and Wednesday I had a lot of peeling (it reached a maximum on this day). Peeling started to subside on Thursday, and Thursday morning is when I started gefitinib at 250mg/day. Thus, I waited about 6.5 days after wounding to start inhibiting EGF. The last of the peeling came off Friday, and a touch on Saturday. I took my last dose of gefitinib yesterday (Monday) – I used it for 5 days total. Due to the long half-life of gefitinib, I will probably end up with around 6 or 7 days of decent EGF inhibition. Now, I wait. Maybe by Thanksgiving I will know if I’ve achieved anything.
Notes:
I washed my hair with antibacterial shampoos every day throughout the experiment.
I used an antihistamine every day throughout the experiment (not by design, I am using an antihistamine for other reasons).
I used dutasteride every day throughout the experiment.
Gefitinib side-effects I had were: GI upset/pain. A sick-like feeling most of the days I took it. Dry, itchy skin. And most annoyingly, my eyes and eyelids freaked out – stinging, burning, itching, and some pain (I wear contact lenses, which I am sure exacerbated the problem). To my surprise, I had no acne or rash at all.
I am probably leaving out some details, but I will post them as I think of them.
As far as resuls…like I said, I wait.