At some point, most guys will deal with hair loss—and as anyone who’s seen a picture of him will know, the President of the United States is no exception.
President Donald Trump’s doctor, Rear Admiral Dr. Ronny Jackson, released his evaluation of the president’s health on Tuesday, reporting that Trump is 6’3″, 239 pounds, and currently taking Propecia to slow the effects of male hair loss. But what is Propecia, and what will it do for the Commander in Chief?
Propecia is one of the most commonly used drugs to slow male-pattern baldness and hair loss, but it has a few inconvenient side effects. It can tank your libido, and even lead to erectile dysfunction.
Related: 5 Methods for Stopping Hair Loss
Propecia the brand name for a drug called finasteride, which works by stopping the body from converting testosteron into DHT, a sex hormone thought to be linked to male-pattern baldness. DHT isn’t the only or exact cause of male-pattern baldness, but lowering levels has been shown to help. Even then, Propecia isn’t a miracle drug.
“A third of patients maintain the hair that they have,” Joshua Zeichner, Director of Cosmetic and Clinical Research in Dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC, told Men’s Health for a previous story.”A third grow hair back, and a third still continue to see hair thinning—though often the rate of loss is less than they saw before. So, if you look at that, at least two thirds of patients see improvement.”
And of course, there are the side effects. Propecia’s penis perils have been described extensively. In 2003, a study of over 3,000 men published in the journal Urology found that 15 percent of men taking finasteride suffered new sexual side effects during the first year of the study, compared to 7 percent of those on a placebo.
“There were real, ill effects from the drug,” Hunter Wessells, M.D., chairman of the department of urology at the University of Washington school of medicine, and the lead investigator of the 2003 study, told Men’s Health previously. “In some men, finasteride caused erectile dysfunction; in others it decreased ejaculate volume; and in others it reduced libido.”
In 2017, study from Northwestern University found that sexual side effects can hang with users long after they stop using the drug. The chances aren’t huge—only 1.4 percent of men on the drug developed persistent ED—but it continued, on average, for more than three-and-a-half years after they went off the drug.
Although Propecia and Rogaine are the only two FDA-approved drug treatments for baldness, there are plenty of other things you can try if the side effects are too daunting. Check out these eight strategies for battling baldness, and start planning to get your hairline back.
source;-.menshealth