I’ve noticed my hair thinning and hairline receding since I was about 25 or so.
I’ve been using Collagen and Biotin “thickening” shampoo but never noticed any difference. My dad swears by some pills he started taking.
What’s Lemmy think? Is he just paying for pills that are placebo effect?
For what it’s worth, there’s decent evidence that rosemary oil works just as well as Minoxidil. It’s certainly a WHOLE LOT cheaper…
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319444
It’s also much safer to use around cats than topical minoxidil is!
Essential oils are still pretty bad for cats.
https://www.webmd.com/pets/cats/risks-of-essential-oils-for-cats
I didn’t say it was safe! Just safer than minoxidil :) The oil is usually meant to be used as a pre-wash treatment, so it’s not going to sit on your head all day like minoxidil, further reducing the risk of contact with pets.
I’d probably use the pills regardless, but good to know! I have two cats!
Looking on Amazon the price per liter ranges seem very similar to Minoxidil, maybe a little cheaper. First glance the cheapest Minoxidil product I could see was around 111€ / L, the cheapest rosemary oil bottles seem to be about 80€ / L - probably because most are sold as “essential oils”. That being said, it seems you’re supposed to further dilute the oil so I guess it would last quite a bit longer. Still, from what I heard you need to continue to use that stuff or you’ll lose the gained hair again.
The rosemary oil should be diluted in a carrier like argon oil. At around 3% concentration.
That’s kinda another 80€ / L though. Not sure how you’d get to 3% when the article states like 5 drops per ounce of shampoo as an example, which would probably be around 1 drop for a regular amount of what you’d use to wash your hair with.
You can buy squalane for like 150$ a gallon. But it could be something else too, as long as it’s non-comedogenic
No idea what that is but why not just go for something like sunflower oil?
Because it’s likely comedogenic, meaning it blocks pores.
It’s not, and it is actually cheap-ish. The Ukraine war obviously pushed the prices quite a bit but it is still far cheaper than something like argan oil.
Great, use that then
I’ve also heard pumpkin seed oil works as a topical dht blocker. Never dug into it to fact check much, since I still have great hair.