• Name - Jon Ross
• Location - Southern California

• Age - 40
• Email - jon.ross@gte.net

In my mid 20's

Used Minoxidil BEFORE it was available to the public. Read an article about how it was being tested and got a pharmacist friend to crush up pills, put it in solution and filter out the binders. We arbitrarily decided on a 3% solution. Used it for a year and a half but didn't notice much diff, so I cut it out. A year or two later I read about some Dr. in Houston who was claiming to have great success mixing Rogaine with an androgen blocker. Yup, Peter Proctor. I flew to see him, got his homemade concoction and put it on my noggin for another year and half and again noticed no difference. (Who knows, maybe the stuff was slowing down my loss, but it was fairly expensive and as far as I was concerned the results weren't dramatic enough to justify the cost.) Over the course of the next, oh, ten years, I tried various things, some pretty wacky, (Helsinki shampoo, reflexology, various herbs and oils, meditation, electric fields) none of which yielded any results. I'd given up and shaved my head when Propecia hit the market.

I currently take 1.25 mg Finasteride daily, use 5% Minoxidil.  There is a 15% Minoxidil with Azelaic Acid,  but I didn't feel this addition would make enough of a difference to justify the cost. I shampoo with Nano, Nizoral and various other anti-dandruff shampoos. I also take an extremely comprehensive vitamin/mineral/super food complex called Daily Advantage (1-800-888-1415). I also take Green Tea capsules, Soy Isoflavones and NAC. I take occasional large doses of L-Arginine.

It's been more or less like this for three years. Some things have been added (Soy), other things have dropped out (Saw P, Pygeum, Nettle) and I occasionally give something new a shot. For instance I tried
Tricomin Spray and Prox-N.

Basically, after the first 6-8 month spurt, nothing's changed much. While the results are obviously phenomenal, the downside is the hair is slightly finer, slightly less pigmented (I use dye every couple of months) and won't grow long. I'd hoped that in subsequent growth cycles it'd thicken up, darken up and grow longer, but it's more or less stayed the same.