Sandin Face
Member
Questions about di-hydro testosterone, folks - is it good or bad?
For a period of about six years, from around 2003 to 2009, I was taking dutasteride to protect myself from feared hair loss.
During this time, I was not exercising much, and not thinking about trying to muscle up.
I don't know if the dutasteride worked or not - I still have my hair, but I might well have kept it anyway, and may not really had anything to worry about. There were no side-effects, as far as I could tell.
From my reading at the time (ten years ago now), I came to believe that DHT didn't have any useful function at all, after puberty. There was a documentary that I saw a long time ago, about a place in the Dominican Republic, where a genetic inadequacy of 5-alpha reductase was common in the population, and in which it was fairly common for kids who looked like little girls, to turn into men at puberty, when testosterone took over all of the masculinising functions that DHT usually has in boys. As far as I remember, such men were just as macho and muscly as others around them.
I stopped taking dutasteride not for any particular reason, but just because my stash got used up; the supplier that I had been buying from dissapeared from cyberspace; because my wife was saying I was just wasting money and sticking who-knows-what into myself; and general apathy.
Anyway, recently (last 2-3 years) I have been making a sustained effort to get myself together physically - I've been lifting regularly, eating better, cut down drinking, etc. And, as part of my effort to regain my youthful good looks (ha ha), and retain them into middle age, I've been looking closely at my hair-line again ...
Since starting to look around the internet for body-building information (which brought me to this forum), I've noticed that DHT is now sometimes talked about as a VERY GOOD THING to have (eg Testosterone is great but Dihydrotestosterone is the king of all male androgens | Mahler's Aggressive Strength ; http://www.anabolicsteroids-hormoneknowledge-bigmuscles-drugs.com/dihydrotestosterone.html), although there is a case to be made that it is not relevant to muscle gain (eg Effect of testosterone supplementation with and without... [JAMA. 2012] - PubMed - NCBI).
So, my question is - can I have both hair and muscles, or do I have to make the choice?
For a period of about six years, from around 2003 to 2009, I was taking dutasteride to protect myself from feared hair loss.
During this time, I was not exercising much, and not thinking about trying to muscle up.
I don't know if the dutasteride worked or not - I still have my hair, but I might well have kept it anyway, and may not really had anything to worry about. There were no side-effects, as far as I could tell.
From my reading at the time (ten years ago now), I came to believe that DHT didn't have any useful function at all, after puberty. There was a documentary that I saw a long time ago, about a place in the Dominican Republic, where a genetic inadequacy of 5-alpha reductase was common in the population, and in which it was fairly common for kids who looked like little girls, to turn into men at puberty, when testosterone took over all of the masculinising functions that DHT usually has in boys. As far as I remember, such men were just as macho and muscly as others around them.
I stopped taking dutasteride not for any particular reason, but just because my stash got used up; the supplier that I had been buying from dissapeared from cyberspace; because my wife was saying I was just wasting money and sticking who-knows-what into myself; and general apathy.
Anyway, recently (last 2-3 years) I have been making a sustained effort to get myself together physically - I've been lifting regularly, eating better, cut down drinking, etc. And, as part of my effort to regain my youthful good looks (ha ha), and retain them into middle age, I've been looking closely at my hair-line again ...
Since starting to look around the internet for body-building information (which brought me to this forum), I've noticed that DHT is now sometimes talked about as a VERY GOOD THING to have (eg Testosterone is great but Dihydrotestosterone is the king of all male androgens | Mahler's Aggressive Strength ; http://www.anabolicsteroids-hormoneknowledge-bigmuscles-drugs.com/dihydrotestosterone.html), although there is a case to be made that it is not relevant to muscle gain (eg Effect of testosterone supplementation with and without... [JAMA. 2012] - PubMed - NCBI).
So, my question is - can I have both hair and muscles, or do I have to make the choice?

Last edited: