How often should you take finasteride or dutasteride for hair loss?

Key wellness / productivity-style takeaways (hair-loss treatment strategy)

This video focuses on optimizing finasteride/dutasteride dosing frequency to maintain efficacy while potentially improving tolerability, using pharmacokinetics and clinical evidence.

Core strategy: start a 5-α-reductase inhibitor (don’t delay)

• If someone is losing hair but hasn’t started finasteride yet, the speaker’s default recommendation is to start immediately.
• Rationale: delaying treatment is framed like delaying resistance training—momentum matters for outcomes.

Standard dosing baseline (best clinical evidence)

• Finasteride: 1 mg daily is described as the standard dose with the strongest clinical evidence.
• Dutasteride: commonly used as 0.5 mg daily, with the video emphasizing stronger suppression and longer persistence.

Can you take finasteride less than daily? (yes—often)

The speaker explains reduced frequency can still work because:

• The drug distributes into tissues (not just measured blood levels)
• The biological effect of inhibiting 5-α enzymes lasts longer than the drug’s blood half-life

Most-supported approach

• Finasteride every other day (1 mg every other day):
  • Suggested as likely as effective as 0.5 mg daily for suppressing DHT.
  • The speaker’s position: dose frequency can be flexible while maintaining efficacy for many people.

Less frequent than every other day (but not extreme)

• The speaker claims there’s evidence intermittent schedules can work, though very low-frequency regimens may be less reliable.

What the video discourages

• Finasteride once every other month:
  • Rejected as “too extreme,” citing weak evidence (small, preliminary, subjective, no placebo, and no objective photo-based endpoints).
  • Recommendation: don’t try “every other month” dosing at home.

Side-effect minimization angle

The video frames intermittent/lower-frequency dosing as a potential way to:

• Reduce side effects while keeping DHT suppression adequate.

A referenced example:

• In women with androgenic conditions, intermittent dosing (every 3 days) produced similar DHT suppression but lower side-effect incidence than daily dosing.

Dutasteride: longer-lasting effect, likely more flexibility

Dutasteride has:

• A much longer half-life (weeks vs hours)
• Stronger DHT suppression (video states ~90% vs ~70% for finasteride at typical doses)

Therefore, intermittent dutasteride dosing (e.g., a few times per week) is suggested as likely to work—either:

• alone, or
• added to finasteride

The speaker also references related videos on:

• intermittent dutasteride dosing
• combining dutasteride + finasteride

Safety / decision rule emphasized

The most important point isn’t the exact schedule—it’s that you’re actually on a 5-α inhibitor and keeping hair loss controlled.

Final guidance:

• Choose dose/frequency based on personal preference + doctor input
• Ensure your regimen truly includes a 5-α reductase inhibitor

Presenters / sources (as mentioned)

Presenter

• Kevin (referred to by name: “Kevin…”)

Referenced clinical studies/articles (by description only; not named in subtitles)

• Evidence supporting standard finasteride dosing (1 mg daily) and comparisons to other doses
• Studies of intermittent finasteride every 3 days in women (including idiopathic hirsutism / PCOS-type conditions)
• A small abstract/medical meeting report on finasteride 1 mg every other month in men (mentioned as “Good Korea” / “Korea”; details unclear)
• Comparative prostate BPH dosing evidence (including 5 mg vs 1 mg; plus a 2.5 mg vs 5 mg study)
• “Drake (1999)” study referenced for scalp/serum DHT suppression

Additional video sources (internal channel references)

• “optimal dose of finasteride”
• “perfect dose of dutasteride”
• “combining dutasteride and finasteride”