Propecia + sport

[Niall]

wondering.....as finasteride prohibits the conversion of testosterone to dht how will this affect ones sporting performance?

also, is there any point you reach where if you've got there it doesn't mean you will have any side effects from finasteride. for example if you haven't had side effects within 3 months of using it, does that mean you won't in the future?

[Mark]

wondering.....as finasteride prohibits the conversion of testosterone to dht how will this affect ones sporting performance?

I don't know if that has been fully tested to a point where I can answer you definitively.

At this point, I'm just going to link to a radio show I listen to where they interviewed a guy who lost his testosterone. (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=220)

It's really a fascinating look at what life would be like without the single hormone that defines us as "male".

Now, I'd like to specifically point out that this is not what happens to you when you take Finasteride. You don't suddenly lose all your testosterone. I'm simply providing the link as a point of interest for those interested in what testosterone does in the male body.

also, is there any point you reach where if you've got there it doesn't mean you will have any side effects from finasteride. for example if you haven't had side effects within 3 months of using it, does that mean you won't in the future?

Again, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don't think that anyone can guarantee that you'll never see any side effects from any drug. A perfect corollary is the way that people develop allergies to specific substances. My sister for example developed an intense allergy to shellfish. She once at a shrimp and went into such bad shock that she had to be taken by ambulance to a hospital where her airway almost completely closed off.

That was about 7 years ago. She has had plenty of completely non-eventful shellfish eating since that event. She does carry an epipen around with her in case it happens again.

I once ended up in the doctors office because I had these red spots all over my body and the best the doctor could do was make sure that they weren't adversely affecting my health. He couldn't explain what might be causing the reaction. His best guess was that I had changed laundry detergents and the different ingredients were causing some sort of bad reaction. Nobody could really figure what the problem was.

Eventually it went away.

Lastly, I should really stress that the VAST majority of people we see in our clinic do not have any adverse reaction to Finasteride at all. In clinical tests of the drug, there was nearly the same percentage of people having "side effects" participating in the test whether they received finasteride or a placebo.


All in all though, I can safely say that we have thousands of patients of our clinic who have no adverse reaction to the drug at all.

Hope that helps out some. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

-Mark