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Been lurking here for months and finally pulling the trigger on something. My hairline started receding around 27, I’m 31 now, still a diffuse Norwood 2 trending toward 3. Derm gave me the standard “start fin” pitch, but my brother-in-law swears PRP saved his crown after two rounds.
The thing I can’t get a straight answer on: are these two doing the same job through different doors, or are they actually treating different things? Fin is DHT suppression, PRP is growth factor stimulation — but if the follicle is already miniaturising from DHT, wouldn’t PRP just be feeding a dying garden? Or does it work because it wakes up follicles that are dormant but not dead yet?
Curious what people who’ve actually run both (or one, then the other) have seen. Not interested in the marketing pages. Real timelines, real shed phases, real maintenance costs.
Ran fin monotherapy for 3 years starting age 29. Held perfectly for the first 18 months, then started losing ground at the temples again around month 22. Bloods were fine, DHT was suppressed on paper. That’s the part nobody tells you — the systemic number can look great and you can still be losing hair, because scalp-level conversion is a different beast.
Added PRP at year 3, four sessions spaced a month apart, then quarterly maintenance. What I noticed wasn’t regrowth exactly, it was the shed calming down within about 8 weeks. Hair I’d been losing in the shower every morning just… stopped falling out at the same rate. The crown thickened up over about 5 months, hairline barely moved.
My honest read: fin is doing the hormonal firefighting, PRP is doing local wound-healing signalling. They’re not redundant. But PRP without addressing DHT for a genetically predisposed guy is bailing a boat without patching the hole. Order matters.
Different take. I couldn’t tolerate fin — brain fog set in around week 6, libido tanked by month 3, and I’m not one of these guys who was looking for a reason to blame it. Stopped, everything reset in about 10 weeks. Not going near it again regardless of what the meta-analyses say about incidence rates. My body, my data.
Went pure PRP route, 6 sessions in year one, twice a year since. Also on topical minoxidil 5% and dermarolling 1.5mm weekly. Two and a half years in, hairline is exactly where it was, crown is measurably denser (I have the standardised photos, my clinic does them at every visit).
Will this hold forever without fin? Probably not, if genetics are aggressive. But “not forever” and “not at all” are different sentences. For guys who can’t or won’t take fin, the PRP + minox + microneedling stack is a legitimate protocol, not a consolation prize. The forums here have a fin-maxi bias that I think under-sells what mechanical and growth-factor approaches can do together.
One thing worth flagging on cost: PRP is not cheap and it’s forever. £250-400 per session in London, quarterly minimum for maintenance. Fin is £15 a month. If money is the constraint and side effects aren’t, the math is obvious.
Appreciate both of those, genuinely useful. Follow-up question because the answers pointed at something I hadn’t thought about:
The “scalp DHT vs serum DHT” thing — is there actually a test for that, or is it inferred from response? Because if my serum comes back suppressed but I’m still shedding, how would I even know whether to blame the fin dose or add a topical anti-androgen?
And on PRP — is there a meaningful difference between the platelet concentration protocols? I’ve seen clinics advertise 3x, 5x, 9x baseline. Or is that mostly marketing and the actual variable is injection depth and technique?
Trichologist here, not a doctor, but I’ve been in scalp analysis for 11 years and I’ll give you the version I give my clients.
Scalp DHT can be measured via biopsy but nobody does it because it’s invasive and expensive. In practice we infer from response: if serum DHT is suppressed and you’re still miniaturising, the options are (1) upregulate the dose, (2) add dutasteride which hits both 5-AR isoenzymes, (3) add topical fin or topical spiro/RU58841 to attack local conversion, or (4) accept that you may be one of the guys whose androgen receptors are just very sensitive and no reasonable suppression will fully stop it. That last group exists and gets under-discussed.
On PRP concentration: the honest answer is that the research is still messy. Studies showing benefit tend to use 3-6x baseline, single-spin vs double-spin protocols produce different platelet yields, and activation method (calcium chloride vs mechanical vs none) matters. The 9x claims are largely marketing — you get diminishing returns above about 5x and some evidence that hyper-concentration actually reduces efficacy because you’re injecting too many inhibitory factors alongside the growth ones. Injection depth (dermal, not subcutaneous), spacing pattern, and post-procedure protocol probably matter more than chasing a bigger number on the centrifuge printout.
Framing that might be useful: fin changes the hormonal environment the follicle lives in. PRP changes the signalling environment. Minoxidil changes the vascular environment. Microneedling changes the mechanical/wound-healing environment. Hair transplant changes the physical inventory. These are five different levers and the guys who hold their hair long-term are usually pulling three or four of them, not just one.
Contrarian post incoming. I ran fin for 6 years, PRP for 3, minox for 8, dermaroller for 4. Combined, they held me at a Norwood 3 with acceptable density. Total spend over that period: probably north of £14,000 counting clinic visits, products, and my time.
I shaved down to a zero last summer. Best decision I’ve made in a decade. Not saying this to be smug or to derail — I’m saying it because these threads always frame the question as “which treatment” and never as “what’s the actual value of the outcome I’m buying.” If you’re 25 and terrified of being bald at 35, the treatments work and are worth it. If you’re 40 and grinding through quarterly PRP appointments to hold a diffuse thinning crown, ask yourself what you’re actually protecting.
That’s not advice against treatment. It’s advice for a five-minute honest audit before you sign up for a lifetime of it.
Fair post above. I’d only add: the audit is different at different life stages, and for a lot of guys the emotional weight in their 30s is real and not something to reason yourself out of. But yeah, going in eyes-open about the “forever” part of both these protocols is the single most under-discussed thing on hair loss forums. Both treatments are maintenance, not cure. Stop either one and you find out fast what your baseline genetics wanted to do.
To bring it back to the original question: if you can tolerate fin, start there, give it 12 months honestly before judging, and layer PRP if you want to accelerate density or if you’re losing ground despite suppression. If you can’t tolerate fin, PRP + minox + microneedling is a real protocol with real evidence, just more expensive and slightly less potent for aggressive genetic patterns. Neither one is a scam, neither one is a miracle, and anyone selling you either framing is selling you something.
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