Oral Minoxidil.

"The biggest appeal of oral minoxidil is just convenience, it's so much easier to take a pill every day than to apply a foam to your scalp every day and deal with the hair styling consequences that come with that, particularly for women, for people who have longer hairstyles, or for people who have a decent amount of hair but are just starting to notice thinning. Sometimes topical minoxidil can feel just like not worth it for how much benefit they're going to get compared to taking something oral where they might even get better hair growth with less of a chore involved. Oral minoxidil is not FDA approved for the treatment of hair loss, it's used as an off-label treatment. When we give oral minoxidil for hair loss we are using it at much, much lower doses, like one-fifth to one-tenth or even one-twentieth of the dose that we would give to treat hypertension. For men the max dose I usually use is 2.5 milligrams a day and for women 1.25 milligram a day. Topical minoxidil has the potential to cause irritation, flaking, and itch on the scalp, whereas if you're taking it orally you sort of avoid all of those."

"It might be cheaper, less irritating, less of a headache to put on and utilize, and if you have pets, less of a hazard to them. In a lot of cases you might even get more substantial or better results with oral minoxidil compared to the topical stuff, maybe because of differences in enzyme activity or just overall uptake into the hair follicle. You can experience an increase in hair shedding in the first few months of starting oral minoxidil, same as with the topical. With oral minoxidil, hypertrichosis, hair growth on the body and face, is a lot more common of a side effect. It can be a wanted side effect or an unwanted side effect."

"Oral minoxidil is actually a really good treatment orally, you just have to find the right patients who can tolerate a blood pressure medicine orally because minoxidil is a blood pressure medicine and we give it in very small doses for hair loss. A lot of my patients do tolerate it, but I just don't give it to patients who are already on other blood pressure medicines because I don't want to add another agent to their medications and potentially cause low blood pressure and fainting and dizziness. The biggest side effect when you're taking oral minoxidil is hypertrichosis from minoxidil causing hair growth everywhere. A lot of my male patients don't mind or even notice, but with female patients I actually use a very small dose to help prevent that from happening. When you see increased hair growth even on the neck for females and on the face, you really start believing like wow, this is actually doing something."

"Oral minoxidil can potentially be a helpful treatment that can be used to treat various different types of hair loss. It does have more side effects than topical minoxidil, but having said that it may give you better results. For chronic and progressive conditions like androgenic hair loss, long-term use is needed, but for conditions like telogen effluvium, it doesn't have to be long-term and you can gradually taper off. This is where you want to talk with your dermatologist to make sure that you fully understand the pros and cons and to make sure that oral minoxidil is a good option for you."

"There's been a ton of data, a huge uptick in data coming out specifically about using low doses of oral minoxidil to treat hair loss so that you don't get the blood pressure effects but you may get the benefits of hair growth. The studies are overwhelmingly positive. Most of the people in the studies are showing tremendous hair growth, this is in both females and in males. In all studies cross-sectionally you're seeing a big advantage for hair growth. When we use this at a lower dose, that's similar to how we use a lot of other medications, especially related to blood pressure and hair loss too. With a lower dose you might be able to get the hair growth benefits while minimizing the blood pressure problems."