For how we live.
The whole scare traces to one 2009 study that measured a hormone, not hair. In 2025, the first trial to actually assess hair follicles found no difference between creatine and placebo.
A JAMA Dermatology review found the best-evidenced products — Viviscal, Nutrafol and a few others — but flagged weak studies and industry funding. For people who eat normally, the case is thin.
Creatine is not a testosterone booster — the trials show it leaves testosterone unchanged. The baldness scare traces to a single 20-man study that found a rise in DHT, a result no one has replicated in 15 years.
The trials that licensed minoxidil ran for 24 to 48 weeks, and a five-year follow-up shows why the honest answer to 'when can I stop' is: you probably can't without losing the gain.
A nine-man study found hair fibres thickened from 0.085 to 0.092 mm after 24 weeks of daily massage. The larger dataset was a self-reported survey — run by a hair-loss website.
The bestselling herbal for an enlarged prostate flopped in the trials: even at triple the usual dose it beat placebo by nothing. The hair-loss claim rests on a handful of small, weak studies rather than proof.
A single randomised trial found rosemary oil and 2% minoxidil produced statistically indistinguishable hair counts at six months. It is the strongest evidence rosemary has — and it is thin.
Young men are starting hair-loss drugs early and stacking them with dermarolling and oral minoxidil. Two drugs have decades of evidence; the trend's framing runs ahead of it.
A network meta-analysis of 24 randomised trials ranks oral dutasteride first on 24-week hair density. The adverse-effect literature behind these drugs is separately, and seriously, contested.
Pooling 24 studies out of 133 screened, researchers found hair shedding tied to rapid weight loss more than to the drugs directly — and a pattern that hits women disproportionately.