For how we live.
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 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.
Cochrane pooled 47 randomised trials in 5,290 women. The drug most often named alongside minoxidil as first-line — spironolactone — had no randomised evidence, and the review asked for some.
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.