Derek (More Plates More Dates)

Oral?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what they found when they prescribed it for blood pressure decades ago was that one of the side effects besides like people like fainting when they're standing up or having low blood pressure or water retention was hair growth everywhere, including their scalp significantly.

So like, huh, maybe we can take this drug and repurpose it for a topical for hair growth because it's like essentially a really bad blood pressure drug with a black box warning on it.

And they did successfully.

And now it's known to be like the growth stimulant for your hair and seems to avoid a lot of that systemic side effect profile that comes with the oral formulation.

Some people still use the oral formulation.

Dermatologists have seemingly adopted it.

I would say a little bit haphazardly without really accepting the risk profile accordingly.

Cause it's like a pretty, it is a bit of a sketchy primitive drug, but

Orally, especially because the liver has so much sulfotransferase enzyme conversion, enzyme activity that leads to the minoxidil sulfate conversion that you get systemically.

It leads to some people like pericardial effusion, like water retention, dysregulation of electrolyte balance.

It's a potassium channel opener.

That's how it works.

And systemically, it has a much more significant side effect profile than topically.

And it's not uncommon to see people even microdosing it, getting...

arrhythmias and like talking about like chest pains like freaking out and going to the hospital and it's a lot of people just get chucked on it at like low dose but it's still low enough it's still high enough that it causes like these problems and some people works really well though but topically it's like the most benign at least entry-level way where you can not you can get over the counter like you can just buy it off amazon or at costco or whatever

Um, way more, uh, likely that you won't undergo side effects using it topically.

And there are some studies, many studies that show like similar benefit profiles.