Telehealth companies make hair loss drugs easy to get. They also don’t have to disclose side effects in ads. WSJ’s Rolfe Winkler reports that some young men say they are suffering serious health consequences, and that they didn’t understand the risks. Kate Linebaugh hosts. Further Listening: - Testosterone Clinics Sell Virility. Side Effects Sometimes Included. - ‘Uncontrolled Substances’ from The Journal. Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts and main reporters of this episode?
My colleague Rolf Winkler has a full head of hair. Still, he gets targeted for hair loss medications all the time, often by telehealth companies like HIMS.
Chapter 2: How easy is it to get hair loss medication online?
I'm on HIMS.com, and it gives you all these different options for medications that they'll sell you on subscription.
Rolf and I decided to see how quickly he could sign up for hair loss meds online. Shall we hit regrow hair?
Sure. Let's try regrow hair.
Okay. All right. I'm clicking that.
It offers finasteride, which blocks DHT, a hormone that causes hair loss.
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Chapter 3: What are the potential side effects of finasteride?
Finasteride is the generic version of the brand name pill, Propecia. And it has some known and potentially nasty side effects.
Then there's an option to click on safety information or side effects. If I want to click on that, I don't have to. I can just sort of continue.
And then you hit submit.
Yep.
And in your case, how long did it take before you got approval?
60 seconds.
60 seconds. Just about as long as you've been listening to this episode. That's how quickly Rolf got approved for finasteride. Why is this a problem? Is it even a problem?
Well, there are a lot of men we spoke to who got some very gnarly side effects from finasteride that they got from telehealth companies. And they said they really weren't warned about the side effects.
Telehealth companies say they disclose side effects and other risks on their websites. But a lot of men say they wish they would have slowed down and read the fine print. because some of them are suffering serious health problems. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Linebaugh. It's Monday, April 14th.
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Chapter 4: Who is Mark Millick and what are his experiences with hair loss drugs?
Why did you go through HIMSS and not go to your doctor?
I think there was sort of a denial phase. You know, you don't want to go to a doctor and have them directly tell me to my face. You're losing your hair. So you kind of get to avoid confronting the issue while still confronting the issue, if that makes sense, right?
How did you feel at that point?
Felt like I was being proactive.
In recent years, telehealth companies like HIMSS, Keeps, and Roman have boomed.
A key reason they exist is convenience. Some people just want to go on the internet and get a solution. You never have to see a doctor in person. They don't take insurance. It's a cash pay model. You give them their credit card for the medications that you get from them. And they've grown, you know, very, very large.
Hims is part of the parent company, Hims and Hers Health, which went public in 2021.
They had $1.5 billion in revenue last year, and they had over 2 million customers whom they call subscribers.
The main way HIMS and its rival companies get customers is through aggressive TV and social media ads.
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Chapter 5: Why are telehealth companies popular for hair loss treatments?
Getting help for hair loss used to be hard. HIMS makes it simple. It all starts with one click.
By starting Keeps now, I can keep the hair I have and get my treatment without leaving the couch.
Guys, listen up. If you want to not only have a better sex life, but also regrow your hair at the same time, check out this 4-in-1 pill by HIMS. It contains Tadalafil...
Are they like tapping sort of fundamental insecurities?
Yeah, I think that's the main goal here. A lot of younger men are probably insecure about their hair. Guys with hair or without hair?
With hair. Hair. Hair. With. With hair. I prefer hair.
The way these telehealth ads handle side effects is very different from the usual drug commercial.
You know, when you watch a commercial for a drug on the evening news or something, a narrator says a whole bunch of things very quickly and a whole bunch of small print goes past you on the screen. And you're supposed to, you know, know before you go and ask your doctor about this medication that there are some risks. And moreover, your doctor is trained to tell you about those risks.
So you can make an informed decision whether this medication is right for you, right? So what's interesting about telehealth companies? Well, they're not required in their advertisements to disclose side effects. So they typically don't.
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Chapter 6: How do telehealth ads handle side effects disclosure differently from traditional drug commercials?
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Chapter 7: Are there regulatory concerns about telehealth advertising for medications?
Mark was aware that finasteride did have possible side effects. He'd read through the HIMSS website and did his own research online. But to Mark, the risks seemed minimal.
What I recall is that they talked about how side effects were rare. I think it was 1.2% was the statistic I had read. But the side effects only included sexual issues and I think maybe some depression issues, right, that would go away upon cessation of the drug. So that was it. It's like I don't really have anything to lose.
If I deal with side effects, I come off the drug and I just carry on with life. And that's kind of the end of it right there.
About a week or two after Mark started taking the hair loss drug, he began to feel off.
I do a lot of presentations, right? So I mentioned I do safety trainings, things like that. And I was just having a tougher time getting through my presentations, which is something I never struggled with before.
Around six months later, things got even worse.
The transition came, and this was very notable. It was in June of 2021. I woke up that morning. It was a Monday morning, and it felt like I'd been lobotomized. Everything changed. I had developed, at the time, permanent slurred speech, anhedonia, couldn't feel any emotions, felt very foggy. It was like the worst hangover of my life.
And I went to work that morning, that Monday morning, to do a new higher orientation. And information I'd been teaching at that point for several years, I completely forgot. It's like the first time I'd ever read it before.
Must have been so scary.
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