Last Updated on January 3, 2019 by Robert Price
Believe it or not, there are quality hair loss products out there, available on the cheap. And unlike brand-name Propecia, these products won’t break your penis or your pocketbook! That was a joke and this is a serious subject. And no, Propecia most likely will NOT destroy your manhood…It is expensive though.
Let’s get to the list, before I offend every hair loss sufferer on the planet. Here are the top 10 OTC hair loss treatment products of 2018. Note: This article contains affiliate links. If you purchase a product I mention via this website, I may get a super-small commission as a result, at no extra cost to you. Ready, set, here’s the top-10 list…
1. Rogaine
It’s battle-tested in the treatment of male pattern baldness. Hell, it’s been around so long, your grandpa may have even used it at some point! Minoxidil helps roughly 4 out 5 men regrow some hair, or at the very least, slow down the journey to Dr. Phil-level baldness. Here are a few good deals on Rogaine:
2. Kirkland Brand Minoxidil
A slightly cheaper option, Kirkland-brand minoxidil is one of the most popular minoxidil products available today. It has an excellent reputation and is priced to fit most budgets. Most people prefer the foam to the liquid, but either product is a solid option — and the liquid is amazing inexpensive.
3. Laser Therapy
Laser helmets look stupid, sure, but research indicates that laser therapy can help combat pattern hair loss in both men and women. If you’re really looking to throw the proverbial “kitchen sink” at your baldness problem, then you should probably pick up a laser device of some kind. The following three products are a few of the best I’ve found:
- The iRestore Laser Helmet
- iGrow Laser Helmet, Certified Refurbished – Huge Savings!
- Capillus 82 Laser Hat
4. Ketoconazole Shampoo
Don’t expect miracles. But Ketoconazole shampoos have been shown to mitigate balding to some extent. I’d suggest using one of the following two products:
5. Infinity Hair Fibers
A hair fiber product could help you add some unbelievable volume to your thinning locks! If you use a high-quality product like Infinity or Toppik, the results should be undetectable. Requires very little effort, too!
Buy Infinity Hair Thickener Her
6. Saw Palmetto
Saw palmetto has been shown to help treat androgenic alopeica, AKA male pattern baldness. Reviews of these supplements are mixed, but if you’re hesitant to try Propecia, adding a DHT-lowering supplement to your treatment arsenal certainly couldn’t hurt. Here are a couple highly rated products for your consideration:
- Source Naturals Saw Palmetto Extract (highly rated brand)
- Now Foods Saw Palmetto Extract (cheapest option, solid brand)
- Revivogen Scalp Therapy (One of the top Saw Palmetto topicals)
7. Pumpkin Seed Oil
There’s no doubt about it: Pumpkin seed oil shows promise as a hair loss remedy. The following products are the best I’ve found thus far:
- Now Foods Pumpkin Seed Oil – Economical, high quality.
- Swanson Pumpkin Seed Oil – Premium Supplement brand.
- La Tourangelle Toasted Pumpkin Seed Oil – One of the top-rated, standard pumpkin seed products on the market.
8. Rosemary Oil
In my rosemary oil review, I dubbed it Nature’s minoxidil. You’ll need to use, at the very least, a carrier oil and rosemary oil. Here’s a quality recipe for you to consider. You’ll need the following ingredients (Don’t worry, t’s easier to make than you think!).
- 1½ ounces jojoba oil
- 1½ ounces grapeseed oil
- 30 drops cedarwood oil
- 30 drops rosemary essential oil
- 30 drops sage essential oil
9. Viviscal
Viviscal is an often-overlooked hair loss treatment among men. But it can help both men and women improve their hair health and possibly promote some regrowth as well.
10. Derma Roller
Using a derma roller when you apply a topical product like Rogaine may help enhance the effectiveness of the treatment, according to a number of studies. Derma rollers are cheap. Click here to pick one on Amazon for about 10 to 15 bucks.
Do you agree or disagree with this top-10, OTC hair loss treatment list? Rogaine, generic minoxidil, laser therapy, Infinity Hair Fibers, Ketoconazole shampoos, saw palmetto, pumpkin seed oil, rosemary oil, viviscal, and derma rollers are my picks. Hate me if you want to, love me if you can. Until next time.
Robert Price is a writer, consumer advocate, and hair loss researcher with thousands of hours of experience in the field. His goal is to keep you out of the hair loss rabbit hole, underworld, or whatever you want to call it. He founded Hair Loss Daily, the unbiased hair loss blog, in 2016. You can learn more about Robert in the my story section of this website.
As I stated in an earlier post, I can attest to the efficacy of saw palmetto. Several years after I became bald, I started taking saw palmetto to alleviate uncomfortable prostate problems. It did relieve those symptoms, but to my chagrin, it also reversed my baldness from Norwood 6 to Norwood 5 or even Norwood4! Anyone else would have been over the top thrilled, but not me. The last thing I wanted was to ‘cure’ my male pattern baldness. All my life I had the irresistible urge to go bald and having waited until my mid 50s, I wasn’t about to regrow the hair on top of my head. Luckily for me, the hair regrowth effects proved to be temporary and over the next few years, that regrown hair slowly thinned out and disappeared and I was happily Norwood 6 bald again. I still take saw palmetto and it still relieves my prostate discomfort, but thankfully, my MPB is irreversible and permanent. I am beyond the point of no return.
My treatment/cure for male pattern baldness for those who dread it or already ‘suffer’ from it is ‘attitude adjustment’. Learn to love it. MPB is a fact of life and short of reprogramming it out of human DNA, there is no way to get rid of it. It is here to stay. I can’t imagine having to deal with hair transplants or any of those ten OTC hair products. And castration to prevent baldness comes at an unacceptable cost: the loss of manhood. I couldn’t have endured the pain of transplants or afforded the cost of marginally effective hair loss products. I am unbelievably lucky in that going bald was one of my fondest wishes finally come true and I am married to a woman who loves my baldness as much as I do. For me and others like me who love MPB, hair transplants and hair loss treatments are an irrelevance, a non-issue. For everyone else, I my hope that you will find an effective cure or treatment. Or learn to love MPB.
You obviously had some super-potent MPB going at the time when you were on saw palmetto, so the fact that it helped improved your hair situation at all is surprising and borderline remarkable to me. Going bald certainly has its benefits, but you’re sort of a peculiar guy, Eric, and I mean that in the best possible, most complimentary way! If you polled all men between the ages of 25 and 50 and asked them if they wanted to go totally bald, I’m pretty certain that less than 1% of the respondents would reply in the affirmative. As I think I stated to you in a previous response, a significant percentage of men would choose partial blindness over baldness. But glad the look and lifestyle suit you so well, and that your wife loves your bald head!
Male pattern baldness certainly isn’t for everyone, but if it didn’t get so much bad press, far fewer men would object to it as strenuously as they do. But to prefer blindness to baldness? Incredible! I would rather give it all up and just die, rather than lose my eyesight. Blindness, to me, is far worse than death. As for male pattern baldness, try as I might, I cannot logically explain why I love it so much. It makes absolutely no sense, but I am so happy that I feel that way. If I could bottle an ingredient that would cause every MPB ‘sufferer’ to suddenly love it, not only would I make a fortune, but I would be doing mankind a huge favor. If MPB cannot be prevented or ‘cured’, at least it would be turned into an eagerly desired and prized trait.
As much as I love MPB, it would have been very difficult for me had I gone bald in my teens or early 20s. Adolescents and young adults desperately need to ‘fit in’ with their peers. Going bald at 16 or 18 would have made me stand out in a very unacceptable way. While I would have secretly loved going bald, I would have hated how I was treated by my siblings, my classmates and my friends. No doubt I would have been treated like a freak and ridiculed. It is not cool for a teenager to go bald. No girl would have dared to go out on a date with me. I would have been better off pretending that I was a cancer patient on chemo. That way I would have at least gained their sympathy.
My classmates in college who were balding were pitied and sometimes teased, but none were mistreated. By my senior year in college I decided that it was time for me to begin to go bald, so I was both very pleased (and quite scared) when my hairline suddenly receded from no hair loss to ‘mature hairline’. Then when my hairline receded no further I was deeply disappointed. Oh how I envied my bald and balding classmates! A close friend somehow guessed what I was feeling and asked me if anyone in my family was bald. I told her my grandfather, one of my great-grandfathers and an uncle were bald. She smiled at me and said, “Then there is hope for you. Be patient. Someday you will get your wish and go bald.” All I could do was blush. I asked her how she knew. She said she could tell by the way I looked at my bald classmate and how I reacted when she and her friends good-naturedly teased him. I had to admit to her that I envied my bald classmates and wished the she and her friends had the same reason to tease me. She said, “Don’t worry, I won’t say anything and by the way, I think bald is sexy.” That was the first time I ran into someone who actually loved male pattern baldness. She was a very nice girl, but unfortunately, she already had a boyfriend, who she married after they graduated. She said she hoped that someday her husband-to-be would go bald. I have not seen her in 50 years. I hope she got her wish.