Tony Huge

How I Reversed Severe Hair Loss and Grew It All Back: Tony Huge’s Video Guide

Table of Contents

Nine years ago Tony Huge had severe hair loss: a thin patch on top, a receding line, scalp visible from almost any angle. This video is his answer to the questions he keeps getting about how he reversed it. The core of it is not a miracle product. It is a priority pyramid. Block DHT at the follicle first, with the cheapest and most proven tools, and only then spend money on the expensive procedures his friends chase. He goes through every layer he uses, the one he deliberately refuses, and why he thinks people doing exosomes and PRP without a topical are running the 80/20 rule backwards.

Video: How I Reversed Severe Hair Loss & Grew It All Back. Published April 24, 2026. Watch on YouTube.

What the video covers

The base of the pyramid

Everyone uses minoxidil, Tony says, and so does he, but as one ingredient in a single topical formula from a clinic he works with: finasteride, minoxidil, caffeine, melatonin, zinc, folic acid and dutasteride together. He applies it once, in the morning. Beneath that sits ketoconazole shampoo, an antifungal that costs almost nothing, which he credits with cleaning out the follicle, preventing DHT buildup at the scalp and clearing other pathogens that block the follicle. He was originally told to use it a few days a week and let it sit; he has simplified to washing with it most days without leaving it on. The third base layer is RU58841, a research chemical without approval that he describes as highly effective in clinical studies, kept in a separate dropper bottle and applied at night.

The reason the topical goes on in the morning is a side effect. Tony believes he gets mild anxiety from minoxidil, possibly from the caffeine, and applying it at night was worse. He also learned that more frequent application did not help. Once a day lasts all day. People respond to minoxidil very differently, in effect and in side effects, and he treats his own reaction as one data point.

Turning non-responders into responders

For people who do not respond to minoxidil, Tony gives one common reason: the scalp is not converting it into its active form. Adding a little tretinoin, the prescription retinoid people use on their face, helps that conversion, and non-responders can become responders. He credits a friend who helped design his early protocol with the tip. His own habit is to apply tretinoin cream to his face at night, run it through his hair, then apply the RU58841 so the two mix. He is clear that most people respond to minoxidil and do not need this, and that he is not chasing perfection, just the easiest version that works.

“I don’t take the dutasteride or finasteride because those lower my systemic DHT, and I’m a man. I want DHT.”

Tony Huge, 04:30

The layer he refuses

The question he gets most is about oral finasteride and dutasteride, and the answer is no. The only pills he takes for hair are biotin and general anti-inflammatory supplements for overall health. Oral 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors lower systemic DHT, and DHT is what gives him hard muscle, energy and libido. When his DHT drops, he says, he feels less like a man. Some men respond well to those drugs; some respond badly, sometimes find out too late, and take a long time to recover their energy and drive. That is a risk he will not take.

He did run one experiment. When his testosterone was very high from injections, and therefore his DHT was high too, he took a fraction of a 1 mg finasteride tablet twice a week, around 1 mg per week against the 14 mg a week some men take. The goal was to bring DHT back into the normal range, not crash it. At that level he noticed no side effects. He has never taken dutasteride orally, calling it too strong, and is unbothered that both drugs are in his topical formula, because any systemic absorption from the scalp is too small to move his DHT meaningfully.

The expensive layers, honestly rated

GHK-Cu was supposed to be a hair miracle. Tony still believes it is a miracle for collagen, skin quality and anti-aging generally, and thinks it helps hair. But on its own it did not grow his hair significantly. His estimate is that the base layers do about 80% of what can be done for hair loss, and copper peptide adds maybe three to five percent on top. Worth including if you are already running peptides for other reasons; not the priority.

Microneedling he has done and quit. The roller caught and pulled his hair. The pen-style device, another friend’s recommendation, avoided that but was slow, made his eyes water and his nose tickle, and was mildly painful. Friends swear by it; he did not see a large difference in them either. Exosomes he has not tried and has not seen results from in friends who did; it apparently takes many treatments over a long period, like PRP, which he had on his scalp and does not think did much. The pattern he sees is friends spending on exosomes and PRP while skipping minoxidil, topical finasteride and RU58841. That is the 80/20 rule inverted: doing 80% of the interventions for 20% of the result.

Why natural is not enough, and why order matters

Another friend wants to stay natural and use peppermint and rosemary oil instead. Tony’s position is that they work, weakly. The point of a pharmaceutical is to take what nature offers, isolate the single most powerful element, and raise the dose. Natural interventions tend to be multi-pathway but weak on each pathway, and hair loss needs several pathways addressed: DHT, scalp inflammation, blood flow, and more. You can hit each with a strong tool or spread a weak one across all of them. He would still use the oils, and get the exosomes, and do the PRP, after the formula, the RU58841 and the shampoo.

The pyramid makes the reason concrete. If you wake up dormant follicles with exosomes and then leave them exposed to DHT, they fall out again. Address the most important thing first, then the next, then the next. That, he says, is his laws of biochemistry physics applied to hair.

Cheat Sheet Pivot

What Tony reported using and reasoning from, not instructions.

  • His base: a single topical formula (finasteride, minoxidil, caffeine, melatonin, zinc, folic acid, dutasteride) once each morning, ketoconazole shampoo most days, and RU58841 at night.
  • He applies minoxidil in the morning because of a mild anxiety effect, and found once daily as effective as twice.
  • He avoids oral finasteride and dutasteride to keep systemic DHT, and once ran about 1 mg of finasteride per week only to normalize DHT during a high-testosterone period.
  • GHK-Cu, microneedling, PRP and exosomes are, in his experience, small or unproven additions compared to the base layers.
  • His order: block DHT first, then inflammation and blood flow, then the optional extras.

The compounds in his pyramid are in the Miracle Molecules Cheat Sheet. For the fuller written stack, read The Full Hair Loss Reversal Stack, and for the peptide he rates highly for everything except hair on its own, see GHK-Cu Copper Peptide: The Skin and Hair Protocol I’ve Run for 3 Years.

Where the evidence stops

This is a personal protocol video. The only research reference is Tony’s statement that RU58841 is effective in clinical studies, which the video does not cite. His before-and-after is his own; there is no measurement of hair count. The 80% and three-to-five-percent figures are his guesses, and he says so. The claim that tretinoin converts minoxidil non-responders is presented as a tip that worked in his protocol, not a trial result. His anxiety on minoxidil, and the absence of side effects at 1 mg of finasteride per week, are single-person observations. What is well established is the order of the pyramid: DHT sensitivity is the accepted driver of pattern loss, and any regrowth effort that leaves it unaddressed is fighting itself.

Keep going

For the combination study behind two of these layers, read Topical Minoxidil + Microneedling: The Hair Regrowth Stack, and for why the route you take testosterone affects DHT, see Does TRT Cause Hair Loss? Gel vs Injections vs Enclomiphene. Companion articles go out first to the tonyhuge.is email list, and the archive is on tonyhuge.is.

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