UrbanUpdate

Silicon Valley wants to fix everything from food waste to your inability to focus. There's a relatively simple formula to follow: Find an incredibly complex problem, find a disruptively quick "solution," and throw a ton of money and marketing at it. Well, to the list of things our tech saviors have solved we can now add erectile disfunction and premature balding.

There’s a new subscription service called Hims out to address the fact that men’s heads get less hairy and their boners get less bony. These things happen to young men, too! I’m 31. When I look in the mirror, it's clear that my face is a few inches taller than it used to be. And certain other powers of mine have also waned. Slightly. Now I follow the bedroom equivalent of the “no swimming for an hour after eating” rule.

After a consultation with a doctor on the Hims site, you can get generic pills sent to your house in regular intervals. For hair loss there's finasteride—you might know it as Propecia, the patent for which expired a few years ago, opening up the market. And then there's sildenafil—the same as Viagra—for erectile dysfunction. The marketing is reminiscent of Thinx, the women's underwear that's supposed to be period-proof. You know: attractive, diverse models shot on millennial pink backgrounds. Based on the amount of Internet chatter we've seen, it seems to be working.

The best thing about Hims, I think, is that you have access to these drugs at a no-BS price, outside of the mess of a medical system our country has. They’re roughly 50-80 percent cheaper than the retail cost of the brand-name versions, making ED pills and balding treatments much more affordable to the average guy.

Hopefully more guys will talk to their primary care doctors about this stuff, rather than simply accepting fate. Erectile disfunction, when it affects younger men, is a topic that still feels hard to talk about. The automation of a Hims subscription might get more men into the lasting habit of tending to these issues. Because here’s some truth about hair loss and ED: The former is preventable and partially reversible, and the latter is usually easily treated. That said, neither issue has a panacea—it’s all about consistent treatment and proactivity to reverse and minimize the effects of time.

So, while you can subscribe with a simple five-minute consultation, I urge you to take the time to meet with your own doctor beforehand. He or she can tell you about the risks for both, as well as the dosage you should be taking. For example, the standard Hims sildenafil prescription is 10 pills at 20mg, but few guys in their 20s or 30s need that much in a single dose, and there’s no need to start relying on that much just yet. (The Hims team can adjust your prescription if you ask.) The Hims’ finasteride prescription is a 30-day bottle of a daily 1mg dose, which is the standard amount you would get from any doctor; anything higher is detrimental to your prostate.

Some guys might lose their sex drive if they take finasteride. It’s rare, but it can happen. And then you’ll have to decide whether you’d rather have hair or have sex. (Different strokes, etc.) You’ll also need to routinely get your prostate examined while on the drug, among other checkups. As for sildenafil, there are certain things you shouldn’t mix with it—recreational drugs, chief among them—or else your heart could coolly and casually stop beating mid-coitus. But don’t let that alarm you, because the wide majority of men who take one or both of these drugs go on living their lives just fine—and that’s because they’re educated on how to take them. A five-minute online consult with Hims will get you the , but at least it makes access to the pills easier. So go see your doctor, in person, and often.

Adam Hurly has been covering men's grooming since 2013 (and for GQ since 2016). He is also a travel writer. In Fall 2024, Adam is launching Blue Print by Adam Hurly, a men's grooming platform. Adam resides in Lisbon (previously Berlin, NYC, and San Francisco). He is a Sioux Falls, SD, native... Read moreWriterInstagramRelated Stories for GQHairHealth