I’ve just emerged from a 3 months grow-a-beard phase. Given how it looked on me, that can only be good.
I’m 31 with thick, curly beard hairs that are wider spaced than normal. My pallid face mean that I get 5 o’clock shadow as soon as I shave (think Homer). I also get a lot of sensitive skin issues when shaving, hence the beard binge.
Enough background. The real question is can growing a beard for 3 months reduce your hair growing abilities? I’ve found that, 6 days after shaving it all off, I have stubble that I’d have expected after only 2 days of not shaving. It seems to be growing in a more even and certainly a slower manner than before.
You are just scraping off dead tissue. Perhaps, by not being stimulated every day, some hair folicles have stop producing hair.
I have not shaved in two years now. I like my beard.
The point of the hair coming in more even might by a simple fact of ageing. My first attempt at beard growing was not to good looking. Waited a few years and it grew in much better.
How often did you shave prior to growing a beard? I find that I get a much closer shave after skipping shaving for a few days. I think part of it is that my Trac II razor works more effectively (that whole first-blade-pulls-second-blade-cuts thing) on longer beard hairs.
Also, shaving creates scar tissue. When you don’t shave for a couple of weeks or so, the scar tissue heals up. Then you get a better shave. Electric razor instructions tell you that it will take a couple of weeks before you get the best shave with an electric, and that’s the reason.
Hair follicles don’t need stimulation to grow hair, and hair grows at the same speed regardless of whether you shave or not. The apparent growth that can change with varying skin condition.
As wide a variation in hair growth patterns as you describe seems implausible. It’s not impossible, though.
The variation has nothing to do with whether you shave or not. Your follicles couldn’t care less. Internal states may influence hair growth immensely, however.
Generally speaking, if you’re healthy, male, have no thyroid disease, and aren’t taking medications that poison hair growth, the most common cause for the phenomenon you describe is an error in perception.
CB (derm guy-I see people with similar complaints often)
Well, with 3 months of beard it’s possible that I’m just not used to it. I used to be a shave every day person. Assuming that I was shaving regularly, I still would be. However, the g/f test (pretty scientific ) proves that my 6 day old stubble is not as scratchy as it would have been before.
Still, it seems that science is against me. I’ll report back next week when I start the daily shaves if I notice a difference, but for the moment cased closed and we’ll put it down to misplaced optimism.
The effect is real, at least I can say that I experienced it and it was noticed by others without my mentioning it - the first shave after four months beard growth was without a doubt the smoothest, closest and longest-lasting shave of my life.
Observations:
It really was a close shave - my beard grows very flat to the skin and I am unable to shave upwards - after a normal shave, I usually end up with a ‘blue’ chin and slight roughness if rubbed the wrong way. After removing my beard, however. there was no blueness and my chin was properly smooth in all directions.
It did seem to be the case that my beard grew slower - not only in the interval between the initial shave and the next, but for a few weeks at least.
Hypotheses:
As CookingWithGas suggests, the tug-and-cut effect may well work better with longer hairs on which to work. But this would only really effect the initial removal of developed beard.
When you shave, you’re massaging your face, although it may be true that hair follicles don’t respond to physical stimulation, the massaging effect may improve circulation - is it possible that reduced blood flow to the hair follicles could reduce the rate of growth?
When you grow a beard, you are undoubtedly allowing natural skin oils to build up to a higher level than they would if you shaved on a daily basis - this fact alone may enable a better shave by allowing the razor to move more readily.
I think it may be possible that, when a full beard is grown, the individual hairs may be teased into a position more perpendicular than usual to the skin and that this might present them in such a way that the razor is able to achieve a closer shave.
On a kind of related note, I was once very ill with some kind of flu-type thing and my beard actually stopped growing (or drastically slowed down) for a few days
) proves that my 6 day old stubble is not as scratchy as it would have been before.