If you’re ready to commit to a full beard or goatee there are a few changes you’ll need to make to your daily routine. This includes daily grooming, strategic nutrition, and making or maintaining a few lifestyle changes. Follow the tips below for faster beard growth.
Nutritional Changes
Whether it’s your first beard or you’ve struggled to grow a beard in the past, learning the science behind how hair grows can help. Yes, your facial hair will grow even if you don’t make any changes to your daily routine, but your goal is to accelerate growth.
Your body naturally nourishes your hair follicles by improving blood flow that delivers the healthy proteins, fats, and carbs found in keratin and biotin.
Keratin is the building-block of healthy hair and hair follicle growth. You can naturally boost keratin production by eating a well-balanced diet that includes more eggs, salmon, and sweet potatoes.
Biotin (vitamin B7) will strengthen your hair while it grows, making your beard look full and healthy. You can naturally boost biotin by eating a well-balanced diet that includes more eggs, nuts, seeds, avocado, broccoli, mushrooms, bananas, and sweet potatoes.
You can also take keratin and biotin in supplement form.
Be sure to stay hydrated as water plays a vital role in every bodily function, including hair growth. Your hair follicles have the fastest growing tissues in your body, but if you are dehydrated, hydrating your hair follicles won’t be your body’s priority.
Healthy Lifestyle Changes
Managing stress is essential for faster beard growth. There are a variety of lifestyle changes you can make to minimize stress, with the top 3 being improved nutrition, getting adequate sleep, and exercise. We covered nutrition above, now let’s look at sleep and exercise.
Sleep is when our body naturally heals, repairs, and self-regulates. When your schedule is jam-packed you may get less than the suggested 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. Or if you are stressed out, you may stay up tossing and turning. Test sleep apps, sound therapy, aromatherapy, or try creating a PM sleep routine to improve your sleep.
Exercise provides a variety of whole-body benefits. When speaking of your new beard, it can minimize your stress levels by boosting the “feel good” hormones dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. Exercise also boosts testosterone function, which is essential for delivering adequate blood flow to your hair follicles.
Commit To A Daily Grooming Routine
Now that you know what changes you need to make to support beard growth from the inside out, it’s time to support beard growth externally.
1. Upgrade Your Grooming Products
No more bar soap on your face, toss your dull razor, and invest in Beard Growth Oil or Beard Growth Balm. Balms are great if your skin is dry, and oil can be applied before your facial moisturizer. No, you don’t have much more than scruff yet, but keeping your skin nourished and hydrated will encourage faster beard growth.
You must keep your face clean by washing in the morning, evening and after working out—but never with bar soap or gym body wash. These products are harsh and will strip your skin and beard hair of their natural moisture and nutrients. Instead, upgrade to an all-in-one Hair, Beard, & Body Wash. Always follow up with oil or balm.
We talk more about how to grow your beard below but invest in a new razor or interchangeable blade to keep your edges clean.
2. Let It Grow
Even if you’ve already selected the style you want to grow, you’ll need to let your beard grow uninterrupted for a solid 3 weeks—only cleaning up the edges. This includes letting it grow around your mouth, even if your end goal is to have a cleaner line around your mouth.
This stage of growth can be frustrating because many men experience patchy beard growth. Let it be and after a few weeks you’ll at least be able to comb over your patchy spots.
Expect to feel the itch in the first few weeks of growth, while your skin adjusts to letting sharp new beard hairs grow. Applying oil or balm twice a day will minimize the itch, but the itch will pass in a couple of weeks.
3. Select Your Style
If you haven’t yet, it’s time to select what style of beard to grow. If your goal is a long beard, you may gradually transition to the style you want as you grow from short to medium and medium to long.
Avoid the temptation of selecting a beard because it looks good on someone else. Your beard style must be realistic for your hair texture, beard fullness, and face shape. If it’s your first beard, you may not know your beard fullness yet and will have to decide as it grows.
It’s helpful to pop into the barbershop between 3 to 5 weeks of growth to discuss the most suitable options for your face shape, hair type, and style goals. Your barber will create your initial shape and provide you with tips for how to maintain your new beard at home.
Continue going to the barbershop every 4 to 6 weeks to reshape and discuss just how long you want your beard to be.
4. Invest In Beard Grooming Tools
There are several beard grooming tools to choose from. You’ve already upgraded your razor, now it’s time for a comb, brush, and beard trimmer—either scissors or an electric trimmer.
If you preferred a shaving foam before you grew your beard, you’ll need to switch to a Shave Cream or Shave Gel to ensure you can clearly see your shave lines.
Continue using beard oil, but transition to balm if your beard is unruly, curly, or if you have a medium or long beard. Once you reach your desired beard length, you can switch from beard growth formulas to a standard oil or balm.
Follow these same tips for growing a mustache.
Check back to Uncle Jimmy’s soon for more beard tips!
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