When the beard craze came on the scene a few years ago, many people dismissed it as a passing fad. ‘Oh, look at the hipsters with their quirky beards!’ they mocked. ‘Oh, this is just a passing fad,’ they laughed.
There were websites dedicated to mocking men with beards, making fun of the attention and the care that newly bearded men took to make their beards look amazing. ‘Won’t these guys be embarrassed when they look back a few years from now and see how silly they looked!’ they surmised.
Many men didn’t know where to look for information on how to grow a beard, and they didn’t want to ask.
To be a real man meant not caring how you looked. But men do care what they look like. They want to look nice, and they want to be able to express themselves. Beards allow them to do just that.
Now that we’ve established that many men wish to grow beards, we can focus on the hard part: how to grow a beard. Figuring out how to grow a beard is an incredibly easy process for some men, while others find it extremely difficult.
For some men, growing a beard simply entails not shaving. The good news is that for the most part, the steps for growing a beard are pretty straightforward and the same for most men. Some men may have to put a little bit more effort into it than others, but following the steps below can help ensure that men who find it difficult to grow beards are on the right track.
Steps to Growing a Beard
Dont Try to Shape It Early On
It will be really tempting to try to shape your beard in its earliest stages of growth. Don’t. You need to see how your beard grows out before you can determine what you want it to look like in the end. Resist the urge to tame it and simply sit back and see what it looks like as It grows out. You can brush it to keep it nice and smooth, but don’t do anything to try to influence how it will look. It’s way too early.
Heal and Moisturize Irritated Skin
Make sure that you take care of the skin underneath your beard. Keep it clean and conditioned and work hard to eliminate any skin flare-ups like acne or ingrown hairs.
Many men experience a lot of itching as their beards begin to grow out for the first time, so if that happens to you, use beard oils, beard balm and any skin medications that you usually take in order to keep the skin underneath the beard looking its best and any flare-ups under control.
Be Patient
When learning how to grow a beard, it’s important for you to realize that much of beard growth is hereditary. How fast it grows, what texture it is and pretty much everything else to do with what beard hair looks like is based on our DNA. Because of this, you can’t compare the way your beard grows to the way that someone else’s beard grows.
You need to understand that certain things about growing a beard are out of your control. it may take you six months to grow a visible goatee while your roommate’s goatee will grow within seven days. That’s simply the way it is. As long as you’re doing everything in your power to figure out how to grow a beard that’s as healthy as it can be, that’s all you can do. Just be patient.
Get Enough Sleep
Another important area that people neglect when it comes to learning how to grow a beard is making sure that they get enough sleep. Nighttime is peak hair growth time since that’s when most cellular turnover in the body takes place.
If you’re not getting enough sleep, your hair growth rate will suffer. You also run the risk of decreased blood flow, resulting in less nutrient reaching your hair follicles. Fewer nutrients reaching her hair follicles means that they Won’t be stimulated, resulting in slower hair growth. You want to make sure that you’re getting at least eight hours of sleep per night.
Food and Exercise
How your beard grows and how it will look at its optimum growth level will depend in large part on how healthy you are. If you eat a good diet, drink plenty of water, and exercise regularly, you are creating optimal conditions for hair growth.
Food
- Eat foods high in beta-carotene like sweet potatoes. Beta-carotene is important for cellular growth. It works by converting into Vitamin A, a conversion that stimulates increase cellular growth inside the hairs. Vitamin A also helps in the production of sebum, and oil your body produces to help moisturize the scalp and keep hair healthy and glossy.
- Eat foods rich in zinc like oysters. Zinc helps hair building cells, resulting in increased growth and retention. In addition to being an excellent source of zinc, oysters give you the added bonus of being packed with protein, another hair builder.
- Add eggs to your diet. Eggs are an amazing source of protein and biotin, nutrients that are well-known for having amazing benefits for hair and skin.
- Choose dark greens like spinach. Spinach is rich in nutrients that benefit hair growth like iron, magnesium, protein, potassium, and calcium. If you don’t have time to put it in a salad, you could throw a bunch or two into a smoothie. The best part about that is that you won’t even taste it.
- Eat foods with plenty of Vitamin C. Vitamin C is important to hair health because it’s an antioxidant that blocks free radicals, the toxins that cause cellular damage resulting in dry, aged hair and other negative health effects.
- B vitamins are some of the most important nutrients you can consume when it comes to encouraging healthy hair growth. Biotin is a particularly strong B vitamin, frequently used in hair growth supplements due to its ability to accelerate hair growth.
Exercise
How well your beard grows or doesn’t grow will depend on the hormones testosterone and dihydrotestosterone, or DHT. Testosterone turns into DHT in the body. The more DHT you have, the more body hair you have.
This means that men with high levels of testosterone and DHT tend to find it a lot easier to grow beards and other body hair than men with lower levels. Testosterone is a natural hormone produced by the body, so the good news is that there are ways to increase your testosterone production without having to resort to chemicals or artificial hormones.
One of the easiest ways to increase your testosterone level is through exercise.
- Make sure that the bulk of your exercise is resistance training. Resistance training is one of the best ways to stimulate testosterone production in the body. If you’re able to, you’ll want to keep your body fat percentage anywhere between 8% and 14%. Studies have shown that having it within that range drastically increases the rate and amount of testosterone production in men.
- Get as much aerobic exercise as you can. This will help in body fat reduction.
Caring for Your Beard
Once you’ve finally gotten your beard to grow, and it’s grown into your desired shape and length, it’s time to focus on maintenance. Maintaining your beard should be easy as long as you keep the following info in mind:
- Wash your beard hair with the same care and attention that you use when washing the hair on your head. Don’t neglect beard hair; pay attention to the quirks of your beard hair and find products and solutions that can help you keep it looking great.
- Men with dry beard hair should use conditioning shampoo on their beard. This will help keep the hair soft and supple, preventing breakage. Make sure you shampoo your beard at least a few times a week.
- Pay particular attention to the skin underneath your beard. It’s important that it remains healthy and soft so that it can provide the best foundation for beard hair growth. Beard balm and beard oil are must-haves when it comes to maintaining a soft, supple beard. They help condition not only the beard hair but the skin underneath.
- If you don’t trim your beard yourself, find a reputable barber who you trust. The last thing you need is for someone to destroy the beard that you’ve worked so hard to grow and maintain. Trim your beard at least every 2 months. This will help prevent split ends and breakage.
How to Grow a Beard – Conclusion
Learning how to grow a beard is a very personal endeavor. How your beard ends up looking depends on you and your genetics. At the end of the day, no matter how or what kind of beard you end up growing, you can make it look amazing by following and sticking to the above steps and maintenance care routines.
