There are many questions and misconceptions regarding beard growth. Some of them are harmful while others could benefit your beard when applied correctly.
Pulling your hair follicles out of their place in a process known as beard plucking is one of those misconceptions.
To jump straight to the point; does bear plucking promote its growth?
Beard plucking won’t help your beard grow faster, especially if it’s done in large patches. On the contrary, the more you pluck, the more you risk having other problems that never existed, including bleeding, irritation, inflammation, infection, and even permanent hair loss.
Plucking could be done either for singularly isolated hairs or large patches. The reaction of your body will differ in both scenarios.
For more in-depth information, read on.
Plucking: Good or Bad?
Plucking hairs has its pros and cons, and it largely depends on the reason for plucking.
It’s a standard practice to pluck individual loose, long, gray, or fuzzy hairs to keep the hair even and good-looking.
However, plucking patches of hair in hopes of growing it faster isn’t a good idea. If anything, it might do more harm than good.
So far we’ve talked about plucking hair but we weren’t specific whether it’s scalp or beard hair. This is when things get mixed up.
Some people say that plucking your scalp hair can induce an inflammatory reaction in the scalp that induces more hair growth.
A study at the University of Southern California concluded that plucking hair with certain criteria can cause more hair to grow back in place.
However, this study wasn’t performed on humans, but mice. And assuming that it’s done in humans, the scalp hair has a different reaction to plucking than beard hair.
Depending on how you pluck your beard, how much hair you pluck, and how often you do it; you could have some benefits or harmful effects.
But none of these benefits will help your beard grow faster. Read on for more clarification.
Good Beard Plucking
That’s right! Plucking specific hairs in your beard while following some guidelines will help your beard look better. However, it won’t make it grow faster.
There are occasions where oddly long or fuzzy hairs can show up on your beard. Normally that’s not a concern but their abundance could mess up the shape of your beard.
This is when you may consider plucking them out. We’ll discuss some guidelines for that but they don’t replace consulting a dermatologist.
Don’t Use Your Hands
We use our hands to do everything in our lives and they most likely contain a lot of bacteria. Constantly using your hand to pluck or scratch your beard can cause irritation and inflammation caused by bacteria.
Plucking hairs is done by holders or tweezers.
Sterilize Your Equipment
If your instruments are dirty, you risk diseases and inflammation. Always make sure that your instruments are sterilized with alcohol after every time you use them.
Only Pluck Individual Hairs
Your plucking should be restricted to individual odd hairs and for the sole purpose of trimming your beard.
Beard plucking in hopes of increasing the growth will make you pluck healthy hairs. This could permanently damage the follicles and they may never grow back again.
Bad Beard Plucking
Constantly plucking hair follicles is bad for your skin’s health. It’s even worse if you keep plucking the same area again.
Here’s what could happen with bad beard plucking:
Hair Loss
If you keep plucking the same hair follicle over and over, you increase the risk of permanently losing that hair strand.
The common mistake is plucking the area in the beard which has less hair. Constantly plucking that area will make the bald patch even balder.
Inflammation and Irritation
When a hair follicle is plucked, some inflammation happens in its place. Repeating this process can cause permanent skin damage and irritation.
The beard will feel itchy, which will lead you to scratch it and the bacteria on your hands will worsen the case even more.
Bleeding and Infection
Whenever a hair is pulled out, minor bleeding happens and the pore remains open for some time. This is a good pathway for bacteria that are already on your skin to go inside.
The more pores, the more pathways for bacteria, and the bigger risk you get of infection.
Other Ways to Promote Beard Growth
If you were plucking your beard because you thought it might help it grow faster, we now know that this isn’t a good idea. Read on for some other suggestions for faster beard growth.
Use Beard Butter
Beard butter combines the benefits you can get from both beard oils and creams.
Not only does beard butter allow your beard to grow healthier, but it also gives your beard a soft, shiny appearance.
It’s not difficult to get your hands on beard butter, and the list of benefits goes on and on.
Reduce Stress
Stress is a contributing factor to most issues with the human body. There’s a direct correlation between mental and physical health.
Reducing stress is always going to be helpful to your body in general. It might help toward getting a fuller beard as well.
Micro-Needling
Micro-needling is an intervention done by a dermatologist to promote hair growth. What they do is use small sterilized needles to prick the skin in the beard area to induce minor bleeding. This bleeding increases the blood supply in the treated area and may help in hair growth.
A study in 2013 concluded that combining micro-needling with rogaine (Minoxidil) reduced the hairless patches caused by Androgenetic areata. Many people have concerns about Minoxidil, but it’s very safe to use.
Try Baby Oil
Baby oil does a good job of repairing damaged beard hair as well as moisturizing the skin.
If there was an irritation problem that’s slowing down your beard growth, baby oil has a high chance of getting rid of that problem.
Once the problem is gone, the beard will seem to grow faster. However, this is mostly an illusion because you took action against an existing problem.
For a healthy beard, baby oil will only act as a lubricant and a moisturizer. It’s not scientifically proven that baby oil will aid in the hair growth of a healthy beard.
Keep in mind that there’s no magic pill you could take to increase the number of hairs you grow. Most methods focus on eliminating the obstacles that lie ahead of your beard growth.
It’s important to set the expectations correctly.
Try Not to Pluck at All
We mentioned that, in some cases, it’s acceptable to pluck your beard. However, it’s always best that you don’t pluck at all.
Gray hairs, fuzzy hairs, and long hairs could be dealt with using other approaches like shaving and color dying.
On the other hand, plucking large areas of your beard in hopes of promoting faster growth will move you in the opposite direction plus some more.
You’ll risk irritating your skin, causing inflammation, and losing the hair permanently.
For more information on beard growth, check out this article.