You’ve probably grown a beard at last but don’t seem satisfied and settled yet, and your woes staring at the mirror every morning seem to escalate. You even compare yourself to other lucky chaps who are blessed with chins full of fuzz.
It’s like your beards hit puberty then stopped. You think hard every time, and ask yourself these common questions over and over again- How long does it take for a beard to fill in or will my beard ever fill out? To be honest, your beards haven’t stopped growing.
Some men’s beards fill in at 20, and others at 30 or even longer. A patchy beard is everyman’s fly in the ointment, but one thing that comes out is patience. The key to beating your patchy beards requires patience, dedication to grooming, a healthy lifestyle, and good genes.
So before begrudging Tom’s Viking fuzz, let’s dive in and understand how the beard growth cycle works, answer some of the most asked questions and give some possible remedies to your issues.
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What’s the Beard Growth Cycle & How Does It Progress?
Anything, if not everything, grows in phases, and so is facial hair. Grasping this is the key to realizing your beard-growth capability and reaping the maximum of it.
They say a full beard takes a maximum of 4 months, and that’s nature! But how is it that you are still entangled with a pile of patchy beards for more than four months now?
The truth is that several factors come to play during your facial hair development stages. Factors such as age, ethnicity, hormones, medical condition, and genetics greatly influence your facial hair growth rate. Let’s cut the chase again and understand the stages of beard growth.
The Anagen Phase
The anagen phase is the period during which your beard’s root cells divide, actively producing hair strands. This period lasts between two to seven years for different people.
This stage determines how long your beards can grow as the hair strands grow at a rate of 1cm every 28 days.
It, therefore, means that this is the stage to feed your beards. How? You may ask.
Having enough sleep, eating a balanced diet, hitting the gym, and performing a proper grooming routine is all you need at this stage.
The Catagen Phase
There is less to say here because this is the shortest stage. Usually taking between ten to three weeks, the catagen stage is where your beards now stop growing.
This is the stage where your hair follicle shrinks, and your beards detach from the base of the follicles to usher in the next phase.
The Telogen Phase
This is the last stage in your facial hair development stages. It is at this point that you realize falling hair strands during your grooming routine.
It usually takes up to four months as the already grown hair awaits being replaced by a new hair from the anagen phase.
The telogen phase can also be induced by depression. You see, when you are subjected to intense stress, your beards can prematurely enter this stage.
It, therefore, means that keeping your stress level down is also good for your beards as it provides a suitable environment for growth.
By now, you have noticed that the anagen phase is the most critical phase of the three. At this phase, your beard itches are patchy and doubtlessly where you can tweak things around.
Do you want that thick beard? And stop asking the ‘Will my beard ever fill in’ question; this is the stage to take charge.
Congratulations, now you not only know the food for your beards, but you also know when and at what stage you could take the driver’s seat and steer your beards in the direction you want.
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At What Age Does Beard Fully Grow?
Well, to answer this question, we first need to understand the basis of beard growth. You see, the hormone testosterone influences your beard’s growth significantly, but the beards are fibrous structural proteins known as keratins.
So then, can we suggest that the accumulation of large loads of proteins over time will yield full beard growth? Not at all.
You see, the accumulation of the protein keratin is also affected by genetics, sleep, diet, and the environment.
It even becomes interesting why some people stop growing beards at 20 while others at 40. The keratins are fibrous proteins, and why is it that the beards may stop growing at an earlier age, even with enough proteins in the body?
As research puts it, some families may have adopted some genetic codes from their forefathers that impede the growth of beards to a certain age.
The forefathers might have faced some protein deficiencies prompting the body to use the little protein on more essential functions than forming the quintessentially aesthetic beards.
The body being a sensible system treats the beards as vestigial parts and will overlook them at the expense of other most crucial body parts that require proteins when facing any nutrient scarcity.
So this helps explain why there is no standard age for one to fully grow beards when we incorporate other factors.
Regardless of this eye-opener, most researches suggest that most men grow full beards between 25 to 35 years.
This is because testosterone is averagely at proper amounts at these ages and that the beards can reach their full potential in these ages.
This may, however, vary between most men, but everything has got its exceptions, right?
Read Also- How Long Does It Take for Hair to Grow Back After Shaving Face?
Does the Beard Growth Progress with Age?
You have just read that beards may stop growing at 25, and you are 26 with a patchy beard. You are probably thinking of shaving it off or maybe trimming off the patches. Don’t!
There is good news that as you age, your beards thicken, and the patches fill in. So if you are below 30 and you can’t bear the mental agony of patchy beards, hold the lines, soldier, as the victory is near.
Your beards will thicken as you age, and the opinion that beard growth stops at 20 is just an opinion. So at what age does your beard stop filling in? The answer is- it depends.
Additionally, your beards also grow slower as you age. As you age, your hormones become less active, and your testosterone also decreases.
Other factors like ethnicity, diet, and sleep also aid in slowing down your beard growth and the painful answer to your horror question, ‘Does my beard growth rate decrease with age?’ Is the positive yes.
Conclusion
Regardless of your current situation, you should remember that the key to growing full and thick beards is patience.
With the knowledge you have now gained, you should know that your beard development journey may differ from other men, and with the valleys and peaks comes good times ahead.
One thing that remains certain is that you are still a man, even with a patchy chin. It’s only a matter of time; then you’ll stop asking the ‘when will my beards fill in’ question.
The journey to growing fuller and thicker beards is always stained with itchiness, patchy beards, and sometimes emotional disorientation.
You will know that you are almost hitting gold when you face some of these ordeals but no matter how itchy the beards become, remember to keep going because you promised yourself just that.
Put your blades down and only raise one when trimming, but not shaving off entirely because that’s our journey, and we are elegant men!
You can read more about beard growth science from here, also don’t forget to leave a comment below, if you have any questions or suggestions.