Growing a beard seems easy enough. Just avoid shaving in general. Nevertheless, a lot of us have a patchy beard, there are sections that have fewer whiskers than other sections that make the overall look of the beard, less than perfect. I will highlight 13 tips to reduce the patchiness that you might be dealing with presently.
Some of these solutions may not work for you, or perhaps you will need to combine of few of them to see positive results. Nevertheless, having some patient will do wonders for your beard.
I promise that I will not suggest a tactic that is way out there in left field such as having enzyme injections into your face. I am not an expert in this field since I do not have any medical training, but I have completed lots of research for you as a male grooming enthusiast.
1. Stop Smoking To Improve Your Follicles
Do not worry, I am not going to lecture on the dangers of cigarette, cigar smoking. If you are reading this article, you are probably well aware that you need to stop smoking anyhow. Nevertheless, did you know that smoking can be contributing to your beard patchiness? I recommend a twin pack of Nicotine Patches (link to Amazon).
Cigarette smoke contains over 4000 strange chemicals. It is almost impossible to decipher the overall effect that that deadly smoke is having on your skin. Just thinking about what else could be happening internally is very scary.
I have read that smoking can cause circulation problems. If you have poor circulation, the nutrients that your beard follicles are striving to acquire may be less available. Without the correct ratio of nutrients, your follicles may product malformed whiskers or perhaps they will not even be able to push a whisker out to the surface of your facial skin.
Also, smoke that is being blown around your face is rolling over your facial skin. The smoke and the nicotine can clog up your pores and enter into your follicles. A clogged up follicle is going to have trouble producing a long and strong whisker that will add value to your beard.
Not only can smoking cause directly or indirectly beard patches, but smoke can discolor your beard and your mustache.
I have a friend that has a gray beard and mustache that looks quite stunning. Nevertheless, there a yellowish tinge in his mustache that matches where he releases smoke from his mouth. From the side, everything looks perfect until he faces you head-on. There is a product on Amazon called Just for Men that will reduce the gray in your beard if you wish to do so, click here for current pricing.
He has told me that he thinks that it has something to do with coffee drinking, but coffee is not like a milkshake, it usually does not foam up and stick to your mustache whiskers.
So, please consider ceasing to smoke. Your body will love you for it and your beard will rejoice. Furthermore, your beard and mustache will no longer smell like an ashtray.
2. Eat Correctly to Rid Yourself of Beard Patches
Just by eating better, you can improve the quality of your beard. If you have a poor diet, the health of your follicles will be compromised and degraded.
Before I had completed the research for this tactic, I thought to myself that what you eat can affect your overall health, but affecting the patchiness of beard was tough for me to believe. Nevertheless, it is true.
If you are not eating correctly, you will have a low production of DHT which is instrumental in whisker growth. DHT is a by-product of testosterone and it is responsible for beard whisker growth. Also, a poor diet can reduce your testosterone level, and testosterone keeps the beard follicles primed.
What exactly constitutes a good diet for follicle health, whisker strength, and DHT production? It is quite simple actually. You need to drink a lot of liquids and consume a good amount of proteins daily. I recommend the multi-vitamin for men by New Chapter (link to Amazon).
Your body needs to be well hydrated to flush out toxins and to maintain its circulation. If you have poor circulation, you are not going to be able to distribute the nutrients that you are consuming to your beard follicles, and patches may occur.
I personally drink one liter of water as soon as I get up. I feel refreshed and fully awake right away and ready to tackle any obstacles that we all encounter daily.
Also, you need to consume some animal fats daily. Animal fats help your testosterone to produce DHT. Plus, fats from animals will increase your testosterone levels in a natural way.
Can you consume a ton of vegetables daily for testosterone increases? Someone that is vegan may have levels of testosterone that are higher than meat-eaters, but they tend to have bound testosterone that makes it almost useless in the body. You need more of the testosterone hormone that is free flowing so that your body and your follicles can benefit.
Nevertheless, if you are eating well and training at your local gym, you need to consume carbohydrates so that you will have the right type of fuel to synthesize the protein that you are consuming.
Besides eating properly, you need to be patient with your progress for eliminating your beard patches. Some of the patches may be there simply due to our age.
3. Just Wait it Out – Aging May Eliminate Your Patchiness
I know that you are tired of people telling you to wait a few more years so that your beard follicle will create a thick beard on your face. I used to feel frustrated as a teenager because I seemed to be cursed with peach fuzz instead of having even tiny whisker sprouting from my face.
Some of my friends had tiny mustaches and goatees and that made them look 2-3 years older than the other teenagers. They were proud of their newfound manliness and the peach fuzz boys (myself included) were instantly downgraded.
I can remember asking my dad how old he was when he was able to grow a full beard that was patchless. He told me that he was around 30 years old.
Also, he said that when he had first joined the armed forces that he had to pretend that he was shaving. He was only 18 years old and he had not started shaving yet. Nevertheless, each private had to shave with the others. He simply using a razor that did not have a blade so that he could make the others believe that he was actually shaving.
So, in other words, you need to think about your genetics to determine why you may be dealing with a patchy beard. It could be that you need to wait a few more years before your beard will fill in.
I noticed online that many young men attempt to speed up the process by adding beard oils that claim to be able to fill in patchy beards. Personally, I would not waste my money on a miracle grow oil. You just need to be patient in some cases.
Also, when you are younger, you may be dealing with acne that could be irritating your beard follicles. After your period of acne has passed, your patches may disappear.
4. Creative Shaving Tactic to Make a Bald Spot in Your Beard Less Apparent
If you have a bald spot in your beard that on one side your face, there is a way to make it stand out less. Having a patch in your beard that is whiskerless causes the symmetry in your beard to be off. What you need to do is to shave further into the top portion of your beard line on the side that has the patch.
The next step is to shave the other side of your beard to match both sides. Of course, this tactic works best when the patch is small, but I have noticed that a lot of men have a patchy section that is contained close to the top of the beard line.
People will automatically assume that you had styled your beard in a different and they will not realize that you had cut further down in your whisker line to hide your patchy section.
Others may just assume that that is your true beard line based on your genetics. Nevertheless, no one will question you to find out if you are hiding a bald spot in your beard.
I do not have a spot in my beard that is void of whiskers. However, my beard line is jagged at the top. It is as if my beard line is following the contour of my cheekbones.
I noticed that my grandfather had to shave almost up to his eyes. I used to ask him if he was a werewolf. He told me that he was but that it was our secret.
Since my beard line is smooth, I simply shave it to make it look like I have a perfectly formed beard line. No one has ever pointed out to me that my beard covers more of my face than normal.
If one of the above tactics still has not solved your problem, the next tactic is an option for you that is more radical.
5. Beard Transplant to Fill in Sections of your Beard that are Void of Whiskers
When I had first read an article on this technique, I thought that it was a joke. Nevertheless, thousands of men have had this procedure performed on their beards.
I did some research on the average cost of this procedure. It costs around $7000 US. It depends on the extent of the transplant of course. If you do not have a beard at all, it will cost you a lot more to have a complete transplant.
What is involved with the procedure?
The beard transplant procedure is very similar to the method of hair transplanting into the scalp. Hair follicles are removed from the back of your head and they are planted into your facial skin in the area where you wish to have your beard.
It does sound like a long process, but apparently, it can be done in 2-5 hours for a smaller section of a beard that is patchy and the recovery time is ok. In the past, it did take a long time to recover after the transplants were completed. Nowadays, men are shocked at how quickly that they are able to recover and begin to groom their beards.
You can even have follicles implanted into the sides of your face if you have sparse or patchy sideburns. Besides just in the beard area, I have heard of men having hair follicles placed in areas of their eyebrows that are lacking hair-producing follicles.
The number of grafts required will, of course, vary from case to case. On average, 2300 grafts are needed. Ouch, that sounds painful, but if you really wish to use a proven method that has satisfied other men, this tactic may be great for you.
6. Spreading Around the Whiskers you have to Fill in the Gaps
If you seem to have no problem at all growing your whiskers to a good length, you could use some creative whisker training to guide them to spread over your patches.
This method is definitely better for someone that has a long beard. It cannot be accomplished with a short beard style like a stubble beard.
If your beard presently is short, allow it to grow over the next few months. You need to have around an inch in length so that you can begin to curve your whiskers into the area that does not contain whiskers.
I know that you are probably thinking that this is going to end up looking like a hideous beard comb-on, but not if you do it correctly. Just having longer whiskers on your face, your patches will seem less apparent.
A good tip to add in beard wax so that you can force the whiskers to stay in place while you are growing out your beard. After a few months, your whiskers will easily cover the deserted beard spots.
I had actually seen a video online showing a guy that has a patchy beard using this method. After some creative combing, you could barely tell that he had a problem at all with patchiness.
7. How does Resistance Muscle Training Help to Eliminate Patchy Spots?
Resistance training is muscle training that done with free weights, not the type of training where you are using cables and machines. This type of training is beneficial because it uses more muscle motor units along with the focus muscle.
I researched to find out how muscle training that was based on resistance could be helpful to beard growth. Beard growth is improved when the androgen levels are elevated. The trick is to set-up a training regiment for yourself that will something that you will also stick to.
If you just do some dumbbell curls once a week thinking that you will get rid of the patches in your beard, you are sadly mistaken. Go as often as you can, perhaps 4-5 per week and perform multiple exercises that work out the major muscle groups.
I read a study that concluded that you can affect androgen quickly with intense workouts, but that the benefit is short lived. For instance, during a football game, some players were monitored to see if their androstenedione levels (which affects beard growth) increased and they did. However, 90 minutes afterward, the gains in this hormone greatly decreased.
The study states that you needed long-term training to affect your androgen levels farther into the future.
If you wondering which type of exercises are powerful for resistance training, here are few examples:
- dumbbell presses on a bench
- squats for your quads
- barbell curls for the biceps and forearms
- dumbbell curls for the biceps
8. Dyeing Your Beard Could Cause Beard Patches
My beard is patching with respect to its coloring. I have a salt and pepper goatee. My mustache seems to be darker which is quite normal. It is possible that the salt and pepper will remain as I get older. I am perfectly ok with having a full beard that has patches of white in it once I grow it out.
Some of us feel that we need to have a beard that is void of gray and we have decided to dye out the whiteness. There are many products online that can work doing so, such as Just For Men. This tactic could make you look a lot younger. Nevertheless, you need to aware that you should be testing it beforehand to ensure that you are not allergic to beard dye.
I read the instructions for Just for Men, and they state that should wash a small area on the inside bend of your elbow and then add some of their dye to this skin for testing. Then you need to wait 48 hours to see if you have an allergic reaction to it. They also state that you need to perform this skin test “before each use“.
I feel that you definitely should do the test. I saw a photo of a man online that had a reaction to Just for Men. His face was swollen and it had the color of raw hamburger.
Something else that I need to mention is that multiple dyeing sessions of your beard should be avoided. You could be stripping the natural oils from your whisker and you also could be drying out the skin. This damage could possibly cause beard patches.
If you feel that you need to dye your beard to look younger, follow correctly the dye product instructions, especially when they mention anything about how often you can safely dye your beard.
9. Lack of Sleep Can Affect The Level of Patchiness in Your Beard
We all have heard how not getting enough sleep can affect our immune system. Personally, I need around 9 hours of sleep per night. If I have less than 8 hours of sleep, I usually have to deal with brain fogginess and I tend to catch colds left and right.
When you get an adequate amount of sleep, you are better able to deal with viruses and also inflammation. If your beard follicles are inflamed for any reason, and you are sleep-deprived, a whiskerless patch may start to develop within your beard.
Due to my research on the bacterial content of gym equipment, I now know that I am exposing my hands to a lot of germs. Once my hands are exposed to bacteria, just by touching my head, I could be transferring the bacteria to my head. Since I have a bald head and I sweat a lot while working out, any sweat that trails down my face will certainly enter into my beard line.
Sometimes, if I had not slept well for a few nights, my beard is extra red after shaving. I am lucky that I do not have more of a problem with beard patches. So, ensure that you get 7-8 hours of sleep per night.
10. Exfoliating Can Help to Improve the Thickest of Your Beard and its Coverage
I did some research on why skin can be so flaky. I found out that has to do with dryness and also the fact that the outer layer of skin, the epidermis is actually made up of skin cells that are dead. Your body sheds them constantly.
If your pores are constantly clogged up and the surface of your skin is not super clean, the shredding of the dead cells will be hindered. There will be a bottleneck of layers of dead cells that the epidermis is trying push to the surface. This blockage I feel could inflame your follicles within your beard which will hinder beard growth.
I used to think that exfoliating was something that only women needed to do because of the having possibly more sensitive skin because a lot of women apply makeup. I was totally wrong, men should be exfoliating their facial skin also. I recommend the exfoliating product for men by Bickwell (link to Amazon).
Exfoliating helps to remove the dead skin cells so that your skin can become smoother and healthier. Also, the pores that may have clogged will no longer be clogged up.
I suggest you exfoliate your beard skin at least 2-3 times a week, especially concentrate on your patchy areas. The procedure is a simple one.
I thought before doing some research that exfoliating was the creation of some sort of mask on the face that would be yanked off like a superhero villain exposing his true face.
Actually, you simply wash your facial skin, even the portion that covers your beard area, and then apply a quarter size portion of exfoliating cream to each side of your face. Rub gently the cream onto your face. Wait a few minutes and then rinse your face with cool water to remove the cream. Then you just have to pad your face dry. Done!
11. Protect Your Beard From the Harmful UV Rays
Many men do not use sunscreen. I guess that we feel that using it is not necessary. Personally, I believed that after being exposed a few days during the early part of the summer, that my skin would be able to protect itself. That is how a felt a few years ago. Now I use sunscreen on my face during all four seasons.
During my research on the effect that UV rays can have on a beard, I quickly realized that UVB rays can alter the way that follicles in the beard work. When your skin is sunburned (even a minor burn that is hard to notice with the naked eye), your follicles can become inflamed which reduces the ability of a beard follicle to produce a strong whisker.
Another type of UV is that dangerous to the skin are UVA rays. They are present year-round and during any type of weather situation. For instance. these rays will penetrate a heavy covering of clouds on the coldest day of a Canadian winter.
If there is a group of follicles in your beard that are malfunctioning because of exposure to UVB and UVA rays, it is possible that a bald patch in your beard will develop.
I am not saying that you have to blaster your face with sunscreen every day. Add just enough so that you have covered completely your exposed facial skin, including the skin underneath your beard. Most times, I just add a quarter-sized amount of sunscreen into my hands and rub it onto my face.
I find that adding a sunscreen with an SPF 15 is adequate for my face. Nevertheless, for my nose, I add a sunscreen with an SPF rating of 40 since the skin on my nose is more sensitive to the sun.
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