Growing a beard is a process that will test your patience, especially if this is you’re growing a beard for the first time. Even if that isn’t the case, you’ll find that you may want to learn some of the best ways to stimulate beard growth to help close up any patchy spots or to increase facial hair thickness.
We’ve compiled 5 of the Best Ways to Stimulate Beard Growth below! Before you dive into these ways to stimulate facial hair growth, we suggest you check out The Beard Playbook. The Beard Playbook is The Gentleman’s Playbook one-stop for all of your beard questions and needs! It’s the most comprehensive beard care and beard growth guide on the internet – we recommend reading through its contents first to diagnose issues such as slow beard growth, patchy facial hair, dry beard, sores under your beard, and more.
It’s the foundation you need to have when growing your beard – once you do that, proceed below with these 5 best ways to stimulate facial hair growth:
A Killer Beard Hygiene Routine
Before you get into any other ways to stimulate beard growth, you want to have a solid beard care foundation. This will rule out any issues that are a result of general beard neglect or lack of beard care knowledge.
Start off with establishing a killer beard hygiene routine for at least 90 days. This will give you time to see if maybe just getting your beard’s hygiene up to snuff will resolve any beard growth issues you may be having.
The foundation of any great beard hygiene routine is:
- Wash/Condition in Shower with Beard-Friendly Products 2-3x per week, maximum
- Use beard oil daily
- Apply beard balm
- Exfoliate beard once every few weeks, maximum, to fight off dead skin cells and stimulate follicles
Even if you think it doesn’t matter, a great beard care routine will make sure your beard has a healthy foundation to grow on. If you don’t have a great beard care regimen in place, you’ll end up stifling any beard growth stimulant you use. Many beard growth bottlenecks start with basic hygiene.
For a full guide on beard hygiene, check out our piece from The Beard Playbook: Effective Beard Hygiene for Beginners.
Caffeine
It’s been shown that caffeine, especially when delivered via coffee, can help boost or improve hair growth. This means that it can also be effective in stimulating beard growth when consumed!
Studies suggest that caffeine can boost testosterone levels – increased testosterone can mean increased beard growth. Other studies suggest that coffee/caffeine can boost DHT production, which in turn promotes more hair growth (that includes your face)!
There are also numerous beard oils that are made with caffeine in them, which helps stimulate blood flow on the skin and as a result, it stimulates facial hair growth!
So, keep drinking your morning coffee (with minimal cream and sugar, for health reasons) and get a beard oil with caffeine! If you’re not a fan of coffee, but want the benefits of caffeine, you can also check out a caffeine supplement, such as Jet-Alert (we’ve used this as a coffee replacement with great results on focus, energy, and beard growth).
Beard Oil with the Right Essential Oils
Beard oil is the de facto go-to solution for almost any and all beard troubles or needs. At its base level, beard oil consists of moisturizing carrier oils such as castor, avocado, almond, jojoba, or grapeseed oil. It’s then further enhanced with essential oils, which is where the magic begins.
Essential oils are great not just for fragrancing, but for utility as well! For example, essential oils such as peppermint are a great beard growth stimulant, as it promotes blood flow in the area it’s applied, which can help boost beard growth.
Other common essential oils such as tea tree oil help fight beard acne or sores under the beard. Then you have lemon and lime essential oils, which help with fighting against beard bacteria! It’s quite incredible.
The following essential oils are fantastic for anybody who’s looking for the best ways to stimulate beard growth with oil:
- Peppermint Essential Oil
- Tea Tree Essential Oil
- Cedarwood Essential Oil
- Clove Essential Oil
- Lavender Essential Oil
- Rosemary Essential Oil
You can also find beard oils that are infused with caffeine, which as we discussed can help stimulate facial hair growth!
Micro-Needling with a Derma Roller
The Gentleman’s Playbook hasn’t tested this internally yet, but there is some research out to back this – it’s possible to use a derma roller to stimulate beard growth.
A derma roller is a device used to perform micro-needling. Micro-needling has been used primarily in the skincare industry to help reduce wrinkles, combat acne scarring, and tighten skin.
Derma rollers have tiny needles on them that lightly pierce your skin, tricking your body into increasing collagen production in the “damaged” areas you’ve used the derma roller on.
When collagen production is increased, blood flow to the damaged skin is also increased in an attempt to “heal the damage.” Blood flow stimulates hair growth, and in turn, micro-needling your beard can theoretically increase and stimulate facial hair growth in the area.
We recommend consulting with your dermatologist before performing this practice, to make sure it’s right for you. The Gentleman’s Playbook currently views derma rollers and micro-needling as an absolute last resort as a beard growth stimulant. Try to follow our other tips as outlined in The Beard Playbook, get on a good beard hygiene routine, and get your health in line first. If that fails, derma rollers may be the next step for you.
Exercise & Diet
We talk about the importance of exercise and diet in our extensive guide, How to Grow a Beard. You can read that article for more in-depth breakdowns of the different nutrients you need to enhance beard growth.
In general, though, making sure you exercise routinely helps boost testosterone levels, which in turn will help improve and stimulate beard growth. Not only will your body begin to look and feel better by getting on a great lifting routine, but you’ll start to see improvements in your beard’s growth rate, thickness, and reductions in patchiness.
Outside of exercise, making sure you have a well-balanced diet is essential. You can work out all you want, but if your diet is sub-par, so will your fitness progress and beard growth.
Eat a healthy amount of fruits and vegetables, eat plenty of clean carbohydrates and protein, and make sure the fats you consume are healthy fats (think avocados, nuts, and fish) and not unhealthy fats (ice cream, butter, etc.).
For more information on health and diet’s impact on beard growth, check out Section 1 of The Beard Playbook.
Conclusion
Now you know 5 of the Best Ways to Stimulate Beard Growth! These methods have all been tried and true not just by men all over the world, but by the men behind The Gentleman’s Playbook.
In short, the best ways to stimulate beard growth are to:
- Maintain a great beard hygiene routine
- Use caffeine either by drinking it via coffee or topically as part of a beard oil formula
- Use beard oil with growth-stimulating essential oils, daily
- Micro-needling with a beard derma roller could stimulate facial hair growth
- Commit to a balanced and healthy meal plan and exercise regimen
If you want more incredible advice on beard growth and care, check out The Beard Playbook. The Beard Playbook is the definitive beard manual – it’s chock loaded with information on how to grow, maintain, and enhance your beard.