Growing your beard quickly is something we all strive towards. Sometimes you may think your beard is growing slowly or has stopped growing altogether. However, this is just your bodies way of doing things. Your beard hair goes through 3 stages in it’s life, and understanding each stage will help you keeping your facial hair healthy and growing well!
There are 3 stages of beard growth, named anagen, catagen and telogen. Sounds quite scientific and it really is, these are the official names of where your beard is in its growth.
The time periods these stages take is based on genetics, your body and your grooming routine. A good grooming routine with natural, organic products will speed up these stages a lot, and keep your facial hair healthy. But in general it can be broken down to:
Anagen: 1-6 Years
Catagen: 1-2 Weeks
Telogen: 2-4 Months
Anagen
This is the first growth stage, and it can last between 1 and 6 years. This is the stage of growth where genetics plays the biggest role, so it differs greatly from person to person (5 years difference in some cases!).
This is the same process that stops your head hair growing, but it affects your beard much more quickly, which is why we can’t get a full length beard overnight.
Along with your bodies natural growth, this stage is kept optimum and takes a shorter time if you be patient and perform regular maintenance.
This is part of the beard journey where most people give up. The average growth length is 1cm per month. If you keep up your grooming routine, you can make it grow more than 12cm per year! So slow down, and remember to enjoy the journey!
Catagen
This is the second stage where the hair “stops” growing and while it may be a bit disconcerting when you first notice, this is an essential part of the process. Deep down your body is cutting the blood supply to your facial hair and making brand new hairs every day for about 2 weeks.
Telogen
This is the final stage, where your face produces new hair and cycles right back into the Anagen stage.
All of your hair reaches this stage at different times, this is part of the reason you find random amounts of hair on your desk or in your brush. These are hairs that have grown up, looked glorious then stepped aside for a brand new hair to grow in.
It is normal to be losing between 20 and 100 hairs every day! To minimize this, keep yourself stress free and keep up a grooming routine using natural, organic products.
To sum it all up, a man’s beard can grow as long as 1 cm per month. After its stage of growth, the hair follicles reaches its limit, goes through a resting phase and falls out to give way for new hair follicles to grow. Hence, with proper care, a beard can look healthy and full in just a couple of months.
You may be a bit crestfallen when seeing how long it takes, but after reading you will understand how your beard is growing. As always, you should remember to look after your beard with a grooming routine and all-natural beard oils and balms.
- If you want to give your beard the same quality of nutrition you give your body, check out JC Grooming’s line of beard products!
- If you want a more guided look on exactly what to eat to ramp up your beard growth, we wrote a guide on it here.
- To see an example of the beard grooming routine we use at JC Grooming, check our video on YouTube here.
