When people plan what their beard will look like – most people imagine a thick luxurious beard that covers their face evenly from sideburn to chin! But there’s one thing that a lot of men face when they come to grow their beard – thin or patchy areas somewhere on their face. That can be on their cheek or jaw or maybe there are patches all over the place. Here we will go through the options available for a beard not growing on jaw scenario.
Beard is not growing on your jaw you can try boosting your testosterone levels using exercise, diet and medication. However, nothing beats waiting at least 12 weeks to see if the jaw area is able to grow some hair – don’t judge your beard too soon.
Despite what other blogs may tell you there is no magic pill or cure for your hair growth. Some beard growers have had success with using Minoxidil to boost hair growth on their face. You can check out the subreddit r/Minoxbeards for more information if you are interested in medical interventions to beard growth.
I do not, however, think that this is the right course of action for most people. At least not when they are starting their beard growing journey. There are plenty of other options for people who want to look good and can not grow dense hair on their cheeks.
Check out my YouTube video on my channel on this exact question:
Here we need to look at the interventions in order of how serious their side effects could be!
The first is super easy…it just takes a little bit of patience!
Article Contents
Wait for 12 weeks – seriously.
What a lot of people don’t understand is that you inherit a huge portion of your beard growing potential from your parents. Genetics play a huge role in determining if you are able to grow a beard on your cheeks.
You may have inherited sparse or fine beard hair from your ancestors. That makes you unlucky but there’s no reason that you can’t make the most of your situation!
If you can’t grow a beard, check out our blog that goes through your options. Click here!
Everyone who grows a beard has their own personal challenges and yours may be that your hair grows a little slower than the average person. Before you decide that you need an intervention for your beard you need to wait at least 12 weeks.
My beard didn’t start looking good (or at least how I wanted it) for a few months. You have to get through the tough bits! Waiting for your beard to grow can be a huge pain in the arse. Check out the stages of beard growth in my blog post, here. But do not forget that the best things in life you need to wait for!
Everyone’s beard is different and you have to embrace every aspect of your beard. Even the bad bits.
If after 12 weeks you are still not happy with the way that your beard hairs are appearing on your jaws you have a few options. I’ve listed them in the order that you should consider implementing them. Saving the riskiest until last!
Boost your testosterone levels
Next, before going for anything extreme like medication or surgery, you can try to boost the testosterone level in your body naturally!
The more testosterone in your body the more facial hair is stimulated to grow. Check out my blog where this is explained in much more detail – click here.
1. Exercise
There’s a whole heap of research that shows that exercise is one way that you can get your testosterone levels up! Not all exercise is created equally, however. Make sure your exercise contains these activities:
- Sprinting – Studies showed that testosterone levels increased significantly for people who performed a series of very short (but intense) 6-second sprints. The testosterone levels remained high even after the participants recovered from the sprint workout.
- Lift Heavy Stuff – Studies have shown that it takes heavy weights to boost testosterone levels. Focus on full-body exercises like squats, deadlifts, benchpresses and free weights at 85 – 95 % of your one-rep max!
- Use Long Rest Periods – Longer rest periods (more than 120 seconds) between reps are better than shorter rest periods.
- Remember to use your legs – Nothing feels more ‘manly’ than doing upper body exercises, like bicep curls or bench press, but studies have shown that there are significant increases in testosterone when leg and lower body exercises are included in the routine.
Try this as a work out:
- Warm-up
- Four sets of eight reps bench press with the same squats in between the benchpress.
- Four sets of eight reps deadlifts with the same pull-ups in between.
- Five sets of maximum 10-second sprints
- Cool-down
Do this three days per week and you should notice an increase in your overall health and also your testosterone!
The worst-case is that you have now created a healthy habit that will help you stay fit and healthy. If you do this for 100 days you will start to miss the exercise and start to feel antsy.
2. Diet
Combining your exercise with a diet that will promote testosterone production in your body can help grow your beard.
- Ginger – A 2012 study showed that taking a daily ginger supplement for three months increased testosterone levels by 17.7 percent.
- Pomegranates – Another study showed that drinking pomegranate juice for 14 days increased the testosterone found in their saliva by 24 percent.
- Fortified plant milk – Vitamin D found in plant milk such as almonds, soy, hemp, and flax can increase testosterone levels. You can also get a great boost of vitamin D from the sun too! So remember to get yout and about!
- Leafy green vegetables – Leafy greens are full of magnesium – which is an element that has been shown to increase the levels of testosterone in the human body. Eat lots of spinach, kale and swiss chard!
- Tuna – An animal-based study showed that fish oil can increase testosterone levels. Because this has not been done in humans you need to take this with a grain of salt!
Maybe the above options have not worked for you or you are not willing to give it a go! This last options should be used as a last resort:
3. Medication
Check out my full blog on vitamins and supplements for beard growth – click here.
Medication is an option that you should leave for the last resort. There can be a significant expense for the stuff that works and there’s plenty of other options that will not work and stills costs a load of money!
- Boron – There are a couple of studies that show that boron increases the testosterone and DHT levels found in the body. In one study people were asked to take 10 mg of boron every day and after 7 days the results were very encouraging.
- Mucuna Pruriens – There have been two studies that show the testosterone boosting power of this supplement. It has been shown that it increases testosterone levels by about 38 percent.
- Creatine – There are plenty of scientific reports that show how well creatine boosts the levels of testosterone in the human body.
- Ashwagandha aka Ayurveda – There are two studies (here and here) that used human participants with both using 5g per day of ashwagandha root powder for 90 days. Both of the studies found significant increases in testosterone – about 40% and 16% on infertile subjects and about 15% in people with no fertility issues.
4. Minoxidil
The most well-known hair growth treatment is Minoxidil – you can find out more about it in this wiki – click here. It’s found in hair regrowth products such as Rogaine.
The FDA has NOT approved Minoxidil for use on the face and so all of the instructions are for the scalp.
One of my favorite places on the internet, Reddit, has a subreddit where people show their progress pics. check out this from user u/ImBadAtHalo.
You can see that the cheek hairs of his beard are much hairier and denser than when he started.
One of the issues is that once you stop using a Minoxidil containing product the hairs will simply stop growing. So you need to be aware of the potential expense and commitment required before embarking on this usage.
Besides the fact that you need to do this treatment for a long time – up to a year and a half, you may experience some side effects.
Side Effects with Minoxidil
No medication comes without side effects. Here are some of the common side effects that Minoxidil can cause:
Less Common
- Itching or skin rash
Rare
- Acne at the site of application
- burning of scalp
- facial hair growth
- increased hair loss
- inflammation or soreness at the root of the hair
- reddened skin
- swelling of face
Signs and symptoms of too much medicine being absorbed into the body—Rare
- Blurred vision or other changes in vision
- chest pain
- dizziness
- fainting
- fast or irregular heartbeat
- flushing
- headache
- lightheadedness
- numbness or tingling of hands, feet, or face
- swelling of face, hands, feet, or lower legs
- weight gain (rapid)
Should you start to encounter any of these side effects you need to contact your healthcare professional immediately.
Medical intervention is quite a serious step to take if you are finding that your beard is growing longer on one side of your face. While others have found topical treatment to be most beneficial you may want to consider the non-medical interventions before taking that leap.
The final word
If your beard is not growing on your jaw remember that you have plenty of options. Don’t be disheartened if you are one of the people who cannot grow any hair on their cheeks. There are styles that you can adopt that can hide the fact that your growth is weaker.
Please do not jump on the medication bandwagon before you have tried a few less invasive options! There are many other options that you can try! Stay safe out there people!
