Have you ever heard the phrase, “Beards get better with age”? Well, let’s dive into it and explain why it may not be as simple as it sounds.
An important factor in growing facial hair is Testosterone specifically Dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Growing a beard mainly depends on how much DHT is in your system and also how your body responds to it. If we’re to believe the phrase, “Beards get better with age” and we know that DHT is very important to beards, we can assume that DHT increases with age, right? Unfortunately, not quite right. DHT starts about puberty and peaks at late twenties. Most men once they hit their thirties, every year DHT goes down a little.
How comes though that a lot of people swear that their beards get better in their late stages of life even though DHT production is declining? Well, it could be because of other factors and let’s take a look at some of those.
Health
As you get older, you become more aware of your health. You visit the doctor more regularly, eat less junk food, less partying. You become more keen on your diet and consume healthier foods. Good health attribute to a better beard.
Stress
Stress is terrible for the beard. It speeds up the shedding cycle. Once you retire from working, stress levels drop. You’re not worried about work, the hustle and bustle of the daily grind. Also as you grow older, so do your kids. Once they get married and leave the house to start their own life, you get less stressed.
Knowledge
As you grow older, you acquire more knowledge about grooming and taking care of your beard. You learn more about the proper products to use for your beard, all the necessary vitamins that are required for a healthy beard. It could mean that when you were younger you didn’t know or care about all this but the knowledge you acquire can make a whole lot of difference.
Patience
Maybe for the first time in your life, you decide to give your beard a chance to grow. When you were younger, you had the urge to trim your beard whenever you see a patch that looks horrible. As you grow older, however, you give it a shot and that patch gets covered by another layer of hairs and it turns out to be awesome. Sometimes you don’t really know what you have until you give it a full attempt. It could be that you need around 6 months to fully decide whether or not to grow a beard. Or maybe a year. It could be that during your life that wasn’t possible until you’re old. Something to think about there were some different options that could contribute to having the best beard of your life even when the genetics of your body is saying otherwise.
To summarize, generally DHT does not get better with age but often times beards do for very different reasons. Let us know what you think. Get involved in the comments below. Kindly share your experience with us. We would love to hear from you.