If you were a teenager in the nineties, chances are that you either plucked your eyebrows or you wished you did. Plucked eyebrows were simply in fashion back then, and not just among girls and women either – it was fashionable among some men too.
After that fad slowly died down, however, a lot of people were left with the question “Do eyebrows grow back after plucking?”, as well as other equally existential inquiries such as “Do eyebrows grow back after waxing?” and “Do eyebrows grow back after shaving?”
So, do they?
The myth of over-plucked eyebrows not growing back
Yes, like all other types of hair on our bodies, eyebrows will grow back after being shaved, waxed or even plucked. They do grow back slower than other types of hair, however, be it facial hair, head hair or body hair. What’s more, there are certain conditions, various types of diseases and health problems, as well as simple physical traumas that can hinder the growth of eyebrow hair either partially or completely.
It’s such problems and conditions that have caused the eyebrows of many people to never grow back, and this, in turn, has led to the rise of the myth that waxed or over-plucked eyebrows don’t grow back. This is also the reason why when you want your eyebrows plucked, shaved or waxed, it’s best to let a professional do it – an amateurish attempt can easily go wrong in many different ways and lead to a physical trauma that will not only be painful and visible but may also stunt the future growth of your eyebrows quite significantly.
Despite this myth, however, and excluding such incidents, a normal shaving, waxing or plucking of your eyebrows shouldn’t lead to any problems with your eyebrows’ growth, so wax away!
How do eyebrows grow compared to normal hair?
So, we know that eyebrows do, indeed, grow back. How long do eyebrows take to grow back, however?
The fact of the matter is that even when shaven, waxed or plucked properly, eyebrows do take significantly longer to grow back than head or facial hair. The average growth rate of eyebrow hairs is 0.14mm to 0.16mm per day. This is about 3x slower than the 0.42mm per day of our normal hair, as the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) shares.
The normal stages of hair growth for all types of hair typically includes three different phases:
- The anagen phase which is the active growing phase for hair.
- The catagen phase during which the growth slowly stops and the hair follicles shrink.
- The telogen phase which is the resting phase for hair. During this phase, hairs will remain at the same length and older hairs will fall off to make room for new ones.
What makes eyebrow hair grow three times slower than scalp or facial hair is that its anagen phase is much shorter.
So, even under normal circumstances, you can expect your eyebrows to grow quite slowly. And “under normal circumstances” does need to be accented, as there are lots of people that don’t realize they are mismanaging their diet and health in such a way that their eyebrows end up growing even slower than usual.
How does that happen, however?
Why do eyebrows sometimes grow slower than usual?
So, what are the possible reasons why your eyebrows might be growing even slower than what’s expected? The short answer is that, just like normal scalp hair or facial hair, your eyebrows’ hair’s growth is slowed down by the potential lack of certain vitamins and minerals in your diet and in your body. However, just as eyebrows naturally grow slower, they tend to slow down even more if said vitamins and minerals are missing.
In other words, even if your scalp hair or facial hair have been growing slower than usual due to an improper diet, you can expect your eyebrow hair to grow even more than three times slower than that.
Furthermore, there are other reasons why your eyebrow hair might be growing slower or not at all:
- Medical conditions such as alopecia areata (spot baldness) which can similarly occur on the scalp or on the rest of your face.
- Hormonal imbalances of various different types, resulting in a slowed hair growth all throughout your head and body. Health problems such as thyroid disease or conditions such as pregnancy can also have a strong effect on that.
- Nutritional deficiencies of a lot of vitamins and minerals that are necessary for the healthy and fast growth of hair.
- Physical damage, be it from direct hits or from too frequent and/or improperly conducted waxing, shaving or plucking.
- Prolonged periods of heavy stress and anxiety can lead to a slowed eyebrow hair growth just as they do with our scalp or facial hair.
- Heavy makeup applications can harm the skin in many different ways, including by slowing the hair growth of your eyebrows.
- Aging, whether we like it or not, also has its negative effects on the growth rate of our hair, and that includes eyebrow hairs.
- Chemotherapy has a lot of unpleasant side effects, with hair loss being among the milder but also more noticeable ones.
How to regrow eyebrows?
Given the list of problems we’ve compiled above, the answer to how to regrow eyebrows quicker should be rather simple – avoid all the problems we’ve listed above. Well, we’re not telling you to avoid pregnancy (or chemotherapy, if you need it) necessarily, but most of the other factors – most definitely.
So, to regrow your eyebrows as quickly and effortlessly as possible you should make sure you have an excellent diet that includes plenty of vitamins A, B, C and D, an abundance of protein sources (not only meats but those too), iron, biotin, as well as castor oil.
Also, limit your stress and anxiety as much as possible, and make sure to avoid and treat the various medical conditions that might affect your hair growth. Not that you wouldn’t want to treat health problems anyway.
