Beauty Sleuth #7: What the Pluck?

If you pluck your brows … do the brow hairs grow back? A common question because sometimes we go a little overboard when we are trying to clean up those strays!

First let’s get on the same page. I think a lot of people picture plucking or tweezing or threading for example, as if you were ripping a vegetable out of the ground and bringing the roots with it, and therefore, eliminating any hope of regrowth. It doesn’t work that way. A little bit about hair structure: simplified, the hair has three parts - (1) the shaft above the skin, (2) the root underneath the skin that is within the hair follicle, and (3) the bulb, from which the hair grows. The bulb usually remains intact, or will heal, when you pull out the hair, i.e. pulling the root out of the follicle. So you continue generating hair as normal, it just takes extra time for the new shaft to get long enough to reach the surface of the skin.  For example, brow hair can take four to 13 weeks to grow, depending on your metabolism and age, so patience is key. On top of that, at any given time, most of your eyebrow hairs are in what is called the resting (telogen) phase of their growth cycle. They spend about three times longer in this phase than the hair on your head does. ARGH! 

That being said, any form of ‘root’ depilation, such as plucking or threading, can disrupt the natural hair growth cycle. Hair plucking is typically performed with a pair of tweezers, and the hair is pulled out of the follicle at the hair root. But your eyebrow could react to the plucking as trauma. Trauma to the follicle will mean your eyebrows won’t grow back–at least not for now, because they’re resting.

But note, repeatedly ripping out hairs in any small area can stunt or completely destroy growth. And/or if you actually do remove the follicle (difficult to do), or if permanent damage has been done to the bulb, the hair will not grow back.

Ok, so what can be done to get those hairs to grow? Growth serums are big business now in the beauty industry. Why? Because they really can work. Most contain a cocktail of ingredients to stimulate the hair follicle to move out of its resting phase and into a growth phase. Typically, I have found that the ingredients for both lash growth serums and brow growth serums are very similar with the brow growth products being slightly thicker in feel so that they don’t “drip” when applied. Many products on the market are approved for use with both lashes and brows. The one I really like, of course, is the one that I offer in my business, and it is approved for both lashes and brows. I have tried several and this is the one that works for me. It’s also been independently clinically tested and the company publishes “Before and After” images from control groups to show efficacy. You can check it out here.