why do I not believe you guys when im told on here that when you shave it dosent grow back fuller, longer and darker. I need to see some concrete evidence before I believe that, which I havent.
So on what are you basing this belief? Have you ever seen any concrete evidence that shaving does actually make the hair âfuller, longer and darkerâ?
Sure, my leg hair is a bit thicker than before Iâd ever shaved it. I think I started shaving at⌠twelve? Somewhere around there. I didnât even need to at that point, but my friends were. There was no way I was going to wait. So now, yeah, the stuff on my calves is darker and thicker. Iâm also nine years older, with all my teenage years in between.
When you shave, youâre just cutting the hair off at the surface of the skin. Thatâs it. Does cutting the hair on your head change its consistancy? Nope. Hair starts growing below the skin.
That doesnât mean it wonât feel different, though. A hair that just grows by itself is actually taperedâand when you shave, you lop off the tip of that, so itâs more blunt. But that doesnât do anything to the thickness or darkness of the hair, and if you give it time, itâll eventually grow out to being natural again.
Takes time, of course, but itâll happen. Nothing, however, will take you back to the sort of hair you had as a little kid. That, however, you lose no matter what you doâwhether youâre shaving or waxing or doing nothing at all.
I agreeâŚ
Shaving doesnât make hair grow! I guess you could make the argument that shaving draws blood flow to an area, thus stimulating faster hair growth. Maybe shaving just draws attention to a previously ignored area of hair growth and a person simply notices the hair growing.
If shaving did make hair grow, it would stand to reason that a face shaver would get progressively thicker and faster growing hair on his face. It just doesnât happen though.
thatsmytoe has a point. Just think, we might be able to cure male pattern baldness if shaving promotes hair growth.
Concrete evidence, eh? 
Here are links to abstracts of medical papers proving shaving does not cause hair to come in thicker.
You can use the information below to go pick up copies of the data yourself through a local medical library.
http://www.hairfacts.com/medpubs/shave/trotter.html
http://www.hairfacts.com/medpubs/hairgen/saitoh.html
http://www.hairfacts.com/medpubs/shave/lynfield.html
The letter below estimates 6 minutes a day for shaving for males, 45 minutes a week, 40 hours a year, and about 100 days over the course of a lifetime. Yikes!
i am still skeptical⌠just like eiji⌠more so because of personal experience⌠let me tell you a story âŚlol⌠i once had a nasty rash and itchiness from wearing fake jewlery(nechlaces) during a hot sweaty summer which resulted in my neck area (where necklaces usually are) to become sort of black pigmented and there were horizontal lines of black as well⌠of course how devestated i was⌠i was only 17 years old. so i stopped wearing these nechlaces hoping the rediness would heal and all that⌠it did, but the black was still there⌠oh i m fair skinned so the black really did show⌠my mom suggested that i sugar the area becasue that the black could just be on the skin and so removing the dead skin layer with suguring would remove the black colouration⌠so my mom, who is an expert at sugering⌠did do my neck area and upper chest⌠lo and behold!! devestation of my life⌠dark black hair grew in that area where i never had hair before⌠and if i did (i never noticed it) and it was not thick or black like that before⌠ever!!.. its been many years later and i still have this hair⌠its not alot⌠but still noticable⌠i bleach it and sometimes pluck⌠but the black is still there!.. not as much as ⌠because passing years wore it down. but yeah⌠thats my personal experience and so i believe that if you do anything to hair it comes out darker and thicker.!! 
thanks again for a wonderful site andrea
hey rachelle, do you think your mom could sugar my head? maybe the secret combination is cheap costume jewelry AND sugaring⌠we could be onto something here. we could be rich! most importantly, i could have a head full of thick luscious black hair. iâm more than willing to be the guinea pig.
seriously though, sorry to hear about your problem.
Sugaring is not the same as shaving. Sugaring is more like waxing. In both instances you are epilating, or pulling the hair out by the root, removing it below the skin. And others have reported thicker hair growth after waxing. I have never been waxed or sugared so I canât comment from personal experience.RJC2001
My personal experience - SHAVING DOES MAKES THE HAIR GROW THICKER AND DARKER. There is no definitive prove that it does not. Andrea you pointed on books : Trotter, 1928 Lynfield, 1970 The last of them was writtenalmost 35 years ago! There world changed 1000 times since then! First of all the scientists still finding new genes in the hair - that means that none still knows enough about the hair. Not once we have seen the âbest scientistsâ making mistakes, so here can be also a mistake - it is no wonder that many people write they did noticed a change after shaving (I DID!). Second - there is not enough proves to saying that it doesnt effect hair growtht, here are no FACTS and not enough researches proving it. (There are also not enough to prove it does - but keep reading), BUT, that doesnt mean that the hair on the head will grow also more - maybe that depends on 1001 different reasons?
If it would be SO EASY, this forum would NOT exist and we would all go happy and hairless in the places we want to be. So please, dont say it does not affect when nothing is for sure. I repeat, even now they find lots of thing that they didnt know before on the hair - such a tiny thing but contains so much information.
Andrea and others - if you are SO sure about that shaving hair doesnt make it grow thicker, make a research yourself - shave your face every day - and post the results. What? Why not? Whats the matter? If you SO SURE and believing those books ⌠Dont forget to make pictures before and after⌠Or i begin to suspect that this subject is all made for people to get thicker hair - by thus giving the Electrologists earn more money⌠<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />
I guess you have made up your mind. Glad to know ya.
Wow, NoFate! You just solved male pattern baldness! All those guys have to do is shave their heads, and soon they will have a thicker, darker head of hair thatâs the envy of everyone! You should patent your observation-- you are going to be a millionaire!
You heard it here first! Shave your head and watch it get thicker and darker!
Or read the clinical data that settled this question decades ago.
Moral of the story: Shaving has no significant effect on hair growth.
Ohh, and what is that?
Andrea wrote: âShaving has no significant effect on hair growthâ
This word âsignificantâ is very handy here. Can you explain yourself? Does it mean that âShaving has no effectâŚâ or âIt has effect but not a significant oneâŚâ ?
Because just a few posts before (go up) you wrote:
âshaving does not cause hair to come in thicker.â
Is it a doubt?
In other words its seems like HERE you are not so sure in what you write, and thats what I am talking about.
My point here is not to annoy anyone, I am just trying to explain my point - for now you can not state what you or anyone else can not prove.
You wrote:
âYou heard it here first! Shave your head and watch it get thicker and darker!â
so I knew that you can write something like this before you actually did - that why I wrote "
ââŚBUT, that doesnt mean that the hair on the head will grow also more - maybe that depends on 1001 different reasons?â .
How can you tell it for sure when you dont know it by your self?All you âscientistsâ can be wrong and many times are wrong!
âOr read the clinical data that settled this question decades ago.â - they can be wrong - no wonder so many people complain about stronger regrowing of the hair after shavingâŚ
Electrolysis is used moer than 100 years and you still dont know why it works on some people and on some not - and there are still arguing if the skin ALWAYS damaged or not, when, how, whyâŚ
Maybe for some people shaving hair does effect regrowth - as Electrlysis affects on some and does not on others?
As you I dont see any facts - only theoriesâŚ
âSignificantâ is a term used in clinical research when making comparisons under controlled conditions.
From Mayo Clinic:
www.mayoclinic.com/invoke.cfm?id=AN00638
Is it true that shaving body hair will increase the amount of hair that grows back?
Nate / Wisconsin
Mayo Clinicâs answer
No. Shaving hair doesnât create new, active hair follicles. It also doesnât increase the rate of hair growth or the color or length of hair. The color, density, location and length of hair mainly depend on genetic factors as well as hormonal factors.
When you shave body hair, it may feel coarse or âstubblyâ for a time as it grows out. During this phase, it may be more noticeable.
http://members.aol.com/beardguy/bfaq.htm
Will shaving make my beard grow back thicker?
No.
n an article titled âOn beards, no beards, and other hairy problemsâ in the April 1972 issue of Science Digest, Dr. Herbert Mescon, then professor and chairman of the department of dermatology at Boston University was quoted as saying: âThere are a number of myths about shaving. It is not true that shaving makes whiskers darker or coarser or grow faster.â
In the October 1963 issue of Science Digest, an article titled âWhat happens when you shaveâ included the following:
Does shaving make your hair grow faster?
Shaving has no permanent effect on the rate of hair growth, says Dr. Howard T. Behrman. Writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Behrman notes that although there is an immediate increase in the rate of hair growth after shaving, this increase is followed by a decrease within the next few hours. The net effect of a shave on the rate of growth, therefore, is zero.
Dr. Behrman also says cutting or shaving the hair does not make it darker or coarser. However, a hair shaft is darker and coarser at the root than at the tip, and cutting it near the root makes the hair appear darker and coarser.
Urban legends reference page
Claim: Hair that has been shaved or cut grows back thicker and darker.
Status: False.
http://www.snopes.com/spoons/oldwives/hairgrow.asp
I am still staying with my opinion. Not enough proves - once they said that the world is flat⌠So maybe one day someone will proove my point of view.
Anyway, what I have to say is that, with my expirience, you should think twice before actually shaving hair on your face.
This is sadly on par with one who firmly believes that eating candy will cause diabetes or that greasy foods will cause acne.
Okay, No Fate, yourâre one in 4 billion people living on this planet who shaved and got more hair and male hormones had absolutely nothing to do with it. Your bodyâs physiology for some reason just defies the principles of well-documented science by doctors and scientists who have spent many years studying and researching hair. Youâre very unique, No Fate, and so is your opinion of the effects of shaving on hair growth.
ââŚdefiNes the principles of well-documented science by doctors and scientists who have spent many years studying and researching hairâ - and what do we have from that?
They cannot treat 100% baldness nor the hairness. That means they have a lot more to study. Lots of things were âprovedâ - which only after 20 years it was that some one proved exactly the opposite. I dont want to argue on something that i am not sure but all i am saying is it doesnt have to be true if some âscientistsâ said so. Once âscientistsâ said that if there will be something like a car then it will be the need for at least 2 or more people to control it - after 20 years we have seen the first car controlled by one only. Its an example to that its all R-E-L-A-T-I-V-E.
I feel like we are missing something hereâŚperhaps NoFate would be a little more convincing if he could point to some studies that actually PROVE that shaving makes hair grow in thicker and darker. Or perhaps we should totally eschew the scientific method i.e. collecting enough evidence until we notice patterns or regularities in the evidence, then developing generalizations that describe what we have observed.
NoFate is certainly right that scientists and their theories are continually proven wrong, sometimes in the face of the majority opinion. In fact, this is likely the most important aspect of science â all scientific theories are forever tentative.
What matters, then, is how you got there. As a goofy example: Einstein may have been considered a quack in his time (as where those crazies that thought that the earth was round and not flat), but he did succesfully falsify Newtonâs Theory of Gravitation. He didnât, however, just concoct this theory out of thin air, he used sound scientific principles to advance his theory and ultimately contemporary physics.
NoFate, then, I challenge you to produce any valid scientific studies to support your point of view, maybe then I might be persuaded.
In the event that NoFate cannot provide this, I will be siding with rational scientific observation carried out in a controlled environment, with a large sample size and preferably at a prestigious university (not in NoFates bathroom, thank you very much)
P.S. What exactly is the right amount of proof that you need in order to believe that shaving hair does not make it grow in thicker and darker (for the majority of us?) â 2 studies? 20 studies? I believe Andrea has provided enough links for now.
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Hey, you know what? From where Iâm standing, the Earth DOES look sort of flat⌠<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />
I am not trying to prove something - only trying to be realistic.
tbanner523 you right, I dont have any proves, and maybe it is right, that it doesnt effect hair regrowth, but all I was saying is that so many people âfeelâ that it regrowth more after shaving and I just dont believe that its only seems so to people (that would be stupid if all people are wrong just because when the hair is shorter it seems to be harder or darker). I am saying that it can vary from one to another and that carefull is still needed as maybe if you have some different skin (or in some parts where the skin is thin and sensetive) maybe shaving can actually affect the follicle. I am not saying it is so - i am saying that it may be so, and one should not always believe those researchs - as with any other thing.
For example just a while ago when you would ask some electrologist about if a hair removal laser can cause to cancer - they would say no. (As my electrologist said - âit was proven by FDAâ) but today there are actually some researchs wich claim that laser can cause cancer or any other danger - âRecent data suggest other skin structures are often affected by laser irradiation, and long term effects of this constitute an unknown risk.â And before this ârecent dataâ if you would come here and ask if it causes damage - they would show you also tons of links on which âFDA claimsâŚâ and they would probably push on you (as they do now to me) with âfactsâ.
http://www.hairtell.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/16286/an/0/page/0#16286
(ofcourse it may be wrong and some facts may be missing - AND BECAUSE OF SOME REASON Andrea âdebunked this claimâ to a link which doesnt exist anymore <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> ).
All I am saying - you should not believe to researches even if there are âfacts provenâ or some âspecialistsâ say âgo ahead, do it! we have âfactsâ - many years ago! They cannot be proved wrong!â âŚ
I just dont want people to be naive, trusting âproven dataâ and therefore make mistakes, and that is not only to shaving hair but to all the âhair removalâ thing.
tbanner523, I hope you understood my point.
Over my 46 years in the hair removal business I learned one thing for sure. âPeople will beieve what they want to believe, in spite of the truth.â
I wrote a book on hair removal, but I had to first understand hair growth first.
If anyone finds how to grow hair or make it thicker, SAFELY, and prove it, they will be worth billions.