How I Finally Stopped Growing A Beard Because of PCOS

Every treatment removed the hair I could already see, but every few days I found myself standing in front of the same mirror dealing with the same problem all over again.

The most frustrating part was believing I would have to do it for the rest of my life because nobody had ever explained why the hair kept coming back in the first place.

Everything changed after a conversation with a dermatologist at a women's health event.

She listened to everything I had tried before saying something that immediately made sense.

She said

She explained that in many women with PCOS, unwanted facial hair is driven by high androgen activity.

These are hormones that continue sending signals to certain hair follicles to produce thick, coarse hair, which means the follicle doesn't stop working simply because the hair has been removed.

That's why so many women have to constantly remove the hair because the androgens keep sending growth signals to your hair follicles.  

That was the first explanation I'd ever heard that actually matched what I'd been experiencing

She then told me about a botanical called Cyperus rotundus.

She explained that Cyperus rotundus contains naturally occurring plant compounds with anti-androgenic activity. 

It has been clinically proven to reduce how strongly hair follicles respond to androgen-related growth signals over time. This means the hair grows back much slower and finer that it’s barely visible more like peach fuzz.

That immediately caught my attention because it wasn't another way to remove unwanted facial hair but rather not having to deal with it from the onset.

I asked her the obvious question

She smiled and said she gets asked that question almost every week.

She told me there were now a few products using Cyperus rotundus, but not all of them were formulated the same way. Some simply added the ingredient to the label, while others built the entire formulation around it.

But the one that has consistently given her clients results is from Celes in Cape Town.

She explained that she liked it because it was specifically formulated around Cyperus rotundus and designed to be used consistently after hair removal, exactly the way the published research had investigated it.

She also appreciated that it didn't promise overnight miracles. It acknowledged that reducing visible hair regrowth is a gradual process, which she said was far more consistent with what the clinical research had actually shown.

She looked at me and said

That made complete sense to me.

The bottle cost a few hundred rand, which was far less than I had already spent on waxing appointments, razors, creams and laser consultations over the years.

So I ordered it.

I didn't expect much if I'm being honest.

I'd already spent years getting my hopes up over products that promised big results and delivered the exact same disappointment

The first week, I didn't notice anything different. I kept telling myself to be patient.

By the second week, something started to change. The hair coming in felt thinner and softer. I ran my fingers over my chin the way I always did, checking, and for the first time, what I felt wasn't as sharp and coarse as it used to be.

By the third week, I only shaved once. The hair was taking longer to come back than before. Some mornings I'd check and there was barely anything there at all.

The following month, I stopped reaching for the razor out of habit. I'd go 2, sometimes 3 weeks without needing it. When I did check, the hair was barely visible, I could only feel short and very thin strands of it.

I know exactly how frustrating it feels to spend years believing you'll just have to live with unwanted facial hair forever because that's exactly where I was.

If you're tired of planning your mornings around shaving, checking every mirror you walk past, and wondering whether people are noticing your chin before they notice you, I genuinely think Celes is worth looking into. 

But It does sell out because it comes in small batches, and the plant's hard to get. So if it's in stock as you read this, that's your window.

The hardest part about unwanted facial hair isn't the 5 minutes you spend shaving.

It's the hundreds of small moments that slowly chip away at your confidence.

It's how sometimes you feel less feminine because of it. 

It's being so self conscious about it during social interactions that you think the other person is looking at it.

I convinced myself for years that this was just part of having PCOS.

Now I realize I had simply never been shown a different approach