Thinning lashes are a different problem from short lashes, and they need the opposite of the standard answer. When lashes are short, more product can genuinely extend them. When lashes are fine and few, more product is the problem: a fine lash has less structural stiffness, so it bends under the weight of a thick coating, and a drooping lash reads as shorter and sparser than the same lash would bare.
What helps is making each surviving lash individually visible. A lash that is defined on all sides — darkened, separated from its neighbors, with a slight lift at the root — contributes to the look of a lash line. Three defined lashes read as more lash than ten clumped together into two wedges.
This is the strongest argument for tubing formulas specifically, beyond the removal benefit. A tubing mascara forms a sleeve around each lash rather than depositing a film on the side facing the wand. On a thinning lash line, coating a lash on all sides makes it visible from more angles, and it does so with less material than a wax coating needs.
The second half of this page is about not losing more. Lashes shed and regrow on a cycle, and on a mature lash line more of them are loose in the follicle at any moment. Mechanical friction — rubbing, dragging a cotton pad, pulling at a waterproof formula with a dry wipe — removes lashes that would otherwise have stayed. That is a daily habit with a cumulative cost, and changing it is free.
One boundary: if your lashes are thinning noticeably and rapidly, or in patches, that is worth raising with a doctor rather than solving with mascara. Several medical and medication-related causes exist, and this site is not able to help with any of them.
