I have no idea where to post general hair questions, so since I am transgendered I'm posting it here;
When you see the follicle on a removed hair does it mean it's gone for good? If not, how can you tell if you get enough of the hair's root to permanently remove it?

Are you doing your own electrolysis and want to know if you killed the hair?

I think you mean "bulb" and/or "root sheath" when you say "follicle"? If you have a bulb at the end and a white/gooey sheath above it, you have zapped an anagen hair and it released as it should, which is a good thing. You won't know if it is really dead until the next growth cycle when it would normally come back.

Thanks for the response:) Yes, I am trying electrolysis and want to know if it worked. However, although I am getting hairs with the "bulb" and "sheath" when I zap the hair, I also got the same thing with some "test" hairs that I plucked without electrolysis. Any idea what might be going on here?

You might get a bulb on the end, but you shouldn't get a root sheath when tweezing. I can't find a picture of what the root sheath looks like, I think there is a picture of one on James' site. It looks like a white kinda-transparent sheath directly above the bulb.

Perhaps the electrolysis affected some of the near by hair or something? Can you send me the link if you can find that picture?

If a terminal hair is in anagen and it doesn't break when tweezed, both the bulb and sheath should be attached.

When doing electrolysis, the hair should release w/o resistance. If you feel it tug, it's either not in anagen, or the settings or insertion was off.

OK, thanks. There is actually a tug with all the hairs. Looks like it's back to square one:(

You are probably just not treating the hair long enough.

What kind of electrolysis machine/device and what modality are you using? We might be able to point you in the right direction.

You can post on the Do It Yourself forum.

I am actually using an experimental system. I don't even know if it can be called electrolysis, but it does use electricity. It's just a device that can be hooked to tweezers which sends an electric frequency into the hair. I don't know the correct frequency or how strong the current needs to be so at this point it's trial and error. I tested it on a small patch of hair on my arm fist. It's been three weeks and only some of the hair has grown back and the hair that has grown back is much thinner than before. I just don't know if it will work on thick facial hair yet though. *fingers crossed*

Hi Bunny:

If you give the make and model number of your machine
someone here can tell you if it is for real or
might just make a good door-stop.

Alicia

If you are not inserting a fine wire probe, or filament, or needle like device into the follicle, you are NOT performing permanent hair removal. Hair doesn't conduct heat or radio waves, or electricity well enough to cause permanent damage to the follicle.

There is no make or model number since I built it myself. I understand that hair is an insulator which is why I am trying to depend on the frequency(not RF) more than the charge. I understand that success with this is a long shot, but if anyone could send me a link to a clear picture of a successfully plucked hair I would be very grateful.

Since you built it yourself, we would need to know specific details of the machine. It's impossible to say for sure what a successfully treated hair looks like. Even if the hair comes out well, it's impossible to guarantee that it was treated properly to kill it permanently.

Such devices have been on the market for a long time. Just search "Vector" or "igia" on this site and you will find lengthly discussions about them. If it doesn't use a needle, it can't perform galvanic electrolysis or thermolysis.

However, you can build a machine yourself that does work. Just visit http://www.geocities.com/hairfreethere/ for the details. (I found treatment times and intensities recommended for different hairs to be spot-on as well, I used them with my pro machine (in galvanic mode) and they worked great! Thanks to whoever compiled those.)

Thanks for the link. How common is permanent skin pigmentation with a home electrolysis system like the one in the link?

Permanent pigmentation would require really bad treatment coupled with really bad post treatment care. Very Long Term Pigmentation, on the other hand would be much more likely.