I am not sure if I am asking this right but here goes...

On my extremely thick coarse (but sparse) chin and neck hairs my electrologist sometimes has to zap a hair anywhere from 2 to 3 to 4 times before it comes out. He'll zap once or twice. Try and pull the hair out. If it doesn't slide out he'll zap once or twice more. Until the hair is able to slide out.

So is what he does normal? Is this ok? Now I do have some scarring/hyperpigmentations in the area. Kind of looks like 'peppershots' and when those finally go away I'm left with a black mark.

Note - when he does other areas with finer hair they slide right out with one zap/insert.

I'm just trying to figure out if this is normal or if I need to find another electrologist. Can this be the cause of my scarring? Aside from that I am happy with everything else.

Some hairs need a couple zaps. 1-2 is normal. 4 or more shouldn't be necessary.

It sounds like you have some pigmentation. What is your skin type/ethnicity? Have you tested out other electrologists to compare things? What is your aftercare routine?

You are not scarred! You have a temporary skin reaction to electrolysis. ask your electrologist if he can do something different to lessen your reaction.

For thick, deep hairs it can take one to three zaps. If the hair is a growing hair, it probably will slide out. If it is not, it will probably be resistant. No more than three zaps should be used. If the hair still doesn't release, then it should be pulled and energy adjustments should be made to treat the next hair. Probe size should match the size of hair one is treating. Many electrologists are afraid to use larger probes. If one has better vision equipment, then one would be able see that larger probes, 5's and 6's, are much better choices than 2's, 3's and 4's for coarser hair.

The first treatments are usually the roughest. Use good aftercare. Witch hazel, aloe vera gel and dabs of tea tree oil will help you heal faster and better.

Talk to your electrologist and see if he can make some adjustments, so your skin doesn't look too aggravated for too long a time after treatment. Just see what he can do.

Dee

Dee, why do you limit the zaps to three?

My electrologist zaps my breast hairs one to four times. I've always assumed this is an attempt to reduce scabbing, since hairs get the minimum number of zaps needed to remove them. My appointments are weekly, so the hairs are always in anagen phase.

For my lower back and my face, where I seldom scab, she only zaps once.

You may be scabbing BECAUSE she's zapping each one so many times. It shouldn't be necessary. Are you saying she needs it because the hair doesn't slide out easily after one or she's zapping the spot again several times after the hair has been removed?

One of the reasons many electrologists use blend or galvanic on breast hairs is so that one treatment can make due. The lye created moves around the curves and treats the whole follicle. If one is using Thermolysis to treat breast hairs, one may find that placement of the probe is not optimal, as the follicles are not nice easy straight insertions. This would cause one to find that many treatments of the same follicle are needed to finally get treatment energy to the needed tissue to release that hair. In the process, some unnecessary damage is done to some tissue that could have been avoided.

This is why we say that although Thermolysis is the fastest form of electrolysis, one needs to know how to do all three, because there are times when one is the more prudent choice over the others.

James is exactly correct about breast hairs. Curvey, crazy hairs are a charactaristic of breast hairs and blend would better serve the goal of treating the hair follicle completely. Zapping a hair more than three times can damage the skin and will deplete the moisture at the bottom of the follicle. We need moisture to be present to work with the currents.

I asked my electrologist to use blend on the breasts, but she said that "they" (her and the other electrologists at her salon, I presume) feel that thermolysis is best and they don't use blend on that machine. (They have Apilus Seniors, so I don't know why they don't like Blend.) She is doing an excellent job on my face and I don't want to go to another electrologist just for my breasts, so I'll have to stick with her.

It makes sense that the scabbing would be caused by too many insertions, but I don't really know how I could get her to use higher energy and fewer zaps. Electrologists don't really take well to laypeople offering them advice on how to perform electrolysis!

What's odd though is that she uses the "Breast" setting for my breasts and since I've been having these hairs treated frequently for TWO years, you would think that my hairs there would be weaker than the average person's. (And I do know that these hairs should have been gone a year ago, but other than not getting blend, I don't know what's going on. I've changed electrologists twice and I saw definite results from the last two on other areas of my body.)

I agree with James and Dee. I used microflash on all areas, but switched to blend for breasts due to exact same reason. It wasn't really working that well either because the hairs were deep and curly. That's where blend helps a lot.

It is my humble opinion that you won't get permanent hair removal until you have someone perform blend or galvanic on your breasts. The good news is, if you did go to someone other than the people who are doing a great job on everything else, your breast appointments would be short. Fifteen minutes or less, maybe.

There is no way one could have treatment on the breasts for two years and not have achieved permanent hair removal UNLESS one either had new hairs growing in due to a physiological problem (like PCOS), one was not going on schedule, and was missing growth phases, or one's practitioner was missing the necessary growth cells.

I think they just never learned how to do the blend, and are afraid to step out of their comfort zone. On the other hand, you probably don't want someone trying to do something they don't know how to do either.