Hey Guys,
I’m a 38 year old, pretty much type 3 skin, tan well, but light complected with dark, course hair. I am getting my entire beard done. I had one treatment so far, 5 more scheduled. They used a light shear diode.
So I’ve noticed a little bit of hair loss (it’s been 10 days) and I plucked some of them out. They were really annoying, I couldn’t shave them and they just came right out when I pulled them. I called them today and they said just to let them fall out, don’t pluck them. Is there any harm to plucking the ones that are dead (blacker, shorter and thicker)?
I had a little bit of breaking out but I think that’s done now, hopefully. I have another appt scheduled in 3 weeks. They wanted to do the first two five weeks apart because he said the face grows much quicker than other parts of the body, then they space them out. Thought on that? Is the face different than other parts of the body where I’ve read on here that people go 8-10 weeks.
The biggest question is…when is my hair going to start falling out on it’s own? 1o days and when I rub my beard, the hairs don’t fall out. You can tell that there are spots on my face where the hair doesn’t grow, but I was thinking I’d lose more. Do you pretty much lose most of it in the first 10 days, then not lose anymore until the next treatment?
If this doesn’t get rid of all of my hair, I’ll just get electrolysis on the rest and on a few light (err, maybe gray) hairs on my chin.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Chino
My first suggestion to you is to read past posts of people on this forum getting this area done. Unless you are on hormones, you will not get rid of all the hair permanently or even most of it, and definitely not in 6 treatments. This area is hard to treat and there is a tendency to experience patchiness since the hair is so dense (so it actually makes you shave more often for a while, not less to make it look ok).
Do you know what settings were used? Joules/pulse/spot size?
Are you on any hormones or just a regular male?
Are you prepared to potentially have 10-15 beard treatments before switching to electrolysis? And are you prepared to invest 2-3 years into the process? Will you be happy with a reduction and not complete removal after this time? It’s really not realistic to get to a point where you won’t have any hair at all and won’t have to shave unfortuantely. Not on this area. Plus, your body will keep developing new hair with time that you will need to touch up consistently.
At this point, you should give it 3-3.5 weeks. That’s the point where you can judge effectiveness of this treatment. All, or at least most, of the treated hair should shed by that time. It’s ok to pull the hair out if you’re not plucking, i.e. don’t touch it if it’s not sliding out without resistance. scrubbing gently in the shower an exfoliating helps too.
4-5 weeks is too early to treat again. The only way you will have a lot of hair to treat at that time is if they missed a bunch of areas and/or used too low of settings to affect most of the hair. So, it’s not that it’s growing too fast, but rather that you would be getting a touch-up treatment on the same hair. I personally don’t think you should be paying full price for that (some clinics offer free touchups for missed areas).
Hope this helps. Please read other stories. It’s very important that you go into this with correct expectations. And if you’re not ready for that, you might want to reconsider doing this area altogether.
It’s also very important that they use high settings and overlap to avoid patchiness as much as possible.
Thanks for responding so quickly lagirl. I am not on hormones…yet. I most likely will be in the next three months. My expectations at the least would be the the laser would thin out my hair for electrolysis. I have an extremely low tolerance for pain so I’m trying to get rid of some hair and the use electrolysis for the rest. I don’t mind some hair here and there, I’ll just get treatments and keep reducing the hair. I definitely need some electrolysis for the light hairs.
I’m down in Orange County and I saw that you were in LA. I was wondering if there’s a list of top places in LA and how I could get that list. Do you know? If there were Saturday electrolysis appts, I would drive up for those. I probably won’t start those until I see what the laser does. Thanks again, I’ll keep you posted. I’m going to push the other laser appt back 4 weeks. Chino
Once you’re on hormones, you can achieve total clearance with a combo or laser and electrolysis, though it will take a while. It’s a good idea to start with laser, though you should make sure your treatments are as effective as possible. If you can find out the settings, we can help more. You should be experiencing almost complete shedding each time. Where are you getting treated now? Are you stuck in a package?
If you run a search using the Advanced Search feature at top right and look only in the Electrolysis section of this forum, you can find several threads where we discussed electrologists in LA. Besides those, I heard that many TG clients go to Layla in West LA. There are many electrologists in the Long Beach and OC area as well. I would use the recommendations on how to find an electrologist in the sticky post on the electrolysis forum and go for sample treatments with those as well. Though most here do offer Saturday appts, I don’t think it’s necessary to drive all the way out here.