I had another appointment today after going almost 2 weeks without and had a lot of hair come in. The electrologist was commenting on it and saying that the hairs were the ones she treated around 4 weeks ago. I know she told me at the beginning that she doesn’t kill the hair on the first try but keeps reducing their size over time. But I think my first electrologist, who was slower, DID kill the hairs on the first try or at least turned them blonde. So are these two different approaches, and if so, can anyone explain the advantages and disadvantages of each method?
On another note, I came in early and she offered me a glass of red wine while I waited I was VERY relaxed and almost went to sleep during the session! (I’m a lightweight who hardly ever drinks).
As long as she was not playing “Just Dance” by Lady Ga-Ga, I think you will be ok.
It is hard for me to know if she is telling an electrolysis fib to keep from explaining what we show people in the growth charts, or if she really is purposefully under-treating the hairs because she believes you can’t stand up to the treatment energy needed to knock the hairs out in one zap.
It would be hard to armchair quarterback this one without seeing you. (It might be impossible unless one could actually see her working on you.)
she offered you wine??? Thats silly, i would be maybe a bit concerned with that. But that is me. LOL, and i dont drink but like with anything needle related alcohol thins the blood, tattoo, piercing, any of those things, i am told do not drink prior, and my electro asked if i was a heavy drinker. Not that i bleed from electro but there is that risk with ingrowns, correct.
But on another note, if it were me and my electrologist said she wasnt killing my hairs, to me i would not want to go back! I cannot go two weeks between treatments tho. I have to much hair. And it seems that the area that had the least amount of hair to start with just has random growth now. Not like it was. But i know that the chin treatments seem that hair grows in more, but this was my heaviest growth area. And I think i could perhaps fall asleep if i had a drink and a few sedatives, yet she has told me ppl fall asleep sometimes, or almost drift out.
Just my two cents, if i had a doctor who offered me wine and told me they werent fixing my problem, i would be leary, not that i am confusing my electro with my doc, but she has to do her job. I work with children, and if i dont get them where they need to be the first time, Im fired.
Perhaps it is just a different approach.
Good luck and keep it up and if your not happy move move on to someone you trust! =)
Yeah I don’t know what’s going on with what she said, but at least my 6 month mark is coming up soon so I’ll know how effective treatments have been by the results I see then. I like going to this electrologist because she uses surgical magnification and has good machines.
I did notice a little dried blood up by the side of my eye, but that could be from the tweezers or something. I only had maybe a third of a glass. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m a lightweight.
It could be that she’s fibbing as James said, but I think it might be that she does undertreat because she’s very cautious about scarring and healing. As long as I get results by the 6 month mark it doesn’t really matter.
What we can say is that you should have already noticed a reduction in the number of hairs and maybe even the thickness of the hairs you now see. (You did take your Before Picture didn’t you?)
As you work through the next 3 months, you should get to the point where you are clearing everything every time (provided you have enough treatment time per appointment) and you should start to be able to have more time in between treatments (as long as you don’t have something causing steady new follicle recruitment).
As for The Red Red Wine…Ga-Ga (or for us older folks, the musical cue would be Red Red Wine, Make Me Feel So Fine. UB40/Niel Diamond) I know of more than one electrologist who utilizes this type of thing in their office to calm clients. I even met one who had a big production where the elevator opened revealing her suite’s greeting room, where as one stepped off the elevator, the beautiful secretary greeted you with your choice of wine, sparkling wine, or whatever one liked, served in a chrystal glass. The thing is, while this may be ok for a short appontment, it would be counter productive for a longer one, as the dehydration and lowered pain tolerance and effect on the blood would start to kick in before the treatment was over. Its a good news, bad news sort of thing.
I think that the hairs have reduced in thickness. I don’t have many hairs anymore that are thick and black from the moment they pop out of the skin, although they get stronger in a few weeks. I did tweeze my chin and upper lip for a few years, so that could be slowing things down.
I’ll be sooo happy to be able to clear my whole face in 1 hour!
I noticed some areas on my upper lip that are leaking clear fluid or have clear bubbles like a tiny blister. Is this something I should be concerned about? I did put on makeup a few hours after treatment because I wanted to go somewhere, but I put tea tree oil on last night.
Tea tree is good. Tell your elecrologist about this even if she doesn’t ask you how you healed. This would clue her in to adjust the intensity and timing or to try a different probe. Any scabbing 48 hours later?
If they are pinpoint scabs, no… but let her know anyway. If they are big and interconnect, yes. You must let her know that you don’t want that to happen again. I am assuming that you avoided excessive sweating, makeup and did proper aftercare for at least three days as well. You will be just fine, but give her feedback so she can make some adjustments so as not to overtreat the hair.
No, I put on makeup a couple of hours after treatment to go out somewhere (won’t do that again!). Then I put on makeup as usual yesterday and today. It seems like the area is healing fine, but there are scabs and one is kind of big. Thanks for the advice though. I’m glad it doesn’t mean I’m going to scar–it looks awful enough today even with concealer because of the raised scabs.
Do not pick the scabs - EVER! or you may end up with a permanent scar. It will heal from the bottom up like every wound. Leave the scab alone and talk to your practitioner.
So I had another treatment today and I told the electrologist what happened. She didn’t think it was serious and said that the spots were healing well but she wrote it down on my chart. Now I have a few new crusted over spots on my upper lip like last time. Actually even during the treatment I could feel the air on the open spots so I pretty much knew I would have new ones. I don’t know what’s up with that but since she thinks I’m healing well maybe this is just normal for me.
Back to the old hairs resurfacing issue–I had another session today and a bunch of coarse hairs on my chin, at least 15. The electrologist said that they were hairs she had removed before a while ago and that she wasn’t happy with how they were coming back thick and that she wanted to reduce their texture for me. That bothered me because again she was talking about making hairs thinner instead of permanently removing them. I asked if they weren’t new hairs because I thought I was just going through a new growth cycle but she said no, they were too strong to be new hairs and they were regrowth.
She said that since she wasn’t happy with the coarseness of the regrowth she was going to try her other machine on those hairs, and used the silhouette-tone instead of the elegance.
I am worried that this electrologist doesn’t know what she’s doing or has some kind of philosophy where she doesn’t like to kill hair permanently. My first electrologist used really high settings and it was painful, and she took a long time with the hairs so it took forever to clear my whole face, but at least I knew that the hairs she treated were likely dead or sometimes turned blonde.
The upside is that I am making an appointment to see another electrologist who’s supposed to be the best in town, so hopefully she’ll be better at killing hairs on the first try…but I don’t know anymore.
With my first electrologist, the coarse hairs decreased from covering my chin to around 4 a week. That continued with this electrologist until last week when I had a lot of coarse hairs and then this week the same, and the hairs came out about the day after my last treatment.
Thanks for any thoughts.
Last time she also brought up me using a birth control pill again that she said would help in making the hairs thinner…I really would rather have an electrologist just kill them already!!!
A skilled electrologist will disable any hair follicle, permanently, for good and forever, Amen. We all know this. I don’t know how to interpret her words. You are going through hair growth cycles most likely. This is good. This is what we want. It takes months for all bothersome hairs to surface just one time. When enough energy is given for the correct amount of time, the hair follicle will not be able to produce another hair ever again.
You started in April. It is now August. You have been at this for five months. Hair is still coming forth. This should be no surprise for any electrologist. We expect this to happen. Forget the birth control pills and just focus on treating the noticeable hairs. Just use the proper settings for any new hair that cycles in and soon you will run out of hair follicles that produces bothersome hair. I’m saying this as if I’m talking to her. I assume you have ceased all tweezing, right?
Definitely, I stopped all tweezing sometime in March.
I’m worrying that she doesn’t use proper settings to kill all the hair. All I know is that she doesn’t take as long on each hair and it doesn’t hurt as much as with my original electrologist, plus she says she wants to make hairs finer in texture instead of talking about killing them. I’d rather deal with the pain and get permanent results sooner than have coarse hairs keep coming back, as this electrologist said happened. And I don’t want them coming back at all unless it’s as short, fine, blonde hairs.
Is it possible to kill coarse, tweezed hairs using blend if the electrologist is quick and it doesn’t hurt much? And how is it possible for an electrologist to treat hairs with blend and have them come back as coarse as hairs come? I thought blend was really good at killing hairs, even if the electrologist makes mistakes.
And is the Silhouet-tone really going to be better at killing these hairs than the Elegance?
Last I heard, electrologists were in business to permanently remove hair the whole hair, not to try and reduce the size of hair. I don’t know why she said that unless she meant to say that she would need to breakdown the hair structure gradually in order to protect your skin in the long run??? I don’t know?
There is no such thing as a quick blend. How many seconds is the probe inside the follicle when she performs blend on you? When I use blend for coarse hairs, the time varies, but I would say 7-8 seconds per follicle is what it takes to treat a coarse chin hair according to the way I do it. Does it hurt? Pain is always subjective, but yes, you should feel something and it should be tolerable. A high percentage of my clients prefer PicoFlash over blend and when I used MicroFlash, they preferred MicroFlash over blend as well. It’s a sensation thing.
It doesn’t matter one bit if she uses a Sil-Tone or an Elegance. Not one bit!! Both epilators, when used correctly, deliver energy that will “kill” the hair growing tissue. Don’t focus in terms of what brand epilator she uses (though some brands and models within those brands are better than others), focus on skill and comfort level with the equipment the electrologist uses.
If she using a Silhouet-Tone VMC model, that is a very nice epilator and I assume the Elegance by ClareBlend is as well. I haven’t used the Elegance, but I keep my VMC as a backup epilator just in case.
Now, how do you know that the coarse hairs sprouting on your chin are regrowth or NEW growth? When I work on chin hairs, I am amazed that after nine months of steady work I may see less than ten hairs at some random appointment that have the bulb structure of hairs that we initially treated in month one. I assume that those hairs are just sprouting for the very first time above the skin because they are programed to only come alive in say, August, September and October. Some hairs just go dormant and hibernate like little bears and there is NOTHING we can do about that! We just have to sit around and wait patiently for them to come forth.
It is strange and frustrating, but hair is a tough enemy and that is why no electrologist will ever say that they can permanently remove all bothersome hair in a four month period. It truly takes a minimum or 9 months but can go as long as 18 months, depending on a persons genetic makeup and hormonal environment. Even after you are “finished”, you may still need short, snappy pick-up sessions 1-6 times a year. Neither you or your electrologist has any control over whether your body will command that new follicles come alive to produce more hair in the future. You have to clean up the bulk of the hair you have and then clobber any NEW hairs that pop up on your chin throughout your lifespan. That’s the way this works and there “ain’t nuthin” we can do about it.
If you feel you are being under treated, then sample some other electrologists. Blend is a great modality, but you can’t rush those insertions for coarse hairs. Again, how long is the probe in the follicle? Do you feel like the hair is being tweezed as she lifts it out after treatment?
Thanks for the reply. I don’t know what’s going on. I thought the hairs were just new growth but I asked her and she said no, they were too strong to be new and that they were hairs she had treated already. But luckily I think I’m going to have an appointment with another electrologist who has great reviews on Yelp. If she’s better, I’ll switch to her.
Sometimes it kind of feels like hairs are tweezed, but not most of the time. Another weird thing though is that after my last appointment I noticed a couple of coarse hairs kind of sticking out of the skin. I had to pull them out with my fingers like she hadn’t tweezed them enough.
The thing about the Silhouet-Tone being better at killing the coarse hairs than the Elegance doesn’t sound right to me…plus she used the Silhouet-Tone during my sample treatment and that was misleading because I thought she would always use the ST and I would have fast, unpainful treatments, but from my first appointment she said that she didn’t want to use the ST on my face because she didn’t think I’d heal well.
Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not true. All I can think of is she may have an older model in the Silhouet-Tone line and perhaps it needs some calibration??? I’ not good at these guessing games, but that information puzzles me. Also, any hair that was treated with blend that regrows should be thinner if it appears as regrowth. Just the opposite of what was said. Can she see well? Get another consult and treatment and compare. That’s the best action to take.
I was VERY relaxed and almost went to sleep during the session! (I’m a lightweight who hardly ever drinks).