I know laser won’t work on fine hairs, even if they are dark…
But I am super confused on how to tell which hairs are fine and which are coarse! I am a female with excessive body hair growth that is ruining my life. I want to get laser removal whenever I can afford it (probably no time soon :() but I don’t understand which hairs are fine and which are coarse. Even the hair on my arms, while thick, is pretty “fine” in texture. I have some hair that I think must be coarse that runs from my pubic area up to my belly button, but the rest of my abdomen is also covered in hair, which is dark but finer in texture. However I don’t think it’s any less fine than my arm hair… so I am confused…
I don’t want to waste money on an area that will see no reduction from laser… but electrolysis would take FOREVER on my ENTIRE chest/abdomen and it sounds like it would hurt like hell too! I would much rather do laser but I don’t understand how to tell if the hairs will be affected by laser or not. I shave them all off so it’s not like I could walk into a clinic and show them. I have to shave because I am in a sexual relationship right now and my partner does not know about my hair problem (I am afraid he will reject me if I tell him.)
Laser hurts like hell in case you haven’t heard by reading these forums and others. Don’t fall victim to laser hyped ads. That’s why many laser centers offer numbing creams before treatment. You can try it without though and see what that brings you. Better to start without and then ask for it later if you need it.
A coarse or very coarse hair is like the hair on your underarms and pubic region. A fine hair is like peach fuzz, or a little bigger, on a womans face.
Laser is a gamble. You may or may not be pleased afterwards. The chest area seems to please a lot of people if they are good candidates and choose a good laser and technician. I would find a good electrologist to finish the job that laser starts. The two can work well in combination for the areas you describe.
I don’t really have a problem with facial hair to the extent that I would consider laser for it. I do have a huge problem with body hair though, but most of it is what I would describe as “fine.” However it is dark, and longish, similar to arm hair. I have been shaving my armpits and legs for so long that I can’t really say what the hair looks like naturally, to compare it…
I was under the impression that laser hurts less than electrolysis… but honestly I don’t really care… I will endure a lot of pain just to get this ****ing hair off my body. However electrolysis can only target one hair at a time so it seems to me that it would take FOREVER and be very expensive to do all the areas I need to.
So, if I have hairs on my stomach, chest, and even my back (found more on my upper back today… it’s a great big patch… :() that are not just normal vellus peach fuzz, but not quite as extreme as underarm or leg hair… will laser work on them? I am mostly concerned that I will pay for laser for the whole area and then it will do nothing. I would have to take out a loan or do some type of financing to be able to afford laser. I probably would not be able to do any kind of electrolysis for a while after… it’s not something I can afford… but I feel so horrible about myself and I want to die, I have to do something about it…
Trust me, laser is more painful than electrolysis. The better the candidate - the more it hurts, but the more it works.
Secondly, are you a man or a woman? If the hair is not coarse, dark and dense on a man shoulders, upper back and upper arms, it should not be lasered, at all. This is the rpime area for stimulated hair growth to occur. If you are a woman, you have a lot less of a chance of the hair being stimulated, but it is very unlikely that it will work anyway, because the hair is so fine.
Thirdly, whats your location? You may be lucky and be near a good electrologist the could help you on your way for the hairs that laser won’t pick up. Even if it’s one hair at a time, you’d be amazed how quickly good ones can work.
I am a female… I said it in my first post… my location is also listed on my profile. I am getting on some anti-androgen drugs soon but I have been told not to expect much in terms of loss of body hair (just that it will stop new hair from growing.) But there’s so much hair, even if it is fine… I can’t even count how many there are… if electrolysis targets only one hair at a time how is it realistic to do such large areas?
Considering that electrolysis can be covered by insurance (with a huge fight against the company-- but, still, it’s possible) I might pick it over laser anyway though. But this is all for the future since I can’t afford it now anyway. The main point is that I can NOT afford to do anything that might not work-- I can’t afford to just zap it with laser and hope it works and then do electrolysis on the rest… I don’t have that kind of money!
I was also wondering if laser or electrolysis will reduce the appearance of the pores… I am growing hair on my hands and fingers… the hair itself is not very noticable, though I shave it on my fingers, because I am self-conscious. However you can see the reddish/darkish pores on my fingers if you look at them in any kind of bright light, and it’s really embarassing. I doubt it would cost very much to get my fingers done, but I’m not going to bother if it doesn’t make the appearance of the pores disappear. My pores are pretty big everywhere I grow hair… will killing the hair make the pore shrink? I don’t think the dark appearance is soley due to the hair under the skin, since I have that on my legs, and it looks a little different. I think it is also just that the pore is so big it’s visible. I don’t want to have sasquatch fingers
Removing the hairs won’t make the pores smaller, but it may make them look less noticeable. After all, they won’t be streched open by those big thick hairs.
Hey, sorry to bump an old thread, but I am still wondering about this. Is there some kind of “test” I can do to determine whether my hair is coarse or fine? For instance, by looking at it or grasping it in my hand and comparing it to something else? This may seem like a stupid question, but “coarse” and “fine” seem like such relative terms to me, so they confuse me. I know the hair on my underarms or legs would probably be considered coarse, but it’s been years since I let that grow out, so I don’t really know what its texture is. I imagine my pubic hair is coarse, but most people don’t have hair as thick/dark/coarse as that in any other place in their body, yet can still get laser.
I will try to describe the texture of most of my body hair. It is dark-- dark brown/light black to dark black, depending on where it is on my body. It is definitely dark, and my skin is pale, so I have that going for me. In some places it is relatively short, but much longer than normal nearly invisible vellus hair. In other places it is longer. I would say it varies from 1/2cm (I don’t have any illusions about laser doing anything to the hair that is that short, though) to about half an inch or 2/3rd of an inch in the longest places (my lower arms, for instance, though I don’t plan to get those lasered. I also have some that grow out that long on my abdomen.) Most of the hair falls in between those two lengths, averaging maybe at 1cm. When I run my hand over the remaining hairs that I haven’t shaved off, I can feel them, but they feel relatively soft. However some of them do stick up off my body, which implies to me they may not be “fine”?
Again, I know this is a ridiculous amount of detail when probably no one on the internet can give me an answer, but I thought I would throw it out there in case someone might have an idea.
I am going to be in the minority, and disagree- electrolysis hurts like hell and way more than laser. I could not barely tolerate electrolysis pain. I have had both done on the same area (neck) so I say this from experience.
Coarse hair is hair whose shaft is pretty thick. Usually when you shave, there is still some shadow or stubble, etc. Fine hair is the hair that you can shave and not see until it comes through the skin again because it’s fine enough to be almost not noticeable shaved. If you post pictures, we can help you determine what kind of hair you have on the area that you want to treat. Generally, underarm/bikini hair is coarse and hair on most women’s faces and lower arms is relatively fine. Legs is somewhere in between and usually get good results for most people.
Greetings: you’re not comparing apples to apples. Laser hurts most on the most dense coarse hair and when higher settings are used. From what I recall, you had treatments on your face on fine hair, which caused induced growth. So, even if higher settings were used, that type of hair wouldn’t hurt as much (pain also varies by laser machine and cooling used on it). On top of that, induced growth often happens when lower settings are used - so that probably contributed to it as well. Also, pain with electrolysis varies based on electrologist skill and machine and type of electrolysis used. For example, microflash usually hurts less than thermolysis even on the same machine, Apilus because the pulse is faster.
Thanks lagirl. Most of the hair on my abdomen can be seen under bright light even when I have just shaved it (I mean, you can see the dark spots in the pores.) However this may just be the way my skin is? It’s always been like that on my legs, too, but right now I am not interested in getting laser on any place where I am “supposed” to grow hair (legs, lower arms, underarms, genital area.) I just want to remove the rest of the hair first. So I am thinking laser may be a good choice for my abdomen, if the hair is in fact coarse there. I get stubble on my stomach if I do not shave every day (sometimes I have to do it twice a day.) This is probably coarse hair, then? If it is then great! It will be a lot less time consuming to do laser, at least on that area, even if I have to use electrolysis for my chest and back…
On the abdomen, most women have the most course hair in the middle but it gets thinner as it gets out to the sides. If the hair is coarse, you should be able to see it in any light. Bright light is deceptive. Without pictures, it’s once again very hard to give you advice. But in most cases, the middle strip will be affected, but those finer hairs around it and going off to the sides will not be and will need electrolysis. Take a look at my story in the link below. I had this area done and found that it was only worth it to have 3-4 treatments on the stomach as the finer hair wasn’t affected. I finished the rest with electrolysis.
Sorry-- I just don’t own a camera that’s capable of giving enough detail to show something like hair, or pores. All I have is a cell phone camera, and the still picture mode in a crappy video camera I have. Neither one shows much detail. When I say bright light, I don’t mean SUPER bright light, just light that is not very dim. When the skin is stretched on the stomach (mine is flabby :() I can see the pores even under the light by the lamp that is beside me (it isn’t particularly bright, and all the other lights in the room are off.) This applies to the hair not only in the middle, but on the sides as well. When I started regularly shaving it in January, I would say the sides were pretty fine, but since my hirsutism has gotten so much worse everywhere else since then, I imagine a lot more of my hairs have turned coarse on my abdomen, but I haven’t let them grow out long enough to know…
Unfortunately that is not an option right now. My partner doesn’t know about my problem (yet… I hope to tell him…) and I don’t really want him to learn of it like this. However even if I tell him, I am not sure I would ever want him to see me with a hairy stomach…
I know it can be hard to tell your partner. You may want to read some reports on this forum of others doing it and get some tips Interestingly enough, most say that their partners told them that they always knew but it didn’t bother them and they didn’t want to say anything to upset their partners.
I have made a decision to tell him, I think. But it’s a matter of when will be the right time-- I don’t want to force it. I was planning on telling him on Wednesday (we always have Wednesday nights out and then he sleeps over) but once I was with him the moment just did not seem right, and I strongly DIDN’T feel I should tell him. Now I think he will stay over again on Sunday night, and usually we have a time where we just sit and hang out and talk about whatever, so I am hoping to bring it up then. I guess if the razor burn I have on my stomach right now doesn’t heal by then, it will be a good reason to explain to him why it’s there. But, I want to tell him myself… I don’t want him to find out by touching stubble… somehow it seems to be that it may be easier for him to deal with if I explain how it is a medical issue causing this (PCOS) rather than it just being my natural makeup. Because then it can be blamed on an illness instead of being “part of me.” I guess?
Anyway, I know I ramble on so much here, but this forum is AMAZING for info and support!!! This is such a hard time in my life, and I obsess over my hair… and it would be best not to think about it at all, of course… but I do… so at least I can spend my obsession by reading this forum instead of standing in the light inspecting every inch of my body for new hairs!
It’s not an obsession hun, it’s something that obviously bothers you and that’s that. Your doing your best to fix it and who can ask anymore eh?
As you said, you’ll find the right time to tell him. Lagirl’s spot on, most partners do know but just don’t mention it to spare their other halves feelings. I never even told the last person I was with that I had back hair until my sister and me had a raging arguement and she screamed infront of him “at least I don’t have a hairy back”. I can remember just sitting down and crying and he just started laughing and said “What you crying for?”, then I found out he’d known all along and he didn’t really give two flying monkeys. I know it’s different for guys, but hey.
It’s good to vent though, so when you need to feel free
In the beginning I had a lot of fears that he would reject me (as you can see in the first post) but now that it is a month later than that first post, I have gotten to know him better, and I feel that he is a very kind, and sensitive person, and I hope that he would look past or not care about this hair issue. But even if he does, I need to know that. I need him to be able to accept or at least ignore my excess hair (even if he can’t see it.) If he can’t, well, I want to know that now, rather than later… so I will be less hurt… he is always telling me how beautiful and sexy I am… and I am afraid he wouldn’t say that anymore and wouldn’t be attracted to me if he knows that I am so hairy… but I guess all I can do is tell him and see. I don’t want to always have anxiety over this secret.
Hey, I had another question I have been thinking about, and I figured I would ask it in here rather than make a new thread (hopefully someone reads this far down the thread!)
Why is it that laser can only target coarse hairs? I mean, in a scientific sense? I understand that it can only target dark hairs because the pigment in the hair is what the laser picks up on. But what does the texture do to the laser? And is it ever possible that laser technology will advance to the point where it can target fine, dark hairs, or is this a physical limitation of the technology (like pigment is, I imagine-- they will never be able to come out with a laser than can target white hairs, because of how the laser works, as I understand it.) I am just wondering if it will maybe be possible some day to treat dark, fine hairs with laser.
