Hi everyone - I’ve posted here once before to ask about my unique case of folliculitis and beard thinning / removal options and I benefited greatly from your advice. I’m back now with a few new questions…
Background: I have suffered from recurring gram negative (bacterial) folliculitis in my beard for about 1.5 years. It is located primarily on cheeks and jawline. I’ve had roughly 15 hours of electrolysis in these areas over the past three months and it has definitely helped to reduce the number of infected follicles that I’m getting. That said, I probably need almost all of the hair in this area removed to ensure that the infections stop for good. Additionally, I’ve had 3 LHR treatments on my neck, which worked great to reduce density - I now have virtually no visible hair on my neck, but I have not been brave enough to laser my entire face yet because I fear patchiness and the possibility of making the problem folliculitis areas even worse.
The lengthy and time consuming aspect of electrolysis is bad for me because I sometime need to take a round of antibiotics to treat the infected follicles (that is the only way to clear the bad outbreaks) so I’m considering switching to LHR for my entire face, other than mustache and goatee area, in order to speed things up.
My electrolysist said that the thickness of my beard hair likely contributes to my problem. She’s mentioned that I have follicles with multiple, convoluted hairs that are twisted / coiled down to the root, and many other follicles are angled sideways / growing back into my skin.
If I switch to LHR for the full face (minus mustache and goatee), what is the risk of aggravating these abnormal follicles? Would LHR be effective or would you recommend sticking with electrolysis in these areas? Is it fair to assume that LHR on my cheeks/jawline will be successful if I had good results with just 3 treatments to my neck?
(My main objective is eliminating the recurrence of folliculitis but I’m also doing my best to avoid an unnatural look)
There aren’t many laser techs here. If you’re seeing satisfactory results after treating your neck with laser, you can assume that your cheek areas will respond well too. Did you feel uncomfortable pain with treatments, that is usually a sign that strong settings are being used which is good.
I would say get your first treatment, wait a few months, get a second treatment, wait a few months and decide if you want to get a third treatment. Try to find a place that will give you an option of a touchup session 2-3 weeks after each main treatments. Touchups make sure all missed hairs are caught or energy levels adjusted to make sure hair sheds evenly. With laser the only main area of concern for patchiness is the mustache and chin area that’s where you enter an uncertain terrain in terms of how the hairs will respond to laser and how many sessions will be needed to even it out.
I really appreciate your response. Very helpful. My first LHR was quite painful but my two subsequent treatments were tolerable… sounds like the settings used were appropriate for me.
For someone like me who has multiple twisted, coiled hairs in almost half of the follicles in my beard, should I expect any complications or adverse reactions? As opposed to someone who has more normal follicles and growth. My major concern with LHR is making the folliculitis issue even worse.
Lastly, do you have experience treating a male beard on cheeks and neck only but avoiding the mustache and chin? A secondary concern of mine is looking unnatural - I now have a fairly visible point on my neck where hair stops completely… Do you think that treating everywhere but the center of my face with laser result in an obviously odd appearance?
I’m not a laser tech, just relaying what I know based on my experiences receiving laser treatments and reading from others. Laser should not make your condition worse. Other than temporary side effects like inflammation, it should help a lot in long term. As for concerns whether you’ll look natural, 2 treatments on cheeks will not produce drastic reduction that there will be a big difference between cheek and chin area. But in case you won’t like the differences in density between chin and treated cheek areas, you can opt out for electrolysis on chin to get some clearances later. What is your laser tech recommending?
My dermatologist is doing my LHR. I’ve been working with him and a few other derms over the past 1-2 years… he thinks that I will benefit from LHR as a treatment for folliculitis, but, given my situation, he is hesitant to predict how the difference in density between cheek and chin will end up.
My instincts tell me that I should go for LHR since electrolysis is taking extremely long and I’m not necessarily interested in being 100% hair free… My goal it to be 100% folliculitis free. And I think I can use electrolysis in the future to help even out any spots that were not treated by LHR.
Yes that strategy makes sense. Even if you will need to do electrolysis to even things out, you are not going to be doing 100% removal so much less clearances and less time and $$.