I am currently practicting on a male leg and have done about 30-40 hours just on the front of the shin. I see classical frothing/bubbling, and hairs are cleanly relased without plucking, with bulb removed intact, or shaft seperated from bulb (but I can gently massage the bulb segment out of the surface of the follicle).
After about 30-40 hours I see no discernable reduction in hair density and I am not convinced i’ve actually killed a single follcile, but at all measurements everything feels like I should be seeing success here.
Parameters are: Sterex SX-B, F4 two-piece probes, Therm 4/Time 10s/0.5mA (50U of lye). I have noticed that between Therm 0 and 4 (pure galvanic and blend) that there is really no difference in the amount of releases.)
Any ideas what I might be doing wrong? I want to make sure it’s not something else before I just start increasing more units.
30 hours-40 hours but how many clearances and over what interval were these treatments? How do you setup your energy levels? Do you lead with HF current first? Do you match the thickness of needle to thickness of the hair size?
I haven’t done any full clearances and this client hasn’t electrolysis before. I am currently practicing on them 2 hours a week. I am not expecting massive changes at the moment but it feels like no changes at all. I will get some pictures next session.
Regarding leading with HF current first, the Sterex unit doesn’t have settings to adjust when HF occurs, but since it is blend it’s safe to assume there is no lead, just HF+galvanic simultaneously . I am following their instructions for blend mode in the manual.
I have F3 and F4 probes at the moment and do try to size it to the hairs. I will get some F5 probes as well for the really chunky hairs.
If you haven’t achieved clearances that probably answers your question why you’re not seeing changes. Pick a small area and do clearances on it so you can track progress. Scattering work all over the leg regardless if it’s 40 hours, is going to be hard to see changes. Also don’t forget to check depth gauge to make sure you’re inserting to correct depth.
Just posting some updates here - out of pure curisoity, I decided to see if ‘slow’ thermolysis on the sterex unit would do anything. Turns out using non-insulated probes, with a time of 1 to 1.5 second, and a moderate amount of power, I get WAY faster results, cleaner extractions (less hair breaks) and the client finds it much more tolerable. They have a bit more minor scabbing than blend (very small, just covering the follicle opening) that takes a few weeks to properly dissapear but i’m mowing through his hair leg now and seeing progress that we’re both happy with, and no noticable blemishes/scarring/overtreatment.
Interestingly I tried today using an insulated probe for the first time and it felt very strange, it would get ‘stuck’ in the follicle post-zap, felt very wierd, did not feel good at all, went back to uninsulated and smooth as butter. Will have to play around with them some more.