I recently started electrolysis on my shoulders, upper arms and back after several years of lhr with not much success. In fact, i laser caused me to grow more hair so i gave up on it and have now started on electrolysis.
I am seeing an electrologist with 31 years of experience who is a CPE and attends electrolysis conferences etc.
I have read in this forum and on the web that one should not really feel the hair being pulled once electricity has been passed through it, however, many times during my treatment i can feel hair being pulled and on some occasions it hurts a bit. I have spoken to the electrologist about this and i get a response that sometimes you will feel the hair being pulled.
I feel that on many of the hairs being pulled, after feeling the current being administered, that the hair is being pulled when it should it slide out somewhat gently.
My concern comes due to the fact that about 2 or 3 weeks after treatment in a certain area i have ingrown hairs. Now these hairs are not thin as though they have just grown, but rather, are thick and i believe that they could well be hairs that have basically been plucked.
My electrologist claims that if the hairs have indeed been plucked they would take longer to grow back and that she never plucks hairs; she always treats them and then gently pulls them out.
I am very skeptical of any hair removal method due to laser hair removal being ineffective. I know it has not been condoned by the FDA as permanent hair removal whereas electrolysis has.
Failed laser treatments, for whatever reasons, always makes life harder for the electrologist who has to spend a lot of time reassuring those that have become skeptical about any permanent hair removal method. You spent money and precious time on laser NOT to get results. So, it is understandable that you are here asking questions about electrolysis.
First off, you are only one in a long line of laser recipients who not only didn’t get results, but had hair stimulated on their upper arms and shoulders. There are two hair removal forums that have numerous consumer reports about this side effect and I’m sorry you didn’t know about this before you started laser. By chance, did the laser center warn you about this, in writing or verbally, before you started treatments?
Now onto electrolysis. What do you mean by ‘recently started’? If you just started treatments, then the ingrown hairs are not from ineffective electrolysis. Yes, hairs should slide out easily, but some hairs POP out because the lower hair structure is bigger than the follicle opening that it is trying to slide from. If this is a virgin area where hair hasn’t been treated before, then hair is in all stages of growth and some of those hairs have dry, hard white balls. Those hair structures are resistant and probabaly not in the correct stage of growth for a meaningful treatment anyway.
Your questions are valid. Work with your electrologist. We are not in the habit of plucking hairs, but there are variables to consider. I can’t say what is going on in your case for sure. Ask to see the root structures. I always take the time to show my new clients different hair structures so they can see the difference between a good growing hair and non-growing hair. They appreciate this. When a hair is resistant after treatment, I tell the client what all this means when they are on the table. They are well-versed about the process and the sensation factors within a short time. They appreciate this mini education because then they are not put in the uncomfortable position of having to question my expertise. An educated client is an at ease client who cooperates and participates in the plan to get this hair off as fast as possible.
ELECTROLYSIS will work for you as long as your electrologist is skilled and knowledgible and you are showing up. She sounds very capable, but learn as much as you can about this through her or here on hairtell. I like that Russian proverb, “Trust, but verify” for all things undertakien in life.
One other thing to consider in the feeling of pulled hairs. Often times, an electrologist is removing one hair, and another, untreated hair gets caught up in the forceps/tweezers at the same time, and although the treated hair comes out, the untreated hair is either tugged, or mistakenly removed as well. Most practitioners won’t take the time to tell you when this happens, as they are too ingrossed in doing their job.
I continually ask my electrologist whether i should feel the hair being plucked and she has mentioned that some of the hairs i will feel because the root is larger than the hair shaft.
The last time i saw her i did speak to her and told her i was concerned that i was getting ingrowns because they were plucked and that i thought that was the case because when they grow out of the skin they are thick, whereas if it is hair that is growing back then it will grow out thin with a tapered end.
For example, there are a few hairs on my arm that she treated on my 2nd visit and then about 2 weeks later they came back as ingrowns right in the same spot. THey literally grew out of the scab or red dot that had formed on the skin and they were thick. Now prior to this there had been no other hairs around them.
She stated that she is doing the best job she possibly can and that she is not treating hairs that she has already gone over.
On some areas i can feel the hair being pulled out and on other areas i cannot. Perhaps that has something to do with the thickness of the hair. I have asked her if she has had good results with people with more hair than me and she has said yes.
However, she said she is human and that it is possible that some hairs will be plucked - obviously there is some margin of error.
She is not the one feeling the current and also the hair being pulled out. I guess she can only gauge whether the hair has been treated properly by how easily it slides out. Like i said some slide out easily without pain whereas others cause some discomfort and about 2 weeks after treatment i can see some ingrowns.
I only started treatment 3 weeks ago so that is how i can gauge that 2 weeks have gone by since she treated a certain area.
She states she is being completely upfront with me and that it is going to take about a year to treat the hair depending on how often i go to see her, and like i mentioned before, she has been doing this for 31 years so surely someone could not go so long doing a bad job. I have not found any bad press on her in this forum but i also have not found any good reviews.
One thing to note is that for the 10 hours i have already gone through, which would equate to about 4000+ hairs(at least 400 per hour because she can treat at least 8 per minute), i only see a small percentage of ingrowns for those 4000+ hairs so perhaps i can be somewhat assured that she is treating the majority of hairs. I guess i will only have to keep on trying and see what kind of results i get. She states that we are doing quite well having cleared a good part of the hairs.
I just don’t know what to believe any more and, like i said, i am skeptical.
Holy goodness. You’ve been into this for three weeks and see ingrowns! Have you actually seen a full hair from tapered tip to bulb? If you have, then that’s good. It is impossble for you to see ingrowns due to electrolysis if you have only been doing this for three weeks. Impossible. It is crossing my mind at this moment that the hair may be breaking off under the skin because of undertreatment??? Hair through the scabs? hmmm.
Ask her to show you several hair structures. Look at the bulbs. If there are no bulbs, then this is something for you to worry about. The hair is probably breaking off below the skin surface. Is she wearing magnification glasses?
Are there other electrologists you can check out in your locale in case you need to move on?
Dee,
Thanks for the response, are you an electrologist?
So it’s impossible to see ingrowns after only having had 3 weeks’ treatment? I don’t like the sound of that. Is it possible that she is inserting the probe but not directly into the hair follicle and so the current is not actually reaching the root?
She does not wear magnification glasses but instead uses a large magnifying glass that has a light in it.
I have seen her treat some of the hair on my upper arms and i can see her insert the probe and then i feel the current and then she pulls the hair out. When she pulls it out she does it gently and it does not look like she is forcing it out and yet i still feel it coming out.
She has shown me a hair that she has pulled out before and it did have a bulb and was tapered at the end but of course she has only shown me a few.
THere aren’t many other electrologists in the area but i am going to look around and if i find one i will have a test area done.
I really thought that after years of laser with negative results that electrolysis would be my savior, but alas, it seems that it is overhyped.
Electrolysis is underhyped if anything. All you have to do is find someone who does it well, and be consistent, and your unwanted hair will be under control in 3 months or less, and it will be a memory in 9 to 18 months.
Yes, I am an electrologist licensed in the state of Ohio. I just choose not to have my credentialing initials on my screen name, but maybe I should rethink that to avoid confusion. It’s probably impossible to change my screen name by now.
The magnifying apparatus she uses is used by a lot of electrologists, I suppose. I never liked it and all I can say is using surgical loupes as I do, is light years ahead of those lamps for seeing any hair, anywhere, with good clarity.
The nature of the hair growth cycle is such that a hair cannot grow back normally or even as an ingrown in just three weeks. Once a hair is treated and lifted out of the follicle, it cannot come back for another 6-16 weeks, assuming that it wasn’t permanently destroyed on the first attempt. If you pluck a hair, you won’t see that hair for another 6-16 weeks depending on it’s structure and body location. That’s why I’m guessing that she may be undertreating the hair and it is breaking off under the skin. It wouldn’t hurt to ask her if you could see several hairs from the area after they are treated.
Just remember that electrolysis works. If it doesn’t work for you, then something is missing in the treatment plan whether it be a lack of practitioner skill or client cooperation.
You must settle this with her. I know she has 31 years behind her. That’s impressive, but you are asking questions because you want to be sure that you are getting permanent hair removal, unlike what you didn’t get with laser.
When you don’t have many electrologists to compare treatment sensations where you live, you have to either work with what you have or travel to find someone who can deliver the goods.
I agree with James - electrolysis is underhyped. It works 100% everytime it is performed correctly as you can read from testimonials here on hairtell. But again, the consumer does not always get the same standards of know-how from electrologist to electrologist. There are equipment issues that make one electrologist different from the next and that can affect the outcome as well.
what method is your electrologist using? how many have you tried before sticking with this one? can you try others in your area to compare their skill? it sounds like your hairs are breaking off half way, which is causing the ingrowns.
I’m not a big fan of electrolosis but if your gonna do it you can prevent the ingrown hairs by getting a product called Prince Reigns…Its all natural and i’ve talked to some estheticians that swear by it. They dont like some of the other harsh products out there because they burn and have harsh ingredients.
I get it from a distributor who gives 10% of your repeat orders. Its $24.95.
Well, prince reigns claims to soften hair and straighten the follicle thereby preventing ingrown hairs…Thats what they advertise. I use it and its great…and i’ve got corse, curly, dark hair (african american).
Well, i did as was advised and checked out another electrologist near my work as my last treatment with the previous one did not go so well. Basically as she was treating me i could feel some of the hairs being pulled and i would exclaim “ouch” to let her know so that perhaps she would be more meticulous. At one point she got angry that i was doing that and she said she did not know why that was happening and that i was the only customer who experiences that. She kept saying that she is doing the best job she can - well based on all the ingrown hairs that i got and the red marks she left me with i was convinced that this electrologist of 32 years experience was not doing it correctly.
In any case, i went to the other electrologist and told her that i had been seeing some one else and when i told her who it was she stated that she has had quite a few of her patients come to see her. She has heard of the other electrologist and has seen first hand what she has done. I don’t know how someone can get away with that for 32 years. I was not impressed.
My new electrologist is very professional and has a very good setup. She explained everything to me and showed me how she cleans everything prior to treatment and then did a treatment.
SHe uses blend and it was a bit slower than the previous electrologist but i am sure effective and i could not feel a single hair being pulled. On some of the hairs i could feel the needle going in and the current hurt on some but never felt the hair being pulled out. She is very dedicated and it shows from her practice.
It goes to show that it pays to shop around to find someone who is good - this may be a little bit slower because she is using blend but it is certainly more comfortable and i believe will be much more effective so overall will be cheaper. Who knows if i would ever have got results with the other one. I am just disappointed i went to her for over 10 hours.
If anyone is looking for a good electrologist in the Raleigh North Carolina area then you should go see Thelma White at ABCs of electrolysis.
I don’t think blend on shoulders, back, and upper arms would be cost effective in any way, unless you are removing a couple hundred hairs at most. It is not just a little bit slower it is a lot slower, but again I don’t know how much hair you are intending on removing.
One would always feel something different when comparing work on the arms as opposed to the eyebrows. The hair anchors are in different places in relationship to the surface of the skin, and the hairs are at different angles. That being said, I can’t say that you were getting good or bad treatment by what you have described. Either is possible.
You have to take into account what stage of growth the hair is in. If you don’t get regular complete clearings on your arms then you WILL feel the hair coming out and it is not the fault of the electrologist. Ask to see the root of the hair. If it is a dry, white ball you bet your sweet bippy you will feel it being removed. The only way to prevent that (and therefore get more efficient treatments) is to get complete clearings of the arm on a regular basis. Not possible? Wax in between sessions. You won’t get results any where near as fast as complete clearing every time, but at least you know that new hairs are being treated each time and so it is more likely that the electrolysis is actually working.
If my clients are willing, I like it when they wax or epilate their forearm hair before starting electrolysis. That way, when we start, we are targeting only moist, anagen hairs. Using the correct amount of intensity and timing makes it so that the growing hairs slide out nicely. We skip the first clearing woes of treating those hard, white protein bulbs that we are probably not going to effect?? Setting the autosensor/autotimer mode makes it even sweeter when the electrologist can fly through a whole section of growing hair pretty fast and then move on to the next section with the same speed and efficacy. Waxing once for this purpose is sort of like getting rid of the deadweed and starting fresh. Now, the client needs to have the mindset to go after all new hair that pops forth thereafter and keep the arms maintained until there is no hair left to conquer. That means more money and more time put in up front, but it goes fast enough and is pretty satisfying. Exfoliating the arms before each treatment is nice, but only do this after you are healed from the previous treatment.
This is not a are large area for those electrologists that have a newer computerized professional epilator, good magnification and quality light. No need to wait for shedding to occur like with laser - the hair is zapped and removed in a rhythmic fashion.
Well, then, I guess we can say that it is likely that the treatment is not the best it could be.
Your practitioner may not have vision equipment that is up to actually seeing the follicle openings very well in this area. In that case, the insertions would be guesstimates, and you would be getting a pinching sensation ahead of the current, and it would tend to make extraction more problematic, even if the hair were treated to the point of permanent removal.