Is a hair that slides easily after treated considered a successful zap that destroyed the follicle? Would a CHANCE at destroying the hair be a better definition of a successful zap? Can you ‘‘sever the link’’ without destroying the stem cells allowing it to regrow? (bit of a hole in my understanding here)
Well, yes, its a very good indication that a new hair won’t regrow. If there are few stem cells left, well, a new hair will appear in the months ahead as a thinner, weaker hair.
Are you sure about hairs coming back weaker and thinner? I’m only confrontational because I wanna know the truth. I’ve heard a few conflicting answers on that subject!
On a superficial level, my take on it would be that hair ‘‘comes back thinner’’ because the tip of a new hair is smaller than its body. If you cut/shave it, it’ll appear bigger than an uncut hair that just started to grow.
There’s also a few illustrations online about early anagen, catagen and telogen hairs looking smaller in size than mature anagens, so maybe they are in fact thinner… But are they ‘‘weaker’’, thought (treatments more effective on them)?
There’s also this quote from Josefa about it:
Something to think and dream about tonight…
Just to DRIVE YOU NUTS, Mr. ZAP … consider this! Smaller hairs grow slower than larger hairs.
Thus, you can remove the fat “fast growing” hairs (say from a shaved face) and a month or more later, the tiny “underbrush” begins to show up … when the client has stopped shaving.
Electrolysis didn’t “cause” the smaller hairs … not shaving allowed them to make an appearance. Versteh?
That’s what I thought, danke schön!
Lets use an analogy.
Imagine youare inside a building, say a smally gym or stadium. Someone detonates a small nuclear bomb, inside the same gynasium. Does that mean you are dead? Is there any chance you can live to see another day? Well yes, actually there is IT’s pretty slim, but there is a small probability due to any number of factors that you could survive it. Is it reasonable to assume you will be dead? Yes.But if you do survive you’ll be badly maimed, and you will probably die soon if not right away.There would be nothing left of the gymnasium itself, but someone could always rebuild it ( as your body does the follicle to a large extent)
Well the hair follicle is similar to that gymnasium. Imagine that the hair germination cells are the students inside that gymnasium. Is it impossible that none of them survive the blast to use the rebuilt gym? Does the gymnasium have to be completely destroyed for all the students to die? Is it possible that one student, might actually live? Well yes, it is possible but he would be badly maimed, and arguable, not a very good "student " by that point.
Well the "container " of the follicle is a bit like that gym. In our analogy world, if the gym is completely destroyed, then there’s a pretty good probability that all the students will be dead. But if even one student lives, that gymnasium could open for business another day.
Our electrolysis treatment, and the bomb, are very similar. In fact both are radiation like energy which fills the container of the “gym” or “Follicle”. If the gym is not completely destroyed ( analagous to the smooth extraction of the hair) then there is a possibbility, some students, or germination cells, live to use the newly rebuilt gym another day.
And indeed, in a genital hair removal case I did recently, on a client that I had treated before, I found maybe 2-3 TINY little curled up terminal hairs, of completely incongruous size with all the hair that normally grows in the area. The hairs looked sickly. Like they had survived a bomb blast. But yet, they lived on. So some small percentage of the hair I had treated on a previous occasion, did not die. I’m actually surprised it was that few.
You seem fixated on the “Math” and statistics of electrolysis. And statistics can tell you an awful lot. But I think you should expand your horizons to appreciate the “art” of electrolysis.It might fill in some of the gaps in your questions. Statistics, while fantastic, can only get you so far.
Seana
I know I’m obsessed, I’m even using my own body to do some tests! I guess I’m more interested in the knowledge than the removal of my hair, at least for now… If that makes sense.
zapmyface,
you might want to look into a condition called “Body Dysmorphic Disorder” . It might give you some insight into why you want to be hairless. It’s relatively common, and we as electrologists see a lot of it whether we recognize it as such or not.Here’s a link to get you started:
https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/related-illnesses/other-related-conditions/body-dysmorphic-disorder-bdd
Seana
Interesting read, I’m not excluding the possibility that I might suffer from it, however I don’t necessarily see my hair as a flaw, but mostly something that I can get rid of for a lifetime of convenience (I hate shaving more than the hair itself!). I also only have a few very specific areas I wanna treat, so I don’t think it’s a general fear of hair.
Funnily enough, I would’ve never gone outside with a beard on before starting electro… Maybe it cured me! LOL