Hi… I have had 6 laser sessions and left with severe burns and ingrown hair marks. yay. thank you god for making me hairy and not allowing me to live my life. the reduction was very little. after reading these forums i have decided to go with electrolysis. THE ONLY professional who works with microflash thermolysis is stationed 7 hours away from me. so i have bought a train ticket and went there. had 21 hours of microflash only on my back. it took them 5 days averaging 4 hours per day. I STILL have 2 days of work on my back thanks to the laser induced regrowth thing. They were petty fast; the removal rate was between 10 - 20 hairs per min. I still have my front and sides and arms and neck and a lot more areas to cover. they have used golden needles and most of the treated hair came off with the needle. they said that those hair wont ever grow back and i should expect to see at least %40 clearance for those treated areas… i have a high pain tolerance so it didnt hurt much. I am going to have another session two weeks from now and this time they will spend 36 hours on me for the remaining hairs on my body. Taking the physical pain is tolerable but i dont feel alive for some time because of this problem of mine. gonna post the results later on.
Damn, I’m sorry to hear that youv’e had such a bad experience! Have the burns healed now with any lasting marks? What were the areas that hair was induced by laser? What’s the clinic done to except liability?
It sounds like your going on a mammoth journey, would be good to know what method theyr’e using, the machine, good lighting or not, whether theres more than one operator working on you at a time and so on.
It’s good that you have a high pain fresh hold and the fact that your skin can handle such an aggressive treatment. I hope this works out for you and the great thing about electrolysis is if it is performed properly it will work.
Please keep us updated, this would be a great thread for everyone out there to see what electrolysis can do for large body areas.
Good luck,
Benji
apilus cleo, settings are 8 for the thermo and 5 for the hair deepness i think. those are the max values of the machine. they have good lighting i guess.
as for the burn marks… hyperpigmented ones on my body are healing but those ingrown hair marks are not. i will not touch them until i am hair free if i ever will. the ones on my face are healed except for one hypertrophic scar that is becoming flatter everyday. i may need some steroid shots later on. there is one operator working on me since there is one machine available.
actually my back and sides have more hair after laser treatments. my front, legs and arms are ok
May I add my “sorries” concerning the laser hair stimulation?
From the electrolysis side of things, 10-20 hairs per minute is very good. Microflash is awesome. Gold probes are my choice,as well. Hair sticking to the probe happens, but I’m thinking that intensity needs to decrease a little. High pain threshhold is a plus.
Certain areas of the back are sensitive for sure. Some topical anesthetic helps in these areas if that is a possibility for you. This past Saturday and Sunday, another electrolgoist and I worked together on a man’s back using microflash. We got about 20 hours of actual work accomplished. The counters registered a little over 18,000 insertions after all was said and done. It is a tough go, but electrolysis will take you where you desire. With the help of a few marathon sessions to clear his back and with the help of his local electrologist to maintain the area so he doesn’t have to travel so much, we are going to get him permanent hair removal. He’s motivated and has the mindset and smarts to know how to make this will happen for himself.
Anyone’s first choice would be laser if it was a sure bet that it would reduce the hair and not cause more hair to grow. Some/many? men get excellent results with laser for the back and shoulders and then they resort to electrolysis for a quick cleanup for the remaining hairs. This is an ideal situation, but the problem is, how do you predict if you are going to be a success story or a laser failure?
Keep posting your stories. They are invaluable to all the quiet hairtell readers trying to discover what they should do for their particular situation.
Dee
“Some topical anesthetic helps in these areas if that is a possibility for you”
none needed. it only hurts when a strange burning sound comes from the root, like the sound of an electricity current. i can take much more than the current intensity. i just want to live free without hiding anything. right now, i cant even get close to the girl i like and probably never will because of this problem. That hurts.
I am thinking of using anti androgen drugs after my first full clearance. I dont care about the side effects. I was a body builder, i can take care of the breasts after i am done with hair and if i cant get the lady I love (and probably not going to be able to), I dont care being “less” man than I am right now.
I will keep replying to your comments and will post my results. Hopefully, I wont have to kill myself over this 
Oh,my.
I really feel for you and I really relate…it feels like my life is never going to come to fruition because of seemingly trivial unwanted hair. But it has such wide-ranging effects on your life, as everyone here probably knows. Just hang in there with the electrolysis…well that’s what I’m telling myself to do anyway, what else can we do? :o)
I suppose what i have to say wont do you much good, but when ive seen you mentioned "killing yourself (hopefully not), i just had to reply.
I know hairness is a curse. Its even worse when youre a woman, and when you give birth to a baby girl, and 10 years later shes complaining about her having hairs, and the rest of the girls in her class not. But let me tell you something. My dentist is from India. Hes hairy everywhere, although he shaves every part of his body, his back included. Even as that, hes one funny, cute, sexy guy, with awesome sense of humor , wonderful smile and even better personality. What better can a girl ask for? If i wasnt married at all, and i had a chance, i dont think id mind his hairs at all. 
If i girl cant love you for who you are, then most certainly you shouldnt change for anyone, but yourself. Trust me, most people arent that bothered with someone elses hair. It sounds and looks far worse that it really is. No one in my family can see my hairs beside me, so dont worry. Just keep doing what you doing, and don`t bother with anything else.
Some body building drugs and supplements are actually known to cause a variety of side effects, including extra hair. I think your best bet at being both healthy and looking good is to try to stick to a healthy diet, exercise, etc. Anything exaggerated usually comes with more side effects than it’s worth, and more and often more serious problems on top of it. Take care of your body!
Are you shaving meanwhile?
I know this probably won’t help, but there are millions living with hair and in great relationships, and many more hiding it thinking that their significant others don’t know while of course they do and just don’t say anything to avoid hurting their loved ones’ feelings. You may want to consider starting some type of therapy. These types of thoughts can be dangerous. There is only so much we can help with on the forums, but we’re not psychiatric medical professionals. You may feel better talking to a professional about your situation. In general, great relationships stem from one’s self-confidence, not looks. Looks can get you in the door sometimes, but that fades very fast. I have yet to hear of a relationship breaking off because of someone’s hairiness. People don’t talk about, but many people are in the same situation and are happy because of the people they have around them and because they feel good about themselves regardless. A society promoted by glossy magazine covers is not what the majority of people expect in their personal relationships.
no i am not shaving and not using any supplements. and the situation that i am in right now is not just that simple to describe. i must get rid of my excessive hair. i even have hair on my forehead and on my nose. no one i see has hair on his forehead… i am not under the impression of those magazines in any way. what is more depressing for me is in this country, no one knows how to treat this problem efficiently, that’s why i have many scars from laser treatments. everyone’s after my money on this. and i dont need to talk to a professional because that wont make me feel better, i will still have hairs on my forehead. this is not nice.
also, for the girl, i wont make any comments on her, i lack self esteem because of me being hairy and scarry and all, so I’ll still have to fix this even if i talk to a professional.
11 days from now, i’ll be going to the practitioner to get rid of the remaining hairs. i am going to have 36-40 hours of electrolysis spread on 6 consecutive days. i hope that would be enough for them to remove all the remaining hairs on my body. i will post after my 1st full clearance is achieved.
hi, i am back from my quest. this time i have had 21 more hours done on my back and guess what… it is still not done. we have 1 or 2 more hours of work needed on my left shoulder and neck. not a big deal though, they’ll get them next time.
i intended to have 31 hours of electrolysis. the first day, i have had 5 hours and the next day i have had 7 hours done without any pain. on the third day, i basically died. the pain was so intense that i cried a little bit. the area that hurt so much was my spine. on that that, i have had 4.5 hours of treatment, and the next day it didn’t hurt as much. i realized that it was because i didn’t sleep well on that day and before the last day, i have slept about 10 hours straight. so sleeping is very important when you are having marathon sessions.
the practitioners that i have in istanbul were using old non digital sterex epilators and i have had 7 hours with them. apparently, they screwed me because all the hair they treated is back, so my new practitioner had to go over them again. totally, i have had 45 hours with this practitioner spread over 9 sessions.
she is pretty fast, she removes 20+ hairs in a min when she is really warmed up and working on a flat surface, but she could not move that fast on my spine.
the reason it took that much time is because of laser treatments that i have had since it activated all the fine hairs instead of removing them. i should say that there is still fine hair left here and there, the practitioner said that she wants to wait for a while to see if they’ll grow or not.
the settings were 8 to 5 on apilus cleo. sometimes she zaps the same hair twice to kill it. a very important detail that i should mention here is that she didnt use tweezers to remove the dead hair. she did it with her fingers instead. she claimed that she can feel if the hair is loose or not when she pulls them with her hand and if it does not come easily, she zaps it again. she only used tweezers on the hairs that she could not grab. still, 10 to 20 hairs per min.
well, that’s it for now. thanks for reading my post.
Sounds like you are having great success with a very hard to work on area to me. Please give us the information about your practitioners. Finding people working in that part of the world is not easy.
I would want to address the idea that you were “screwed” due to your seeing hair again after your marathon session. In the do it yourself section we have a “STICKY” called growth charts or something like that. You need to read it. Since hair grows in phases, a person working on the perfect schedule would still seem to see “all the hair coming back” for the first 3 months before noticing any perceptible reduction in amount of hair. After that, the person would not be sure that permanent hair removal were being done until a year after the first treatment, as that would be the first time that an area that had been treated would be coming back into the phase it had been when fully cleared. This is why electrologists have a hard time explaining to people that it takes a year for them to know they got good service even in the best of situations. The longer it takes to get to First Clearance, and the longer it takes to reclear the same area, the longer it will take for the person to notice a difference, ESPECIALLY if no before, during and after pictures are taken.
Thank you also for pointing out from a consumer’s point of view that we did give good information on how one’s hydration, caffeine use, eating and sleeping all effect sensation during treatment.
well, james, i dont know if such a technique exists, but the people that i thought who screwed me were just pushing the pedal and inserting the needle to the focciles without raising their foot from the pedal. think of it like a slow sewing machine. also no “ZAP!” sound could be heard. it sometimes made a faint sound. my new practitioner showed me how hair reacts when zapped, it jumps and sometimes it throws out the oily substance out of the skin after zapped. but while those people were performing on my shoulder,nothing was happening. yes, i did not feel hair being removed but i believe that was due to the fact that the needle gave a different kind of pain whick kinda blocked the sensation for a while.
i will be %100 sure about that in 2-3 months since i will be seeing the results myself. before posting any info about my practitioners, i want to see the results so i can advice people who to pick.
How is your skin handling these zap sounds, jumping (is it the skin or hair jumping?) and throwing out the oily substance?
hair tries to jump out and a white oily substance comes out from the root. my skin turns red at first and sometimes the skin looks a little bit raised. after a day or two i get those scabs. they are like little dots formed on the treated focciles.
since my pain tolerance is high, i cant say that those zaps hurt. i just feel them, but it is nothing like its killing me or anything like that. i only felt untolerable pain on the day that i went in tired. after i am zapped, i feel an intense amount of heat for a while but as i said, mostly it does not hurt at all.
I would recommend that you get some numbing cream and apply it on the areas that hurt you the most (especially near the spine) It will completely numb the area and you won’t feel a thing this will make your marathon sessions a much more pleasant experience
i am going to use emla for my sides, because those areas were the most sensitive. i dont know how i will react when they will do my front areas, but if it’ll hurt too much, i will apply emla on those parts too.
i am going to have another session in 2 months, i am now waiting until my back hair grows back. after it does, i will have it cleared and move to other areas.
Got a question, i have had one of my hands done too. the scabs are gone. but when i look at my hand in front of my pc screen with the lights turned off, i can see some superficial bumps with the help of the light coming from the monitor. when touched, they feel a little bit hard. they will fade within time, right?
Generally speaking, such after affects fade with time.