Hey all,
I’m currently having electrolysis done on my upper lip area. I regrettably (and stupidly) shaved my upper lip once and now I am doing everything I can to get rid of these hairs once and for all. I have some visible pores, which are my biggest concern. I still have some darker hairs in this area and am wondering once they become finer and less visible, will my pores go back to normal? The shaving is what caused them to appear, not the electrolysis. I started the electrolysis in the first place because of them. I’ve tried microdermabrasion just to see if it would have any effect on the pores. It didn’t do much but make the area a little more smooth. I’m wondering if anyone has any suggestions? Should I continue with the electrolysis and see if that makes a difference? Or should I look into non invasive laser resurfacing procedures? Any and all suggestions would be very much so appreciated. Thanks!
alexhay,
The visible pores - if they are active, hair-bearing pores, they might well become less visible once they are inactivated. You could try asking your therapist to use cataphoresis on the area, maybe with aloevera as the contact medium as it is gentle but very slightly astringent (drying)
You could perhaps have slightly over-productive sebaceous glands. Do you suffer from oily skin?
Just a few suggestions.
June
Dermatology nurse-electrolysist
Thanks for the reply. I don’t so much suffer from oily skin. The pores became a problem once I shaved. They are only really noticeable directly above my top lip line, and about half way up, with the finer hairs, they are less noticeable. I’m hoping that once the darker, coarser hairs become finer too, that those pores will shrink back to normal size.
You can’t shrink pore size once they’re enlarged (it’s not impossible, but definitely difficult), but you can definitely prevent them from looking enlarged by keeping your skin free from extra oil and debris.
Well they became enlarged because there’s now blunt hairs growing out of them from shaving so I’m wondering when the hairs become finer from electrolysis if that will have any sort of effect on them. That’s why I’m also looking into laser procedures because I’m that bothered by them.
Your pores contain oil glands that produce sebum, an oil substance that helps lubricate your skin. Large pores are a result of overactive oil glands and have nothing to do with hair per se. You are constantly shedding skin cells accumulate around the perimeter of your pores, making them appear even larger. Using proper cleansers for oily skin, along with toners whose active ingredient is salicylic acid, can help reduce the amount of sebum your pores produce and minimize the pore’s appearance.
As I said, the pores were never a problem before I took a razor and used it on my upper lip. If oily skin were to be the problem, then the pores would have always appeared large before I shaved.
Shaving does NOT have the ability to affect pore size. Typically shaving cuts the hair off slightly below skin level. For the first time you are most likely seeing the pores without hair and they appear larger.
Well, I’ve had waxing done before as well and that never made my pores appear larger, even though there were no hairs in my pores after waxing. Seeing as how I know what my skin looked like before, I know that shaving the area has made the pores look differently, most likely because the hairs are coarser and blunt from the razor. Thanks for your input though.
I think you’re concentrating to hard on an area that obviously causes you a lot of displeasure. Put simply, shaving does not promote hair growth or pore size for that matter… Any form of tweezing on the other hand will, it causes blood to flow to the traumatized area where the hair was plucked thus stimulating new hair growth (only sometimes).
I’m not calling you crazy or irrational, I think many of us can think of a couple of instances where we thought ‘x’ was the cause of ‘y’ only to find out later that it wasn’t true.
A dermatologist is also a good starting point for questions like this.