Hi, I am trying to get rid of my beard, I have been epilating for a while with a Silk Epil7 by Braun (some places called Xelle) with mixed results. I had foliculitis (cured since then) and every now and then I get ingrowns (not many).
It is of course painful (very) and the effect lasts at best for 3 or 4 days.
My beard has a bunch of white hairs, so I gues that eliminates the possibility of using lassers.
Anyone with experience in this who could give me some advise?
Thanks
Electrolysis is the gold standard of hair removal. Since we don’t know where you are located, we can’t suggest local options.
You use an epilator on your face!? Wow…you my friend are very, VERY hardcore.
I used those things on my underarms, and it took out the hair AND some skin…it looked like my underarms were chewed upon by a large parrot by the time I was done with it.
I’d recommend electrolysis as well.
Are you male or female? I would stop epilating - that’s likely a big contributor to your ingrowns.
You need electrolysis, but we can’t recommend one without knowing where you’re located.
Hello Pepe,
i epilated my beard. i used a mini-epilator, the emjoi epislim. it only has three disks. the first time a given folicle is ripped, it is so painful that i had to do it in small increments. 5 min/day, clearing small areas each time, it took about 4 months to completely clear my face. i used emjoi after epilation cream quite liberally. of course, after an area has been cleared only once, the pain in that area the next time was about one tenth of what it was the first time.
toward the end of that long process, i discovered a powerful trick: a blow dryer. actually, it was z3ro who discovered it and shared it with the group. it made a significant difference. the pain was almost as bad, but i was clearing over twice as much area each time. nothing else worked. topical anasthetic, oral analgesics, they had no noticable effect. but it does depend on your individual metabolism. i also found out the the Remington Smooth & Silky epilator was somewhat less painful than the emjoi unit.
now i continue to epilate every day, but it actually takes almost as much time as it used to take to shave. so it’s not very advantageous. eventually i will do electrolysis when i have the money.
[color:#CC0000]Okay… Let me get this straight: You rotary epilate your beard.
You’re a bigger man than I’ll ever be. I’m not saying you should even be doing that at all, but you get the medal for pain tolerance. I once knew a guy who wanted to be waterboarded just to see what it was like. Maybe he should try what you’re doing.
Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it. That hair is way to dense and deep for that. And you’ll just be doing it over and over. Save your money and get electrolysis.[/color]
Not to derail the thread, but it would only take a few seconds to satisfy your friend on the waterboarding thing. Jesse Ventura is famous for saying, “He says its not torture, but let me waterboard Dick Cheny for 60 seconds and I will get him to confess to the Sharon Tate/Helter Skelter Murders.” Waterboarding feels like you are drowning, but you can’t die from it – you just think you will. Maybe I should modify that statement. If you die from waterboarding, it is from a stress induced problem, like a heart attack. No one lasts long enough to get enough water in the lungs to actually cause death.
Now, back to hair removal.
The worst thing about plucking a beard is that this IS a place where plucking leads to thicker darker, hairs with all kinds of distortion of follicles as a high probability. This leads to a more costly and more painful process once one finally does take up permanent hair removal. I have a client who had an easily handled beard (though it be plentiful) who waited ten years after the first consultation to start seriously clearing it via electrolysis. By that time, the plucking induced thickening of the hairs and root structures was such, that the treatment energies needed to work on this person went from the low numbers on the Dectro Pre-Sets, to off the chart nuclear, even on an Apilus Platinum! The setting needed to remove upper lip hairs was one I had only twice before used on any beard, and the beard setting was one I had never used before in my entire career. Yes, read that last sentence again.
Even if you get a partner and do DIY or go to a pro and only do one hour a week, or one hour a month, you are far better off working on this permanently, than what you are doing now.
YES! Do NOT tweeze the beard: you will have a real mess in a few years. Presently I’m struggling with a young man who has been tweezing his beard hairs on his cheeks and on his neck. He’s Hispanic and should not have distorted follicles … they ARE distorted! Treatment sessions are short, but I’m amazed at how LONG all of this is taking. We are coming up on 9 months and the hairs are still “coming back,” “growing under the skin” and causing bumps. To tell you the truth, I feel like quitting … but I won’t. This case could have been easy and predictable … but not now!
Michael, I have had cases like the one you describe. The hair keeps coming yet the epilations are good … the hair slides out without resistance. These cases are particularly frustrating for both electrologist and client.