As we keep saying, “practitioner skill is more important than modality used.” The difference is just how quickly (and therefore how likely) a practitioner can reach competency in each modality, so one gets to competence quicker in galvanic than blend, but not as fast as one would reach competence in thermolysis.
Those topicals work fine, and we also suggest Tea Tree Oil (Melaleuca Alternifolia) overnight and Aloe Vera Gel during the day. You may want to test them all and decide which meets your desires best. I like Tea Tree Oil as it does more than what the others do.
The antihistamine helps to keep swelling down in the early going, as the first appointments will have the most swelling. In later days, one will be able to get treatment and notice no swelling at all, while any redness fades in a matter of minutes, or hours.
I do lots of bear removal, and I can tell you that you will be very happy with your result if you get a skilled practitioner, and follow a good clearance schedule.
Thanks for the reply. Your reply reminds me of something else mentioned on the above site. Namely that flash has a higher chance of pitted scaring. Have you found this to be the case? What mode do you use when treating beards? I imagine again that this is also a case of operator skill.
Assuming a good electrolysist, do you see any problem with flash-based beard removal assuming thick, deeply-rooted hairs?
Flash based beard removal is not going to cause pitting if a thicker probe is used and entered at the needed depth. Using blend or galvanic, has no advantage when thermolysis is done properly.
The tale that thermolysis causes more scars and pitting is a half truth. Because it takes longer to get good at it, there are more people trying to do it professionally, who don’t know how to do it good enough doing poor work. Once again, good electrolysis, performed in any modality, leads to hair free, care free skin, that simply looks as if hair never grew there.
Just to follow up on my post from a few months ago…
I have generally been happy with the progress up until recently.
The last few sessions I have gone to have resulted in many of the hairs pulling when they are removed. Basically, as if that are tweezed out.
There has always been a percentage where this would happen during a session. It was low enough that I have not been worried.
Today in particular, around 50% of the hairs felt like they were being tweezed out. The electrolysist suggested that the machine was reporting correctly but that she believed the leads may have been damaged leading to an inconsistent temperature.
Does this sound right? What other factors can cause this?
In this case I didn’t feel the heat and consequently the hair was plucked out. Other times I do feel the heat (pain) AND feel the hair being pulled. I suspect this is the larger root on the hair or adjacent hair being pulled.
Thermolysis is being performed BTW.
How much more effective is flash thermolysis over the standard thermolysis. I believe it is just the standard thermolysis I am receiving.
Again, the effectiveness of ANY hair removal depends on the skill of the practitioner. If you are still working on first clearance, there may be hairs that are stronger than the current that removes most of the hairs, and she may not want to go above that current due to the increased irritation causing more swelling and making it harder to remove as many hairs per hour as you are now. There are many reasons this might be happening. She may even have decided that the best situation for your skin is to weaken these hairs this time around so that she can kill them later with a more comfortable treatment.
In any event, we can only guess at what is happening as we are not the person doing the work on you.
The importance of the skill of the practitioner has been made very clear on these forums which is great. The hard part is knowing wether they actually have the skills when exceptions mentioned above occur.
Regardless, the last session went very well for me.
It is really important for one to do the work of sampling a few practitioners before settling down with one to do the job for you, as you will have to have faith in that person’s abilities during the 3 months that it takes to achieve undenyable change. Then it takes more faith to trust in that person for the next year to get to the point where the permenant part becomes a reality.
Hi Booga - I am a female who once had a lot of dark chin hair. I had a wonderful electrologist who was able to clear most of it. I think I stopped a little too soon. It literally took 1+ hour per week for almost 2 years to meet my objective but it did happen. As far as scars, I have some minor pitting but I think that is from acne and the fact that for years I tweezed the hairs almost daily and that was probably traumatic to the skin. Also, the hairs were very coarse so the “holes” where they grew through are visible due to the size needed to support those big hairs.
If you look at a close up picture of James Brown from the 70’s, you will see the ravages of plucking on the face of a coarse haired person. It looked like mini golfers were walking across his face with cleats on.
Plucking facial hairs tends to thicken them, and if they are coarse, and/or curly, can lead to pitting that looks like divits of skin have been knocked out of your face, requiring microdermabrasion or skin resurfacing to repair the damage.
Yes, it does! If you see him in the Mohammad Ali movie “When We Were Kings” you will see just how pock marked and ravaged his face is at that time. He has since had resurfacing done, and took a smooth skin to his grave.
No need to take anything. Alli, dear, just go tomorrow and see how things work out. Benadryl may make you drowsey. This is not major surgery. Just go and try to relax.