Hello everyone!
For starters, thank you very much for this forum. I discovered it almost one week ago and since that moment I’m spending a few hours reading your interesting threads each evening. It’s providing a lot of help and hope. Furthermore, as a Frenchman (26), it seems almost unbelievable to alone conceive the mere possibility of an interaction between professionals and patients, all the more so deep, reliable and knowledgeable. Here in France corporatism, secret and knowledge retention rule.
So much for the introduction – in a nutshell, all my gratefulness. I have eventually decided to post here because I would like to get feedback on the probability of paradoxical hypetrichosis after/during the LASER depilation of the back/shoulders/back of the neck.
I have been having a major complex w/ my hair in those zones for now 6 years, but it’s admittedly not relevant to go into detail, at least for now. Since I am now working after long studies and earning enough to allow me to deal w/ this critic problem, I decided to finally undergo a long-run and radical treatment in the hope of being one day done w/ the hairs. As a result, I have booked several appointments in LASER clinics for some free consultations w/ (alleged) medical advising and (mainly) cost estimate. As most of you do know - mainly through the precious feedback and work of Adrien, whom by the way I also owe substantial acknowledgement -, there is a lot of laserists in France but scarcely a single affordable electrologist. By unaffordable I don’t aim here at the price per hour dedicated but at the number of hairs done, and overall at the time-framing of the method, which, if I understood you properly, would rather require at best daily or weekly marathons. Anyway, here in Paris I must practically restrain myself to “laserists”, ie physicians of which just a few are dermatologists (there are some nutritionists, generalists, surgeons and a lot of other medical first and main specialties, I guess) but that in practice do not operate but just supervise carelessly from afar the work of probably badly-paid female practitioners who, of course, have experienced and understand a lot more.
I have already seen two laserists this week and, as they have expressed diametrically opposed diagnostic over my hair-type (and as a consequence over the suitable treatment!), I would like to get some advice on this forum, since as said earlier I am convinced that you are not only more experienced and knowledgeable but also far more reliable and honest on those matters. So :
-the 1st doctor I saw yesterday told me that my hair on those 3 zones (back/shoulders/neck) aren’t dense and stabilized enough to be lasered efficiently and durably ; it would just even the type of hair, which is now threefold (vellus, intermediary, terminal), in vellum, probably more dense, hence numerous. However he didn’t speak of paradoxical hypetrichosis or anything alike. Accordingly to him, I should or 1) make 2 laser sweeps on those zones per year to make the hair less visible or (rather) 2) just wax and wait 5-12 years. It was deeply frustrating but maybe more honest.
-The 2d doctor, that I saw today, told me that my hair were perfect for the laser, although I was under the slight impression that he would have said that anyway before me even unbuttoning my shirt. When I dared to inquire about possible paradoxical effects he just dismissed my concerns by saying: “hypertrichosis almost only appears to women w/ PCOS and you don’t ovaries, do you (sic, incredible!)?”. And then, ostentibly face-pulling: “where have you seen this information?”. He then reassured me without committing himself in any way: “I don’t say that it cannot open but here we reason statistically and there is just about 10% chance that laser triggers biostimulation, ie nothing”. To my mind, 10% is not nothing (!) and now I just don’t know what to do. I overlooked specifying that this second clinic was one of the only 2 Parisian ones that do both electrolysis and laser depilation. When at the very beginning of the consultation I told the physician that I would tend to think of electrolysis as more suitable and would prefer it, he dismissed it likewise, saying that it would last for uncountable years, that I am far too hairy (when the first clinic said on the contrary that even a lot of my hair are coarse, long and black they are not really dense in comparison w/ the clients they are used to treat, and added that they reject 2 of 3 males under 35 or so).
What do you think? Would you say that the first doctor is right and that the hypetrichosis risk is high? I would of course prefer electrolysis but it’s difficult here. Electrolytic treatments are rare and I assume very costly and uneffective in the long-run, again because of the time-framing, not because of the therapeutic method itself.
Sorry for the length of the post and thank you for every advice or feedback. Again thank you in any case for all the valuable info you share here.
Best regards!
PD: I’ll be trying to upload some pictures very soon if you need them. I just got a call from another center that this time want to submit me to a consistent and free skin (phototypic) test prior to establishing a cost estimate without commitment. I hope it will be interesting too: 1st doctor didn’t let me see which phototype he ticked in his medical sheet; 2nd doctor told me that I was between phototypes II and III.
