electrolysis for me

Dr Walker this ones for you although I welcome advise from anyone else.
I am wondering if it is possible to use electrolysis to permanently remove head hair. I am beginning to go bald (hence the name crazy baldheads)so I decided about a year ago to start shaving my head. First I used razors then I used a depilatory and now I’m back to razors. Both are a pain in the a@#$!!! I have to shave every morning to maintain a relatively smooth head and still I have that shadowy look where you can still see my hairline.
So anyway, I am considering to options right now…hairtransplants to get back my original hair line or permanent removal of all the hair on my head to hopefully have a permanently smooth, no-hair line look. I am definetly leaning more towards permanent hair removal though (I look kinda good with my baldhead :smile:
So what I want to know is…is it feasible to use electrolysis to remove an almost full head of hair. I realise it will probably take a long time and cost a pretty penny but if someone is prepared to take the time and spend the money…is it possible?
If you could give me an idea of the timeframe and cost that would be great also. Btw, I am a 24 year old black man from the Caribbean.
Wow that was long…sorry

My Dear Mr. Crazy:
If you think that was a long post, you have not been reading here for very long at all :grin:

Most people would agree that it is probably a more acceptable thought to restore the original hair line than to remove the hair permanently, but you are in luck, it is totally possible, and many people have done it.

Your problem will be finding someone willing to do it for you. Most electrologists would find this to be an extreme request. This in addition to the fact that many electrologists won’t treat men in the first place, makes it even harder to find someone to do it even without looking for someone GOOD who is willing to do it.

As for cost, you can do your own estimate. You will need help to do this.
Cut a one centimeter square out of a piece of paper and use it to measure a square centimeter of skin on the left side of your head. Do this on the side, not the top. Now have your helper count the number of hairs inside this square centimeter of skin and write this number down. You will then need to measure the area of your head in square centimeters (Length multiplied by Width will do nicely for our purposes) Now if you multiply this number by the number of hairs per square inch, you have a good idea of how many hairs you need to remove to get to first clearance.
The only question from that point on is how quickly can your electrologist remove the hairs while still giving the best treatments, and not leaving your head a scabby discolored mess. If done properly, your skin treated by electrolysis will look no different from the part that nature has started the job on.
If you get 10 hairs per square centimeter, and your haid is 100 square centimeters (You can see these numbers are for ease of use, not anything like what would be real) you would have 1,000 hairs to remove, and if your practitioner removed 100 hairs per hour (which would be slow by the way) you would have 10 hours of treatment to be done before you got to the point of manintenance phase. Now you just multiply 10 times your electrologist’s hourly rates, and you have an idea of the cost. It may take as little as twice that to finish, or it could be 3 times that depending on the growth rate of your hair, and the appointment schedule you get treated on. Once in Maintenance phase, one can keep the skin bare whith a treatment plan that removes the hairs before they are noticeable with the naked eye, and if full clearance is possible every time, permanet removal in the entire area can be done in 9 to 18 months. Most people however don’t get to have full clearance everytime until much later in the game.

See, my answer is much longer than your question.

A hair transplant would probably be a lot more expensive than full head electrolysis. A good hair transplant by a top notch doctor is probably going to cost about $50K!

If you get a hair transplant and decide you don’t like it you won’t be able to shave your head again as the hair transplant may leave small scars where the follicles are transplanted. After that you’ll have to settle for a rug and good ones are really expensive.

RJC2001

Thanks for the replies. Good advise.
I think I have pretty much given up the thought of having transplants. I have actually had consultations and all that but I just dont think its for me. Plus I think I look better bald than I did with hair anyway. Now if only I can get that perfect bald head with no shadow.
Electrolysis is looking more and more like the answer. But I still have many questions and alot of research to do.
You mentioned that most electrolists wont work on men…why is this? Is it is sexist thing :smile:
You talk about full coverage or something like that…what does that refer to exactly? Removing all the hair?
Then you talk about a maintenance phase… what does this involve? Is it just attacking those pesky hairs that just won’t die?
Finally, are there any implications for black people. I heard that we can sometimes get some pretty bad spotting and scarring.
That’s all for now. Thanks again for your excellent advise.

I’ve done electrolysis on my head,

you know the V like a receding hairline? where there’s hair in the middle of the forehead but not the sides?

that was my hairline so i elecroed some of the v, now it’s more of a W. lol

I’d add that doing electrolysis on your entire head would be a major undertaking, and unless the person was very experienced, you may find that significant side effects would come of it. Modifying a hairline is one thing, or removing bad hair plugs, but full head electrolysis would take major money and a major commitment of time, not to mention finding someone willing in the first place.

Hi Andrea,
I appreciate what you are saying about this being a major undertaking that will require alot of time and a small fortune. It’s really just a thought for me right now. It would really be great if I could get electrolysis done and have a nice smooth scar free head at the end. But I realize this is easier said than done. The money and the time are less of an issue for me than actually getting a doctor who will be willing to do it and do a good (or should I say GREAT) job. Do you know of any doctors that I could contact to discuss this?

Tiny,
Couple questions if you dont mind. Where did you get your electrolysis done? Where you happy with the results? How expensive was it? Did it leave any scarring or other skin damage?

Personally I think you would have to be crazy to do this, I dont see whats so hard about shaving your head every morning, and since your hair is thinning already as time goes by you’ll find the shadow to be lighter and lighter…I defintley would not reccomend this for obvious reasons. lol I wonder if jordan had this done though, his baldies seem to be perfect anytime I see him on tv.

Moe,
Thanks for your comments but unless you are a male in his 20’s who is going bald and is looking for ways to maintain a reasonably youthful look, I dont think you can relate. To say that I am crazy for considering this is to say that someone is crazy for having plastic surgery to remove an unattractive scar, or someone is crazy for having hairtransplants to improve their appearance and increase their selfconfidence or even someone is crazy for working out hard everyday to maintain a young and healthy appearance. I dont think this is anymore drastic than those things.
I added this post to get advise from the experts and to speak to people who can relate to my plight or give advise based on their own experiences.
But thanks for your opinion anyway…although it wasn’t very helpful.
PS. Shadowing will always be evident because as I am sure you know the hair on the sides and back of the head rarely falls out or even thins. And I’m pretty sure MJ has a team of make-up artists who ensure his bald head looks perfect everytime we see it.

Jordan probably shaves his head every day, or at least before every NBA game and TV commmercial that he films.

If you get thermolysis on your head you may wind up with little scabs all over it. They’ll go away in a short period of time but they will be noticable before they do.

There’s lots of nerve endings on the scalp too so be prepared for major pain if you undergo electro or even laser.

RJC2001

I am a female and I think it is a great idea to get your hair electrolicized on your head. You are 24 years old and God Willing, if you live to be say 65 years old or older, you are looking at eliminating over 40 years of shaving your head every morning and even sometimes I guess you do it 2x a day. Say it takes you 20 each time to shave your head, that is 20 mins per day 20mins x 365 days in a year = 7300 mins per year. Divide 7300 by 60 mins in an hour = 121.666 hours a year. Say you live atleast 40 more years, 121.666 hours x 40 years = 48666.67 hours. Now divide that by 24 (24 hours in a day). You get 202.77 days. So, basically, you could spend over 200 days shaving in your lifetime!! (and that’s only figured to age 64).

So the crazy thing would be NOT to get the electrolysis on your head.
I say go for it!!