As i have posted before, ive had 7 laser treatments on my front neck, and the hair is not fully gone.
It has been reduced and thinned, but some come back. id say only 50% is gone.
So someone suggested i drop the laser treatment and use electrolysis to finish it off.
so my question is, how long does it take? In terms of sessions. Only one session will be enough, or is it like laser treatments, where you have to keep going back for more sessions?
BTW, don’t buy Khalo, doesn’t work.
Since it takes 9 months for every hair to show itself even once above the skin’s surface, no permanent hair removal method could possibly work with just one session.
This seems to be a common question that requires fine tuning the understanding frequently. I will copy the answer here, too bad we don’t have a sticky, or a Quick-FAQ’s page for stuff like this.
The reason you might think you see nothing being gained in the early going is that you can’t see what has been done for months, or a full year. Take before, during and after shots to really appreciate what is going on here.
Think of your skin as a grid. Think of this grid as being 10 x 10 spaces in square form. If left to their own devices, the follicles in the first row, (1 - 10) will present hairs in spaces 1, 3 and 9. These hairs will cycle, and as they get ready to fall out, hairs in spaces 2, 5 and 10 begin growing, and brake surface just as hairs 1, 3 and 9 fall out.
Now it looks to the naked eye as if nothing has happened, because one saw 3 hairs in that area, and there are still 3 hairs in that space.
If one removes the hairs in spaces 1, 3 and 9, one will be targeting spaces 2, 5 and 10 when they come out in 6 to 9 weeks, and later, hairs will present in 4, 6 and 8. It takes a full 9 months for all these hairs to present. By the way, space 7 never grows hair in this example.
One should never have to treat a follicle more than 2 times. Three times is the most I can see, unless the practitioner is very bad or the client doesn’t show up on schedule. If the client is the problem, the practitioner might never actually get to treat that hair while it is in growth phase, if ever at all. (If you never come in during the months of November, December, and January, there are hairs that the practitioner will never, ever see, or treat, and you will always have those hairs in winter.)
So your skin grid starts like this:
X = Hair and _ equals empty space
X_X_ _ _ _ X
X X _ _ X
_ _ X_X_X _
X_X _ _ _ _X
X X _ _ X
_ _ X_X_X _
X_X _ _ _ X
X X _ _ X
_ _ X_X_X _
X_X _ _ _ _X
Now, in 6 to 12 weeks, the grid changes to this:
X X _ _ X
X_X _ _ _ _X
_ _ X_X_X _
X X _ _ X
X_X _ _ _ _X
_ _ X_X_X _
X X _ _ X
X_X _ _ _ _X
_ _ X_X_X _
X X _ _ _X
And it will change again in another 6 to 12 weeks. As you can see, there is the same number of hairs in the grid, but their placing has changed.
In most cases, one’s electrologist won’t be clearing all these hairs the first time out, so one is chasing the grid, looking to catch each hair as it comes out in growth phase, which gets easier to do as you clear hairs, because there are fewer left to present in the first place.
Does this help you understand how it is possible for the CLIENT to frustrate even the best electrologist by not coming in on schedule? Can you see why going long and frequent hours to start with costs you less in the long run, because you get more hairs in the growth phase, and have an easier time keeping up with the growing hairs as it comes in? Can you see how many people THINK their electrologist was failing them, when they just never really gave the practitioner a fair chance?
When you start treatment, the hair in your treatment area can be anywhere from 20% to 80% in growth phase. Those are the only hairs that can reasonably be expected to be gone and gone for good. Now on the hairs that can be treated, the electrologist’s effectiveness for insertion and treatment energy will dictate the percentage kill rate on hairs that could be killed at that time.
Let’s assume that you start with 80% hairs in growth phase, and your electrologist has an 80% kill rate on growing hairs, this means that of all the hairs you remove the first day 64% are gone and gone for good! (In the case of 20% in growth phase, 16% would be gone and gone for good based on our model) The key here is to keep in mind that if you stay on schedule, and never let hairs leave the growth phase after your first clearance, you will have even better results the rest of the way.
In your clearances after first clearance, if you have stayed on schedule, you have 100% hairs in growth phase. If your electrologist has an 80% kill rate then 80% of the hairs treated after the first clearance are gone and gone for good! It is possible in this stage of the treatment to have 100% effectiveness, whereas it is not possible to have 100% effectiveness on all hairs in a first clearance because you never have 100% available hairs in a first clearance.
If you live near enough to your electrologist, it is possible to get to first clearance, and keep the hair at bay so that no one knows you have hair but you and your electrologist once you get to first clearance, assuming you are working on an area that your electrologist can clear from start to finish in a week to 3 weeks each time. This is where being able to get large volumes of work done in short periods of time in the beginning will lead to short appointments in the end stage and quicker project completion times.
Now to expand a little on the subject of modalities:
If we assume 100% kill rate for straight Galvanic, and about 90% for Blend, and we agree to short change Thermolysis with a kill rate of 50% (your practitioner should be better than that, all the way up to the 80 - 90% range) we then can get the following breakdown of treatment results.
Galvanic = 1 hair per minute, or more (it can take more than one minute to treat one hair) so at the end of an hour, it doesn’t matter if it is single needle, or multiple needle work, 60 to 100 hairs per hour is what can be expected, with a kill rate near 100% on hairs in growth phase
Blend = 3 or 4 hairs per minute with a kill rate near 90% on hairs in growing phase. That gives us 180 to 240 hairs per hour removed in Blend per hour with a high kill rate.
Thermolysis = 5 to 10 hairs per minute in most shops and can be faster than that! Although it is possible to exceed 80% kill rate in thermolysis, if we short change it at 50% kill rate, we still get 300 to 600 hairs removed per hour, and between 150 to 300 hairs that will never come back. If your practitioner is better than 50% (and good ones are) you could expect to have 240 to 480 of those hairs never come back if they all are in growth phase. Even the ones that are not in proper phase are at least treated, and removed from your face.
So you see, even granting Galvanic an exaggerated efficacy of 100% Thermolysis still beats Galvanic on number of hairs permanently removed per hour, and edges out Blend, while cosmetically removing even more hairs.
Wow James, Thank you.