To those who have had both, what is more painful. I’m looking for personal experiences only. In Galvanic it is the Lye that is killing the hair, and I was wondering if that is less painful. When I speak of thermolysis, I’m speaking of thermolysis other than flash and microflash. I’ve never had galvanic done, and I’m trying to buy a galvanic machine to try to work on myself, just wondered how painful it is compared to thermolysis.
The question you ask regarding pain of the different modalities is related to insertion skill, timing and intensity. Machine used can be another factor.
Some of my clients are more comfortable with blend and some desire the quickness of microflash. I never do manual thermolysis anymore. Galvanic alone, with no added thermolysis, can be very comfortable if the level of intensity is low and the timing is high. This is very slow, but if you are working on yourself, so what!?
Okay, I’ll butt out and let actual consumers relate their feelings about this. I hope they do, as I would like to hear some other answers to your question, Chuck.
I think Flash Therm gives the best ‘work accomplished / to pain’ ratio. I don’t deal with six-second blend intervals anymore, just too long in the follical. Both when I do it or a pro, I’ll go for the fast blips anyday.
Mantaray
Chuck,
I have played with all modalities. I even build the little home brew galvanic device that is on the web. Any epilator that can provide anaphoresis can also do galvanic with just the addition of a foot switch with one wire being able to connect to a probe.
Pain levels very with galvanic. But it is easy to turn down the levels and just give the current more time to create lye. I firmly believe that Cataphoresis should be performed afterwards.
This of course is providing the person can safely take DC currents. Not everyone can safely use DC currents because of medical considerations.
For myself, I consider Blend modality to be sort of a “How Much Pain can you stand”, as Pain threshold directly corresponds to how much hair can be removed in a certain amount of time.
My clients tell me often that they were surprised at the little pain they felt while undergoing Thermolysis or Flash Modalities. My Doctors response to having some electrolysis was that Waxing hurt a whole lot more than the Thermolysis Mode I was using on her.
But no matter what method it is far easier to work on someone else than trying to perform electrolysis on ones own body, unless it is something like arms that one is working on, and then technic also comes into play as it is hard to stretch the skin for insertion with only one hand free.
And don’t forget that when discussing pain and hair removal, the client has far more control over what sensation is felt. It doesn’t matter how wonderful the electrologist’s skill, nor how wonderful the electrolysis machine, nor how wonderful the vision and lighting equipment, if the client can’t stop smoking, using caffeine, and won’t drink proper amounts of water, get a good nights sleep, nor take care to have proper electrolyte levels and other nutrients like vitamin B and others, nothing we do will make the treatment as comfortable as it can be.
I really am tired of constantly telling clients to cool it with the coffee while they ignore me and yet constantly complain that they don’t see what my other clients are talking about when they say they sleep throught the treatments.
Coffee? Hmmm, I must have a higher threshhold for pain than I thought I did… I drink a big ole cup of coffee
on the way to my electro appointments! But then, I drink a lot of my spearmint-flavored chlorophyll water at home so I’m probably well hydrated–coffee or no coffee.
I was wondering about galvinic myself. Only thing I’ve heard is that people will have that mode done only on the most stubborn hairs because the lye sits in the follicle awhile. (?)
I’d like to know.
True,true. That’s a nice advantage of blend or galvanic - the units of lye created within the treated follicle hangs around longer to continue to work on any hair germ cells left behind.
Dee