help needed with patchy regrowth/induced hair

Hair Removal Methods Laser hair removal
#1

Hi,

I hope I’m in the right part of the forum - my question relates to IPL and patchy regrowth and induced hair growth. I went to a place to get IPL on my buttocks and back. I had six sessions on each part of the body. My last treatment was in June, so it’s been about 8 months.

On my buttocks hair has been reduced considerably but after the last treatment the regrowth has been patchy with some areas filling in OK, while others are almost hairfree. I have also experienced what I think are ingrown hairs which have left big bumps, and red marks/scars that are noticeable even after 5-6 months. There were also other marks, which look similar to stretch marks (looks like light zebra stripes on the skin). So I wonder is this normal? Will the hairfree parts fill in with time? I’ve read that with IPL sometimes re-growth can occur up to one year after the last treatment, and also that hair on the legs has a long growth cycle. This I hope could mean that there is a chance that the hair actually will grow back because right now it just looks so freakish that I don’t know what to do.

On my back I had only like 20-30 odd hairs that I used to tweeze, but apparently the treatment has induced hair growth on by back because the previously finer hairs wich I would say were intermediate/vellus hairs are now much thicker and most of theme are terminal. Is electrolysis the only option to get rid of these hairs? I imagine it is, but it just seem so hard to go through another year/year and a half/two years to get rid of the hair.

The worst thing is that I was OK before I started all of this, I mean I had some hair on my buttocks but at least it looked normal. Now I’ve spent lots of money and time just to grow hair on my back which I practically didn’t have before, plus having this strange very unattractive patchy re-growth.

OK, hope anyone can give me some info about patchy re-growth after IPL (if it fills in eventually?) and induced hair (what can be done?).

Thanks for taking your time, it will be so appreciated, and sorry if the message is long.

#2

I do not know if you are a female or male. If you are a female who is young there is the possibility that you have NOT yet reached your full complement of hair and you will keep growing new hair in places where you did not have any before. The treated ares can come in more dense than before with hair that is longer and thicker than what was removed. No two patients are alike, however, there are many who have a particular disorder that also will grow hair. Wait and see if the hair spreads to the abdomen, breasts, chin, sideburns, etc. If you are a male that is a different story.

#3

Unfortunately, increased growth is one of the potential side effects of LASER treatments. Electrolysis doesn’t have that problem.

#4

This situation is exactly what I fear would happen to me if I had laser hair removal on my legs and chest. The patchy regrowth is worse than the hair itself. Why does this occur? Is it sloppy workmanship or something inherent to the procedure? I have been reading this forum for several years and some practioners claim that they do not encounter patchiness problems with their clients, yet I read about it all the time. I feel really bad for you. Eight months is a long time to wait for the hair to regrow. Is the leg hair growth cycle that long? I hope someone can offer a solution to you to fix this problem. Perhaps having just the hairy areas relasered would do the trick.

#5

It is inherent in the procedure.

Just like sunlight shining down on trees has shaded spots and more sun hits some parts of the trees than others, the same is true of the hairs. Some get more treament than others, some hairs, one side gets more treatment than others, leading to uneven treatment on that hair in other instances, some hairs don’t get much treatment energy at all. Later, the problem may be not enough pigment in the hair to build up enough heat.

#6

One could get more treatments IIIIIFFFFF the patchy hair has pigment and it is coarse enough. Once one reaches the point of diminishing returns, one may be very satisfied with the reduction or one may have to look onward to good, old steady friend electrolysis to refine the patchiness.

Many of the cleanups I do on bikini lines, underarms and lower legs reveal hair structures that laser can’t “see”. When I work on ex-laser clients, I treat and remove hair structures that have very little color and that explains why the client gave up on having more laser. I’m actually very puzzled by a client that I have been seeing for electrolysis on her chin and neck. She had 10+++ laser treatments with a pretty fair reduction, but it appears that the root structures are lacking for the remaining hair, presenting as very dry root structures ( with no root sheaths) and the hair is having trouble breaking through the skin leaving the client with little bumps everywhere. If James, or any other electrologists reading this can offer an explanation, I’d value your opinion on this. I’m not sure if laser has changed the root structure and I’m not sure if I’m even affecting the hair since there appears to be very little moisture. The client is really bothered by the bumpiness. I think we are making progress despite these challenging hair structures, but time will tell.

I would certainly not fear laser hair reduction. Many people are very grateful to get a meaningful reduction that helps with ingrowns and makes shaving easier.

#7

Wow, hair sure is complex! Fortunately, even a permanent reduction is a blessing for those who are bothered by the hair on their body. Not all that long ago there were no options. Dfahey, keep up the good work. This forum is lucky to have you. The information your provide is not only interesting but very informative. I enjoy reading your comments.

#8

Thanks, met.

#9

It sounds like you didn’t have quality treatments. First, you were treated with IPL. Second, the side effects you describe ont he buttocks indicate not overlapping (i.e. missing spots) which is what caused patchiness. If the remaining hair is coarse and dark, I would do proper research on a better machine and clinic and get a few more treatments.

The hair on your back shouldn’t have been treated at all. Laser is not meant for sparse hairs. Treating areas like that can stimulate more growth. In that situation, electrolysis should have been recommended instead. Laser should really only be used on dark DENSE COARSE hair.

#10

Thanks for the replies, it’s really great that you take your time to help out. I also have some additional questions that I am hoping someone might have some answers to:)

When it comes to the patchy areas I can still feel that there are hairs that feel like they are “pointy” or a little bit like after you have shaved, which might be a sign of hair growing back? And I do feel that some areas have slightly more hair then say a month ago (but this could be my imagination to, it’s kind of hard to tell). So I am hoping that the hair is still growing back. Does anyone know anything about this, I mean if it could be biologically possible that there will be regrowth 8 months or more after I had the last treatment?

I read in some other forum (can’t remember where) about people stating that they had been free of hair/having less hair after laser up until a year after treatment but that all of it then had came back. I also saw somebody stating that they had experienced hair reduction for some time but that after two years the hair was back to its original state. With male beards I have also read stories about people slowly growing back to normal after patchiness in about two years. Has anyone experienced/know anyhing abour this? I figured it might be explainable by the length of the hair cycles, and I thought the hair on legs/buttocks was fairly long, which would mean that haor could still be growing back. But maybe it doesn’t work that way?

Another thing with the patchy areas was that the patchiness did not really show until after the last treatment, and then it was not noticeable during the shedding period but only after. I mean it did not seem that any area was missed since all of the area treated was hair free during the three first months after treatment and only when hair started growing back in other areas I noticed that it did not do it everywhere. That also has made me hope that these areas are waiting to “catch up” with the rest of the hair and that this hasn’t happened because the hairs are in different cycles. But I don’t know if that makes much sense really…

In the general info you can read about IPL/laser it is often also stated that you need “touch-ups” once a year or something like that, which to me indicates that you should expect some re-growth, right? How much is that re-growth expected to be? 5%, 10%, 20&? Or is this depending on each individual?

Sorry for all the questions but at this point I just want to get back to normal again and I’m wishing that whatever hair there was comes back, so I guess I am looking for something to hope for…

I don’t think that I’ll do any more treatments, which some of you are suggesting, since it seems really arbitrary (even if you go to a good practitioner) what the results will be, I’m scared of making it even worse. The only realiable thing to do seems to be electrolysis from what I have read at this forum. But that is very time consuming and I guess I would prefer to be able to just go on with my life instead of gowing through years of additional treatments.

With the hair on the back, I guess there is not much to do, I will try to live with that. I know now that you shouldn’t treat single hairs with IPL especially not on the back, I found that out here on this forum some time ago but then it was too late. And I really wish I would have done better research before starting any treatments, but I just thought the person that was doing the treatment would know what could cause unwanted side-effects or not, and would warn me about potential problems of the treatments. But apparently the person who treated me didn’t know or didn’t care what could happen…

Anyway, hope someone has some answers for me on the questions. Maybe Dee or LAgirl, you seem to know a lot about this!:slight_smile:

Thanks a lot!

#11

Touchups are only needed for NEW growth if your body continues to develop NEW hair with time. If the hair was killed, it wouldn’t not growth for a year and then start again like nothing was done. This would happen a lot sooner if the hair wasn’t actually affected, i.e. in 3-5 months at the longest depending on the area since different areas have different hair growth cycles. Also, something to consider is that generally professionals think IPLs have a much higher chance of just retarding growth and not killing the hair altogether. That’s why we don’t usually recommend them. One thing you can consider doing to really determine how much hair you have there now is to wax and see what grows out. Right now, all the hair there is in different phases of growth so you’re seeing different amounts at different times.

If the hair is still dark and coarse and dense, you won’t “make it worse” by more treatments. You have to realize that you didn’t get the best treatments possible. If you do get more, we would help you make sure you’re getting the best treatments possible. But once again, we would need to make sure you have the right type of hair for this.

Electrolysis would be possible on your back and would probably not take that long since it doesn’t sound like you have large amounts of hair there. But it’s up to you of course if it bothers you enough to commit some time and money to this.

Also, I don’t know how old you are, but keep in mind that if you’re relatively young, under 30, you’re still developing NEW hair on some areas at least.

#12

Thanks for the info LAgirl.

Not much to hope for me then I guess, that really sucks…

I have dark coarse hair so it would work with laser I guess. But I am really hesitant to try it, I think it was a mistake to do this in the first place and it feels like I would be sort of adding to the pain and embarassment to start another treatment which, when all is said and done, wouldn’t guarantee perfect results. Maybe I’ve got it wrong, but there does not seem to be any scientific proof that laser hair removal will give you a 100% predictable results and guarantee no ocurrance of side-effects, even if you have the best practitioners. And there are none or extremely few scientific studies on long term effects of having this done to your body, so there is a risk in that too, right?

And the other thing is that the parts where there has been less regrowth is basically hairless, I would say 95% of what was there previously is gone, there are some small barely visible light hairs left. So it seems that the IPL hit extremely well there, while the surrounding areas are still visibly hairy. And from what I understand about reading about laser it seems that it would take a lot of treatments to get the hairier parts down to basically zero hair growth. And also my intention was never to make all the hair go away,I just wanted a reduction. I mean there is still a lot of hair in the area around the scrotum, anus and between the “cheeks” (which I don’t think can be treated because of the skin being darker) and it would look even weirder if all sorrounding areas would be completely hairless. And I have already skin discolorations from the IPL, I think that there is a risk for that with laser as well (however minimal it might be) Sorry for getting explicit about this and carrying on, just wanted to explain why laser might not be the thing.

But thanks LAgirl, it’s always nice to get some answers.

The induced hair on the back is actually not so bad, maybe 200 hairs in total that would be needed to be removed. So maybe electrolysis could do that, I’ll have to think about that. Does anyone know the estimated treatment time for that? One year?

The ironic thing is that if I could go back to the way I looked before, all my problems would be solved. I guess you shouldn’t try to fix something if it isn’t really broken…

#13

I think you’re a lot more pessimistic about your situation that you should be. Also, consider the fact that you would have developed a bunch of that hair even if you hadn’t done anything. It would have happened with age. So not all of it is due to IPL.

There are longterm studies for effectiveness. There are some posted in the sticky posts. These lasers have also been around for more than 10 years. And they do not produce any harmful radiation. So there isn’t much risk as far as I see it.

Now, once again, you didn’t get good treatments. So I know it’s hard to imagine that good results are possible, but for dark coarse hair with a good machine at good settings, the results are night and day. I had my treatments several years ago and am hairfree still. But I had good treatments on the right type of hair. That makes all the difference.

Also, for the darker skin, there are YAG lasers. They would not produce any side effects. There should not be ANY side effects after laser treatments if they’re good treatments.

200 hairs is really nothing for electrolysis. I wouldn’t hesitate doing it. The overall time it takes to achieve permanent results is always around 1 year. The difference between laser and electrolysis is how many times a year you have to go. With electrolysis, you just have to go in more often because you have to treat the hair when it first comes out and is still weak. On average, an electrologist using thermolysis removes 5-10 hairs per minute. So 200 is really not a big deal. Of course, you have to realize that you really have about 600 hairs or so if you can see 200 now. The rest are in a different hair cycle.

#14

Thanks LAgirl for all the advice, I’ll have to think through what to do - now I now what my options are and that helps a lot.

Just one last question I am hoping you might help me with: do you know anything about what to do with skin discolorations caused by IPL? I have these parts where the skin is lighter than the rest, it looks like white “zebra stripes”. Any info on what to do about that would be great, thanks again!

#15

[color:#663366][color:#000099]laserscare’s quote:

“The induced hair on the back is actually not so bad, maybe 200 hairs in total that would be needed to be removed. So maybe electrolysis could do that, I’ll have to think about that. Does anyone know the estimated treatment time for that? One year?” [/color][/color]

Lagirl can address your skin discolorations, but I will say that this will resolve with time most likely.

A MODERNLY equipped electrologist armed with the better tools of the trade, can fully clear those measly 200 hundred hairs in about 30 minutes or less if they use the faster modes of electrolysis. Time it takes will be the same as it would be for laser (if it works), which is 9-12 months on average for a situation like yours. If it takes a few months more to get the remaining troublemakers, then no big deal, just get them.

Laser reduction and electrolysis are dependent on HAIR GROWTH CYCLES and you can not hope to get full removal or reduction before nine months as a rule, but both will get you where you are much satisfied by month 12?, 13?, 14?, 15?, 16?, 17?, 18?. ‘How long’ questions are the same for electrolysis and laser, the difference is, the outcome of one (electrolysis) is more predictable and stable than for the other (laser). This is assuming that the human beings behind these modalities are top-notch in their specialties.

Don’t be afraid of the money issue, time and effectiveness of electrolysis. It works fabulously well for all types of hair (color and structure) on all colors of skin. It is not as expensive as laser in most cases. It is permanent hair removal- the gold standard by which all hair removal is judged. I ask my clients after they have completed their electrolysis journey if it was worth the $420 they have paid me over a period of a year to have the hair permanently affected on their upper lip? They resoundingly say, “OH, YES!” I ask the the chin and sideburn client the same thing if it was worth spending $1,800 over 1.5 years to not have to shave every single day with all the side effects of that shaving brings? Guess how they reply? “YES! YES! YES!”. I ask the man with a formerly hairy back, if it was worth the $4,500 he paid me over 14 months to have permanent hair removal. He assures me it was money well spent. Electrolysis works. It takes effort. It takes time. Some cases are easy and some cases are steeply challenging and take more time and effort than others. It takes motivation, but within a short time span in your life, it’s over or controlled. We cannot stop new hair from growing, but we can attack it as it comes forth over the years.

People will plow down thousands of dollars along with all their hopes for light-based treatments with no questions asked about time, skin damage and effectiveness, but come forth with all kinds of questions about electrolysis with unmatched hesitation. All I can say is, to make hair removal (electrolysis) or hair reduction (laser/IPL) work for you, the best action to take is to research, sample and then settle on the best human being who knows how to deliver the best care with the best equipment possible.

Long-winded as usual, but always passionate,

Dee

#16

You have pigmentation which should resolve with time. You can see a dermatologist to see if there are creams that can help speed it up.

#17

This is hypopigmentation. It may not resolve itself as quickly(2+ years) as hyperpigmentation does. This is why IPL’s are used to remove age spots, they remove pigment. Some dermatologists speed up the re-pigmentation process with Elidel (or generic).

#18

Thanks lagirl, Choice, and Dee,

Maybe electrolysis will be an option, especially since it seems to be able get the kind of results I would be looking for on the back. But this would also depend on if I can find someone to do it right and as I live in a small town in Europe there aren’t a whole lot of options to choose from.

And thanks for the info on skindiscolorations, hopefully they will improve over time.

Another thing that I have a problem on the area treated are ingrown hairs: I keep getting occasional red, inflammated pimple-like bumps where I had the IPL done on my buttocks. This keeps happening now even if regrowth should have stopped. I never had any problems with this before the IPL, but know it keeps happening and it’s just not a very nice thing which also tends to leave quite ugly marks. I read somewhere that some people had problems after laser treatments with ingrown hairs because the hair had become so thin that it had problems breaking the skin surface. Could this be the case? Do you know why this happens and if there is anything to do to prevent it?

I’d be really thankful to get some thoughts on this and I am really appreciating your efforts to answer all my questions. This experience with IPL has really been worse for me than I could ever imagine, but it helps a lot to get some answers from people like you who actually know what you are talking about. Thanks again!

#19

Did you remove hair on that area with other methods before? If so, which methods? Ingrowns usually happen when you remove hair, regardless of the method. Also, once the hair gets finer, there is often more potential for ingrowns because the hair is not strong enough to push through the skin for example.

#20

I would exfoliate gently everyday in the shower. There are a lot of ways to do this with different products. You can read up on what works best for your situation.