Is it even feasable to remove body hair thru electrolysis through a large area such as stomach, chest, lower neck, shoulders, delts, and upper arms? It’s as thick as most mens bears in all of those places. I just don’t know what to do, tried everything from laser to shaving. Nothing works.
Yes, it is possible, if you have a lot of patience,time and money. By the sound of your other post on the LASER forum, with 25 treatments with laser and IPL and very little to show for it, you maybe running out of cash???
If you try electrolysis, definitely go to someone who has the SKILL to perform microflash thermolysis,as it will clear the hair “faster”. By “faster”, I mean, you will not be finished in the time frame that most people are finished for smaller, less dense areas. You are probably looking at years, in terms of what you describe. You are a young man still growing new hair, so this will be an ongoing process before your body stabilizes.
My other thought, that has NOT BEEN PROVEN THROUGH EVIDENCE-BASED STUDY AND RESEARCH, but makes me cringe and logically wonder is, could one be harming their skin long-term by having so many light-based treatments? No one knows the answer to that question. We certainly hope not, and we cannot draw any conclusions until a good amount of time passes. This is not a scare tactic, but rather just a simple (and fair) question for your consideration.
You can keep doing what you are doing in order to have a “hair-free” period, you could stop all treatments and accept yourself and your genetic makeup or you and a friend could enroll at an electrolgy school and become licensed to work on each other. The last option would be less expensive in the long run considering your age and the amount of hair you have.
Lastly, I’m wondering if your laser experience was all that it could. Maybe the proceedure was not performed correctly up front with the correct laser and power for your skin type. Maybe you could give specifics about that after you read the Laser Faq’s post here on hairtell and others more knowledgible than me (I’m an electrologist) could help you understand what went right or what might have gone wrong. lagirl and rjc2001 would be glad to give you their input, I’m sure.
Dee
Chuck
I am actually doing almost exactly what you have asked about. I started electrolysis about a month and a half ago on my abs, chest, back, shoulders, upper arms, and back of neck. About two weeks before I started I waxed the entire area to allow only new grown hairs to be treated. Some agree with this method while others do not. I planned on treating all hair in these areas as soon as it grows out. With an area this large, however, an electrologist usually cannot keep up with all new growth.
I have been going for treatments on average of about three hours a week for about a month and a half. I have done one full clearance on all of these areas and am nearly done with the second clearance (just need a couple of hours on the abs). I would say the keys to being successful on an area as large as this is …
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Finding a good and fast electrologist, even if he/she is more expensive than others in the area. The person I use is about as fast as it can get, I believe. I honestly can say that sometimes I can feel hairs being treated about every 3 seconds. Of course there’s some down time for switching areas/moving etc. It’s important to try out a few eletrologists and compare how they feel. I tried out a few different ones and the difference was very apparent. There’s no sense wasting time and money on an electrologist that doesn’t know what they are doing. They are not all created equal.
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Avoid caffeine and keep yourself hydrated to minimize pain. I have gone through sessions both with caffeine in my system and dehydrated and the pain was extremely worse. It’s gonna be pretty painful regardless so it’s better to minimize it if at all possible.
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Go consisteltly and for relatively long sessions. Like I said before I have been doing about 3 hours a week for a month and a half and am almost through two clearings. If I were to only do an hour every two weeks it would basically have taken me nearly a year to be where I am now. Go as often as possible. Make it part of your routine.
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Prepare for the $$$ that it will cost. With areas this large it is going to take quite a few hours which in turn will cost lots of money. I have spent about $1400 so far on about 19 hours. If you can’t dedicate alot of time and money to an area this big you will probably not see much difference.
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Stay confident! With the money, time, and pain of the treatments, it is easy to become discouraged. Just think how good it will be when you are done. I could be saving lots of money by not doing the treatments but could never be happy because of the hair. Think of it as an investment. Life’s definately short. Get it done now.
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Don’t make any rash decisions during a session. The sometimes unbearable pain can trigger unhappy thoughts, such as quitting treatments or even worse. Just bear the pain and think about the good future it will bring.
I also had about 7 laser treatments on these areas before I began electrolysis. It thinned some areas but I can almost sware that it triggered growth in many other areas that were not previously there. I wish I had a finished success story to base all this on but i’m still working on it. These statements/actions seem to be working well for me.
Best of luck and keep us posted on your progress.
Interesting. I don’t hear much about electrolysis anymore. I would pay big bucks if I knew the hair would be gone. How much reduction do you have so far or is it hard to tell yet? How is the pain compared to laser treatments? How many hours and money do you think you’ll spend by the time your finished? What do you mean by first and second clearance? Do you have alot of irratation after you are done with treatments?
Sorry for all of the questions <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />
Good luck with the process!
clearance is a point during treatments when all hair is gone at that moment.
electrolysis is still very popular. laser is advertised a lot by corporations, so that’s why you hear a lot about it and they try to make electrolysis sounds bad to get more customers. the fact is though that for some type of hair (white, grey, blond, sparse and fine, hair on very dark skin, etc) and for some people electrolysis is still the only way to achieve permanent hair removal. And if you’re doing laser, but want 100% removal, you should expect to finish with electrolysis regardless. Laser won’t get every single hair.
I think I might try to just hit problem spots like my shoulders, upper arms, delts, and back of neck. I’ll continue getting cheap IPL treatments to my chest, and stomach area. At least that area won’t have increased growth to it and most of the time my laser tech misses spots on my shoulders more than anything.
I had laser done on one area and it worked about 80% but now I need to get rid of the other 20% … I am wondering about electrolysis as well … hard to find places that do it and I have no tolerance for pain.
Where are you from? We can’t offer referrals is we can’t start from where you are located.
Did you use numbing medicine for laser? If you did,you can use it for electrolysis, too. However, the newer generation of electrolysis machines offer a quite tolerable experience if you find a skilled electrologist.
Dee
yes, stating location would be helpful to start.
there are 3 sites with searches:
http://scmhr.org
http://www.ighrs.org
www.electrolysisreferral.com
use the search option on this site too.
Also, it would be great if you can post your experience with laser for us. people who get results and are happy with results don’t come to post as often as they should. what laser was used? what areas? what type of hair? male or female? where did you get it done? etc if you can post on the laser portion of this forum, even better. thanks!
I had laser done on one area and it worked about 80% but now I need to get rid of the other 20% … I am wondering about electrolysis as well … hard to find places that do it and I have no tolerance for pain.
The pain is not that bad. I have had both laser and electrolysis and IMHO, electrolysis is not any more painful than laser. Plus you can use numbing cream with electrolysis.
Also, the newer microflash devices are supposed to be less painful. I have no personal experience with them but dee can fill you in on those devices.
RJC2001