Megasessions for beard reduction advice needed

Hair Removal Methods Professional Electrolysis
#1

Hi all. First poster here and occasional lurker and am looking to get started with my beard reduction by ways of electrolysis. Main reason for this is it’s hard for me to shave daily as my beard is extremely course and I end up getting irritated. Not shaving often enough also Irritates my skin… at least in the cheek.neck area, goatee area isn’t a problem for beard growth. I’d have to say my beard area is about 50% grey maybe a little less so i’d like to start with having those hairs extracted first. I live in the south jersey area and wouldn’t mind commuting a few hours since I’d prefer having mega sessions done. I’d like to get my back/neck area done as well but want to get the beard taken care of before I start looking at other body parts I want have hair reduction in. A lot of electrolysis in my area but they most seem to cater to female clientele with underarm hair growth so that is a red flag for me right there. Hoping to find someone who has experience in dealing with full beard hair removal/reduction. Any suggestions or advice that could point me in that direction would be greatly appreciated. I know this could take quite awhile even with megasessions but I’ve been sitting on this a long time and want to get started asap!

Thanks in advance!

#2

I have had my full beard removed with electrolysis. While megasessions are nice, finding an electrolgist who can do it is not easy. Additionally, I found my pain tolerance to decrease over time (e.g. first hour was good, second hour felt more painful, third hour was really hurting, etc.) Even when I do areas with numbing injections, after awhile you get really exhausted and weak from lying there so long for treatment. I did mine in 3-4 hour treatment blocks, and although it took more sessions than it would take compared to mega-sessions, the pain tolerance was much better in that regard. That’s just my disclaimer about megasessions – they sound very nice in practice, but actually tolerating it for many hours is not as easy as it sounds.

As for finding an electrologist in your area, I would recommend starting by looking at this list:

http://www.lauras-playground.com/transgender_electrologist_list.htm

Good luck!

#3

This Saturday, I will doing a mega session on a beard case. In the name of taking good care of myself, I define a mega session as no more than five hours at a time. If I feel like going longer and if the client feels like going longer, then I sometimes can stretch that to 7-8 hours. My out of town clients want the most for their effort to get here, but honestly, as I age, five hours is the maximum I want to work. With that said, taking a ten minute break every 90 minutes helps. It does help when someone lives closer - less pressure on them and me to achieve! No anesthetic is used, by the way.

#4

I am also doing “megasessions”, sometimes over up to three consecutive days. I always try to do 6 hours a day, but as i age my weekly limit is reached after 4 days. Those 6 hours are of course, not fixed, the client can always stop if it is too hard (or i stop because i am unwilling to apply torture). If things are going really good, the time can also be extended - my maximum is about 8 hours on one client.
Also part of the agreement is that i need to be able to stop at any time when i feel it is becoming too hard for me and my precision will lack.

Numbing with EMLA is of course possible. Breaks as needed, the first one usually at 130-150 minutes. But i have also done up 6 hours without break (the client was really calm and i did not want to interrupt the flow…).

And Yes, i do also know how megasessions feel for the client on the table. My own maximum has bee 4.5 hours (the colleague did not want to work longer, although i was still fine).

#5

There was a time when 4-5 hours sessions were the norm for me when I worked on other transwomen, in an attempt to make progress as fast as possible for them.Like Benton points out though, tolerance , for both the person receiving electolysis, and the electrologist. These days, I almost never go more than 2 hours, and that has a lot to do with pain tolerance of the personbeing worked on, and my insertions frankly are not as good after 4 hours fatigue and eyestrain set in in a serious way. That said though, it’s a lot easier to find a local electrologist for shorter ( sub 2 hour) sessions and book a couple times a week, than it is to find an electrologist willing to do longer sessions.In my opinion that is the way to go.

I dont know your situation, but I will echo some others sentiments in that a complete beard removal on a CIS-gendered male looks really odd, and if that is what you are going for, I would urge you to rethink this. You may well find that a thinning approach will look better on you, and is less likely to cause you regret.

Seana

#6

I could handle more than 2 hours of body work if I’m being worked on with insulated probes and Apilus 27mhz machine. On all other units, 2 hours is max and very exhaustively painful even with icing. I never tried Liodcaine topical creams with electrolysis due to logistics of it.

#7

That’s an important point, but it is also a point during a normal working day on several clients. And that’s also why i wrote “breaks as needed”. For both, my clients as well as me. Which might mean breaks long enough for making a cup of tea or leaving the office for half an hour to give the eyes a rest.

#8

Breaks every hour even if it’s only long enough to stretch my back ( my stool sucks), though tea is nice too. The clients need the break as much as I do.I dont take on as much work anymore though, so multiple sessions in one day are less of a problem, I’ve done it, and yes it was just as hard especially whenI used the old medical bench, that was a back killer!,

#9

I can usually go 4-5 hours at a time without any breaks on an area that is easily accessible… At least once a week, I’ll typically end up with 2-3 clients doing a combined total of 8-10 hours straight with no breaks in between (other than cleaning/resetting the room).

I usually don’t have any fatigue problems until I get beyond the 10 hour mark unless it’s a day that I’m doing a lot of brazillian type work if the client and I can’t find a mutually comfortable position and I end up having to stand and hunch over a lot. In that case, I need to stretch my back every 5-10 minutes and will probably end up taking some ibuprofen. Fortunately, it’s pretty infrequent that it comes to that.

As far as clients being able to tolerate long sessions, just looking at those that go 1 hour or more, I would say that about 70% want to stop around 2 hours, another 25% by 4 hours and a small handful only want to keep going longer than that. Most don’t use any anesthetic. At least half of the 4 hour people have fallen asleep while I’ve worked on them (and none of those used anesthetic).

#10

The difference in personal working time might be a consequence of the age. I simply begin to notice that i am 58 and not 28. I must reduce now in order to be able to work with 70+

Otherwise Your experience with Your clients pretty closely meets mine.

#11

There are articles that warn about prolonged sitting that I have begun to heed. On days when I know I will be sitting too long, I pop in an aspirin to thin the blood and set the timer to remind myself to move every 90 minutes. I sometimes jump on the treadmill in the other room for a fast three minutes. I figure that may help, too.

Take care of yourself Emancipated!

#12

Thanks for all the replies gang! This has been quite Helpful.

Brenton- Yes perhaps I am getting a bit ahead of myself with doing megasessions right off the bat. My main reason behind this was the concern of not being able to find a qualified electrolysis in my area that does beards. If i’m able to find someone local mega sessions won’t be as much of an issue. I have no idea what my pain tolerance is going to be regarding electrolysis! Very curious to find out though! I had some sloppy laser hair removal done on my back/shoulder area several years ago that hurt but I would have been able to tolerate extended hours if necessary. That’s all I can compare it to really. Going in small blocks during the week like you did would be ideal really. How many hours do you think it took overall,how thick was your beard and would you be able to give me a rough estimate to what it cost total? I’m hoping to keep it on or around 10k for permanent reduction if that’s possible. That should cover several full clearances for a thick beard I imagine.

Will take a look at that list more thoroughly tom. Noticed a couple somewhat local people in my area that I can look into! Hopefully I will be able to find some personal recommendations/reviews before I book anybody.

#13

Iluv2zap- Yes well if i’m lucky enough to work with someone in my general vicinity that does nice work then having megasessions will certainly not be as much of a priority. If anything several micro sessions monthly/weekly would prob be much better. A lot less noticeable swelling afterwords as well I’d imagine!

Yes as I stated in my first post I’m looking for permanent for reduction and not complete removal. My situation sort of mirrors the case of v convington in the before/after here

http://www.executiveclearance.com/beforeandafter.html

I would prob not want my beard thinned as much as his is here but you get the general idea! I def want to start with getting rid of the white hairs (about 30-40%) then see how I look at that point and go from there!

#14

Judging from what you professionals are saying the discomfort tolerance for beard removal is all over the place! Having some people fall asleep and others in severe discomfort after several hours is quite a contrast though. I guess my first few sessions will def be short to test the waters and see how I go with the treatment. If I end up booking with someone significantly far away then smaller micro sessions won’t be an option unfortunately.

#15

Yes, it is. It strongly depends on pain sensitivity and pain tolerance (which are, btw. different things). There are actually clients who stand the treatment for not even one hour. As long as clients do not come from far away i usually propose to do one hour in order see what would be the best schedule.

BTW: pain sensitivity is to a large degree genetically controlled - recently for genes have been identified which act as switches for various degrees of pain sensitivity. Pain tolerance is at least partially a mental thing: i could manage to learn to keep up with the pain electrolysis on my upper lip across two hour sessions (and no, that was no fun at all).

#16

I generally have my longer session clients work up to the long sessions. Come in for an hour and see if they can handle it, next time, I’ll schedule them for two hours and see how they handle that, then move them to four hours if they can tolerate the pain. This way, I don’t have a gaping hole in my schedule because they booked 4 hours and could only handle one, so we’re not put in the awkward position of me losing time that I could have been making money on someone else.

Some people find a single zap to be terrible, while for many, it’s not too bad, but over time, the sensitivity to it increases while the tolerance decreases. When describing it to clients, I liken it to someone poking you in the arm with their finger. A single poke doesn’t hurt, but a poke every second for an hour is going to create a deep bruise and you’re going to scream “agghhhh can you stop already!?!?!”

#17

This is from an old thread of mine I found that I had made a few years ago:

Before pictures:





6 days after a treatment (~8 months worth of treatments):




That was going in about 3-4 hours per week for 8 months (minus some missed weeks for vacation, work, etc.) I also started I think every other week and then moved it to every week to get more done. Right now, there’s still some stragglers – but now it would only take about 1 hour to remove everything that’s there now and I had more pressing areas to take care of! This was also at about $60/hr, so I’m guessing the cost for total removal came in around 7K or so. I never actually calculated out the exact cost since there were times we’d clear off what was left of the beard and move into other areas in the same session. If you just want to reduce instead of full removal, it’ll probably cost around there or less.

Laser pain vs Electrolysis pain is a very different sensation. It’s hard to describe. I found electrolysis to be a very sharp pinpoint pain whereas laser was a wider burning pain.

#18

“I def want to start with getting rid of the white hairs (about 30-40%) then see how I look at that point and go from there!”

…you might want to be careful with the strategy of targetting just the white hairs. Short term, this could have a splotchy effect. Long term as we age, more of the beard hairs become white anyway :(…

#19

Wow really impressive results! What a difference. Also nice to see not too much irritation after 6 days after a treatment? Also early on in treatment what would your face be like say 2 days after treatment? Would it be very noticeable or just look like minor skin irritation? SO i’m guessing you did a grand total of 128 hours give or take? That’s quite a lot more then I would have guessed considering your not all that hairy to begin with! You must have had 4 or 5 clearances total for that amount of time. Were a lot of the hairs removed growing back? My face is significantly more hairy then yours and much closer in comparison to this guy that had removal.

My hair isn’t nessasirly as thick as his(esp on the sides) but that’s a pretty decent indication of my facial hair although much coarser. The coarseness level of my beard along with the thickness really makes irritation from shaving every couple days a problem even with going real slow and using a fresh high quality razor daily.

Sorry for taking so long to respond but i’ve been working insanely long hours all the while trying to put together some bedroom furniture I bought.

#20

Yeah that makes sense. Having someone book a 5 hour block of time while barely being able to tolerate an hours work of treatment isn’t going to do anybody any good. 4 hour blocks seem like a nice treatment time too btw… kind of in the middle between standard and super megasessions…Esp if you go weekly you can make some real fast progress.

Yeah that’s kind of like laser hair removal was for me. When I went in for my consultation she zapped and prodded a bit to give me an example of what treatment will be like and I barely felt anything. However once I began actual treatment I really started to feel it! I still had no problem finishing but just funny how fast it creeps up on you.