I started my first treatment 4 weeks ago and i felt great… my electrologist had 32 years of experience and urged me to come 2 times a week to thin out the hairs as much as possible since i have been transitioning to female for 3 years now (i had very dense hair growth)
I followed her instructions and after 2 weeks things still seemed good, had a little dent on my chin but nothing i noticed before it was too late… After the 4th week and most recent treatments I HAVE PITS ALL OVER MY RIGHT SIDE CHIN AND HALF OVER LEFT SIDE… the 2 pics are 18 days after treatment…
She told me over the phone it was going to go away after 2-6 months by itself, i do not believe her after the information i have gathered on different forums and videos, someone please help me it feels like my life is over, im getting so many questions on the daily about my wounds on the chin and why it looks discoulered! This is literally about to out to everyone i know since i cant hide it!
What technique of electrolysis was used? thermolysis or blend or galvanic?
I would suggest that you start using silicon gel it helps reduce the scarring over the skin. Lot of silicon gels / creams are available over the counter. I would also have suggested steriod cream for initial 2 weeks but since it is not available over the counter you will have to get a prescription for it. I would also suggest to get a dermatologist opinion as well. It will do no harm to get an opinion. The scars do tend to lighten and fade away with time. In case of dense growth it is always better to skip some hairs in between the two hairs to prevent circle of injury to skin and repeat session after one month. One must always remember that the turn over time of skin is 28 days, therefore skin will taken approx. a month to heal itself. No need to hurry. Let the skin heal to maximum before the next session. That would be my advise. Drink lot of water to hydrate skin and prevent exposure to sunlight as sunlight will tend to increase pigmentation of the already irritated skin. Avoid any irritating cosmetic over the affected skin.
Im not sure of the technique, it just says theyre using a needle and electric current…
My mom is gonna send me some of the creams to help with it hopefully it will heal properly since i really cant live with this much scarring this early in the treatments
EDIT: the person treating me is also a dermatologist but, i really don’t know if i can trust her after i wasnt informed of what would happen to my skin if we pressed on as much as we did early
Thx for the answer, this has me really panicking right now
It is not uncommon. Please, do not get scared. I am not sure who you are listening to or what you are reading. There are lots of people pretending that they know just to get some kind of attention. I agree that your electrologist should warn you that may happen, but the process is not uncommon. See this https://www.hairbusted.com/electrolysiscase-studies.html t
These are my clients. Scarring will happen, because she/he needs to find the right intensity for your hairs and if the hairs are coarse and your skin thin that’s when it becomes challenging. We call it China Doll effect. Thin skin/Coarse hairs are extremely challenging for both of you and it causes the Orange skin effect.
The pits you have called orange skin effect, due to the losing of collagen. I read the suggestion my colleague gave you regarding the silicon and steroid creams and I agree 100%. My favorite steroid cream is over the counter cortisone 1%. There is another one that’s called neem oil, does the wonders for the scarring after electrolysis, after acne, and acts as natural antibiotic.Brand does not matter, they all work, just make sure only ingredient is neem.
One last solution: Do the face peel-cross for the scars. Normally, skin needs to heal one round year. after that you will know what to address.So, I suggest wit for 1 year, let the skin heal and then do the peel. Best is TCA cross in my practice and you’ll get your smooth skin back.
Thank you for the answer, it has me a bit more calmer… I was aware scarring would happen in the long run but, just not this early My mom is sending me some of that this week i believe with some pure aloe vera cream as well to help with the healing process.
I really just hope i can come out with a success story in this, have had over 30 laser sessions and still couldn’t walk more than 1 day without shaving, i just want this nightmare to end.
Thank you for the tips i greatly appreciate it, incredible how you can full clear! my treater only does 10-20 mins at a time
Do not get me wrong: stop laser. Laser is not permanent. You are wasting your money. Hairs will come back. On top of it you are radiating yourself.
Do not take my word. Google yourself.
Laser is a radiation:
L igth
A mplification by
S timulated
E mission of
R adiation
It is the same as people do radiation treatment for cancer. They lose their hairs and shave the head and later hair grows back, do you see the similarity with laser?
When working on large areas-I take every other hair if the hairs are too close. Later I wipe everything out. Why only 10-20 min treatment, do you have good pain tollerance?
Oh yeah im not going back to laser as it does nothing for me.
Im going to talk to her and ask if we can have a little space between each treated hair so the scarring isn’t as bad as it has been so far. She only offers max 20 mins sessions, my pain tolerance is okay but, i would have no problems sitting there for hours to clear everything if i had a chance!
No, no, no. I am not an electrologist, but I am a skin care professional and that is NOT normal. I have had literally hundreds of hours of electrolysis on my face and body, and I have NEVER had anything that looked like that. People mean well, but I do think sometimes electrologists on here downplay the seriousness of some of what we see because they want to protect their associates. Also, it is true that most “bad” reactions will smooth out over time. Having said that, do NOT go back to that person, and do not let anyone tell you “this is normal.” Some minor skin irregularities, lingering redness, etc. are to be expected and will heal. Those deep craters and acne-like “ice pick” wounds are not to be expected and may not ever resolve. I recommend seeking out at least 2-3 other opinions and operators or considering going to a specialty place that does a lot of trans women. I ended up having to have laser skin resurfacing of my chin and upper lip due to a series of poor treatments I had with one operator, and I don’t want others to have to go through that. And my skin did not look as bad as what you are dealing with.
nope sorry, I have to interupt here WerenotAfraid and point out that we are seeing the skin a scant 4 weeks from treatment.And transgender beard hairs can be course , deep, and difficult to get a release on. What you are seeing as pits is inflamation. The skin isnt anywhere near done it’s healing process. I highly recommend a viewing of Michael Bono’ “the healing Skin” video series to show you timelines of healing and of the skin post treatment. What you have here is plain old orange peel effect combined with inflamation from the treatments. We know nothing almost of the hair removal that was done in this area, and more importantly we dont have “before” pictures either.
My message? Chill . Wait it out. The skin condition will resolve and I’ve seen much worse resolve completely. The type of pitting WereNotAfraid is mixing this up with takes up to a year of treatment to present itself. You’re okay to continue and I would say " Just relax. " It’s going to be okay.
I’ve been doing electrolysis for 2 months now. I’ve seen 3 different people and one completely massacred my skin. She put the needle in the skin, and turning it around in small circles, while still in my skin.
I can tell you, I felt something was wrong.
When finished, I saw my skin was not only bleeding at some places, but also sweeting and super red and I inflated.
I was transformed into Bogdanov!!
Because I was so new, I was thinking « let’s see how this heals ». But no way. It took me 1 week to stop being red. It took one month to become « normal » (not inflated). And now… well… I have scarfs.
So I believe you are in the same scenario.
Don’t ever go back to that person!
I’ve rated her badly after that massacre but I’m surprised she had a lot of good reviews.
Electrolysis shouldn’t massacre your skin!
Your skin is red and inflated, but after 2 - 3 hours it’s back to normal. If not, there’s a big red flag.
Next time, do just a 5 minute test when you go see a new doctor or electrolysist.
Very good advice. The two danger areas I always talk about are consistently “massacred” by overly-aggressive treatments. I mean, why is the cautious strategy not generally employed. So what, the final result will be delayed … but DAMN I would rather see some delay than skin that is butchered.
The only similarity between laser and cancer radiotherapy is that both use electromagnetic (EM) radiation.
This might come as surprise but visible light is also a form of EM radiation.
These different forms of EM radiation can be put on a spectrum ranging from low energy (low frequency, large wavelength) like radiowaves and microwaves to high energy (high frequency, small wavelength) like X-rays and gamma rays.
Energy here strictly refers to the energy of the quanta of light (a photon particle). The energy of visible light from say, the sun or a light bulb dissipating on human skin will be much higher than the energies provided in the linked table. That is because such a beam of light would consist of many individual photons, each carrying a certain small amount of energy. The energy dissipated on the skin would thus be the sum of the energies of these individual photons.
Now, if the sun were to be moved in closer, or the power of the light bulb was to increase, there would be more photons hitting the skin, resulting in a bigger amount of energy dissipating on the skin in the form of heat. However, each individual photon would still carry the same amount of energy as before - there would just be more of them.
However, if rather than increasing the intensity of the beam (adding in more photons), we were to increase the energy of the individual photons, we’d observe a new physical effect other than just heating, called the photoelectric effect, where electrons would get knocked out of atoms and molecules by these high-energy photons. Whether this effect takes place or not depends purely on the energy of the individual photons as opposed to the intensity of the beam. Increasing the beam intensity would only affect the rate at which it occurs, as there would be more photons available to knock out target electrons.
The removal of electrons from atoms and molecules is called ionisation and the photoelectric effect is just one way of achieving that. Ionisation is significant because electrons bind molecules together, so if you remove them from molecules making up a cell chances are it’s probably not going to survive.
In cancer radiotherapy such ionising radiation is used. Non-ionising radiation can also be used, but then it is no longer called radiotherapy, but rather hyperthermia therapy. More strictly it’s when heat is used rather than ionisation to cause damage, and radiation is just one way of achieving that.
In laser hair removal, you’re not ionising any atoms or molecules, because the wave frequency (photon energy) is too low. You’re just heating some tissue.
You can verify this yourself. Each atom has a corresponding ionisation energy. The lowest one is Caesium with 3,8939 eV. You can calculate what photon frequency and wavelength that energy would correspond to: 942THz and 318nm. So a source would be ionising if it generated photons with a wavelength of 318nm or lower, or a frequency of 942THz or higher.
Because hair removal lasers generate photons of wavelength = 590nm or higher, they do not carry enough energy to ionise any atom, so they are not ionising. They can only damage tissue via heat.
Hello, Alicja. Laser is radiation, again, please, do not take my word, google the simple definition of it. If you like to do it it’s your choice. I a not talking you out of it but fact that it is radiation and it kills gene p53 causing cancer. Read the study, please. I see on a daily basis people come to me treated with laser and instead of reducing it having more hair growth.
Also, laser is used now for regrow the hairs. It’s all over internet if you google laser helmets for hair regrowth. Laser kills gene p53
So which one is, hair removal or hair regrowth?
Absolutely fascinating .i have to reasonably confess, that I know very little of Laser technology but it seems to me that Alicja has presented a reasonable and well sourced argument on the subject that rings true to some old physics courses I may have taken many years ago.
I would be really interested to see how your skin looks now? I am only on my 3rd treatment and am so scared that this is what is happening to me too. I don’t see many follow ups on posts like this about how scars have healed and I feel it would really help to give the rest of us some hope that we won’t be this way forever! I really hope it cleared up for you or that, perhaps you found a new electrologist? Any insight into the situation you experienced would help the rest of us. Best wishes and fingers crossed for all of us <3
hello,
im also looking for healing of the pitted scars stories. It seems it is a permanent scarring…Even for the people with acne scars…but It can diminish I guess
My mom is sending me some of that this week i believe with some pure aloe vera cream as well to help with the healing process.