Plucking by electrologist

Hair Removal Methods Professional Electrolysis
1

I’ve come to realise that my electrologist does in fact pluck a fair number of hairs (about 50%) during each session (although sometimes a lot less than this/sometimes more) which from what I’ve read would mean the electrolysis on that particular follicle had not been performed correctly. What I don’t understand is how she manages to do it correctly (with the hair sliding out easily) on some hairs and not on others? and why she persists in plucking out the hair when she can feel there is resistance there?

I can actually feel the difference between the individual insertions that are going to be effective and the ones that aren’t (length of time the probe is left in, intensity of heat and depth of insertion) so if I can judge this surely she can too? I am thinking about telling her next time that she needs to increase the intensity/depth of insertion but do not want to insult her skills. Do any skilled electrologists out there have any idea why she may be working in this manner and how best to ask for her to change?

2

Are you in the early stages of electrolysis? Have you obtained a first, full clearance yet? How many sessions have you had? In the beginning, when hair is in all stages of growth and non-growth, you may feel an occassional tug.

Tell her that you know it important that one not feel a tweezing sensation. Ask her why you feel tweezing. Tell her you don’t want to feel any tweezing and see what she says.

3

Is she the only electrologist in the area? It can be hard to teach an old cat new tricks.

4

meow!!! You got that one right!

5

As the resident lightning rod and devil’s advocate, I will attempt to find some possible way to explain what may be going on. (In much the same way I took the devils advocate on “reused cotton rounds/balls” The only good reason is that one may have a designated cotton piece moistened with alcohol or whatever, that one uses to clean the probe with, to rid one of the collected gunk that accumulates sometimes, and that it is possible that one may use that to catch a bad bleeding spot if that is easier to grab quickly than your fresh new ones)

Well, in that vain, I can imagine that if she thought you could not take the higher treatment energy that would be required to treat those hairs correctly the first time, she may be going the “weaken them first, and go back for them later, when they are thinner route.” Another, hopefully less likely possibility is she is using a machine with presets, and doesn’t know how to tweak the settings up a notch, and has maxed out the pre-set for that body part.

In any event, an adjustment should be made. Better treatment than this is possible.

6

Yes, you are on your right!
You’re not paying for plucking. You’re paying for every treated hair will never come back, and for us the way to be sure is that you NEVER have news that the hair is forced out. A small percentage of hair again despite having the best possible treatment, even if you feel all the hairs out without resistance, but this should be very little.
There is a way to assert your rights against your electrologist, this is as follows:

Tell her when she see how the hair has to be forced to STOP. Leave the hair on the skin and move to the next hair. You can cut hair with scissors at home later. You do not want to wait several weeks for that hair can be treated again.
Hair is our GPS and we need to destroy it. If this is happening in half of the treated hairs, you need to twice as long to reach the goal. So you do not consent to last even a minute longer than necessary.

Maybe this way she gets the message and how important it is for you. :whistle: (dissimulation)

7

I know this issue needs to be addressed. I’m in a difficult predicament as I have been referred for treatment at the hospital on the NHS so do not have the option to shop around. The NHS will only cover one half hour session each week on the face (chin, moustache and sides) presumably until the hair is gone. I have been for approximately 6 sessions and have never achieved full clearance (currently just working on the chin as this is the major problem area) in one session due to there being too many hairs for half an hour’s work. I have not noticed much reduction in hair growth as yet although I haven’t had very many sessions and also had to have a month’s break due to the electrologist having an operation.

I am worried that as she is my only option I will damage the patient/electrologist relationship if I challenge her methods. I did broach it gently with her at the end of my first session and she informed me this is due to my having particularly strong hair roots. From the answers to a previous question I asked on hairtell this would account for the sensation of resistance I get with some hairs as they slide out but not full on plucking).

I asked her about her experience as an electrologist and she has been doing it for two/three years and is employed by a hospital so her skill level should be high. Another thing, as the NHS will only cover the face and I have problem body areas too (neck, nipples, chest and stomach) I decided to put the little spare cash I do have (student income/PT job) in to having these areas treated privately. I went for a consultation and one session with an electrologist registered with the British Institute & Association of Electrolysis (BIAE). This woman literally just wrenched the hairs out of my chest going far too quickly with her insertions for them to be effective, although she did seem to slow down a bit when it came to the nipple area and some hairs did slide out but I decided this wasn’t good enough to be spending £30 a week on and intend to look elsewhere.

My point is I find it quite shocking that electrologists can get to be working in a hospital and registered with the BIAE without having the basic understanding that the hair should not be plucked??? As I say I will shop around a bit more for my body areas but due to my low income I really have no other choice than the hospital for my face and am concerned that if I cannot resolve this issue with her she will continue to pluck my face thus making my problem worse!

Any suggestions would be greatfully received and apologies for my mammoth rant!

8

Considering what you have said, there is no reason to apologize. I can only say that there is a difference between a pluck and a pop, but if you say that you feel plucking, as if the hairs are totally untreated, then I will believe you. If you were feeling the hairs popping out of the follicle the same way you feel a pimple eject a hard core from the skin when it is squeezed, that would just be a popping of the root sheath from a follicle that has left the upper portions of the skin undamaged by the treatment energy, so that you can have less healing time, and a better post treatment appearance.

I would hope that what you are experiencing is popping, and not full on plucking.

What I will say is that if you truly have really thick, deep roots, you may have hairs that are much more challenging than she is used to treating, and thus, she is not familiar or comfortable with the actual depth and intensity of treatment that these hairs require. The setting that I am forced to use on a life-long face plucker would be nuclear on a genetic female with accelerated vellus hairs.

I am frequently getting calls from practitioners who tell me that they have maxed out the pre-sets on the machine and still the hairs on some client are not coming out. When I tell them to increase the intensity above the pre-sets until the hair comes out with a full bulb and with nothing more than a pop, or to increase it until it doesn’t even pop, they react with shock. Most have never worked with a treatment energy so high. Then I tell them that while my average female client gets work done in the low end of the factory pre-sets my average male client is getting work in the upper 600’s of the e.L. scale, and some have required work above 2,000 e.L.! :whistle:

As for working in the hospital and being a member of BIAE, didn’t we tell you that there is no 100% reliable “Good Housekeeping Seal Of Approval” in electrolysis? Personal recommendations from people who are finished and happy with the work they received, is the best recommendation you can have, but even there, one doesn’t know if better can be had in your community, or if still better work could be had if one traveled some distance away. Sometimes, the travel is well worth the increase in quality of work.

Although, I hesitate to make this offer, but if your practitioner were to contact me, I would attempt to help her with your case.

Please tell us what electrolysis machine you are being worked on with, and what does the vision and lighting equipment look like?

9

If it feels the same way as when you pluck the hair yourself, then she’s plucking.

I don’t know if it’s worth it having her try to get you a clearance. You may want to wax the area and have her treat new hairs as they come in.

10

If I were a UK taxpayer, what I would consider would be this:

Cheshirecat is receiving the best treatment possible with my tax dollars?
Or rather, my tax money is being wasted on a bad practice?

The user is free to request a change of electrologist?

Cheshirecat would continue with the same electrologist if 30 pounds came from her own pocket and not the taxpayer’s pocket?

Cheshirecat has said she will not return to the BIAE electrologist because she is not willing to waste the money saved so hard.
It should not be the same for the electrologist paid by all British taxpayers?

11

Hmmm. You said that well, Josefa. Cheshire cat should have the power to choose. Free care isn’t always good care.

12

You said you started out with an electrologist who also works for a hospital… if it’s the lady I’m thinking of, I didn’t feel any plucking, but I would recommend looking elsewhere for private treatment. In London, Parkside beauty centre seems to be the place to go.

13

Since my original post I’ve been back to the electrologist twice and discussed my concerns with her. I asked her if it was possible to increase the settings as I noticed some hairs were not coming out easily. I think she may have been wary about doing this without my prompting as in my initial consultation when she was asking about my skin’s sensitivity I advised her that my mother ended up with some pitted scarring from electrolysis done years ago. She has increased the settings slightly but says she is concerned that she will burn a hole if she does it too high. She also said she has noticed if she applies the current for 1/3 longer then the hairs will slide out easier. These two adjustments seem to have resolved the problem and I now only feel plucking on four or five hairs throughout the session compared to the 50%+ I was experiencing previously.

She has also now decided to increase my weekly sessions to one hour in order that we get more clearance each time. She asked if I would be comfortable with enduring the pain for this length of time which I don’t think will be a problem as it only seems to really hurt for the first few insertions in each side of the chin before I get used to it and as they say no pain no gain!

I’m glad I was able to discuss these changes with her and find a solution as currently it is not financially viable for me to get my facial area done privately due to my low income and the amount of hair in this area which will require many hours of treatment. I do still think any professional electrologist should be skilled enough to make these judgements without input from the client as without this forum I wouldn’t have known whether I was being treated correctly. I have been lucky to have found this site for advice and have an electrologist open to change but it does concern me that there are electrologists out there who are taking money from clients whilst providing ineffective treatment to women whose mental well-being depends on the removal of their hair. The qualifications required to be able to work as an electrologist in the UK are obviously not rigorous enough in their testing of students (I am basing this on my experience of the NHS treatment and a session with a private BIAE registered electrologist).

14

How is your treatment going now? I’m glad you did give some input into YOUR treatment. If it helps, then it’s worth it, although as you say they should be skilled enough to know this…

15

Would I sound like a broken record if I repeated that licensing doesn’t assure the public of better treatment, just higher overhead for practitioners. :wink:

16

Hi Smurf I’ve just seen that you asked for an update on my treatment sorry for the late reply. I’m coming up to my tenth month of treatment now, still attending every week for one hour. I can definitely notice a reduction in the hair on my chin in terms of the amount and coarseness of the hairs but due to the density of follicles in my chin area I am predicting this could take another 6 months- 1 year to get completely rid of all hair.

I must admit I did expect to have progressed further at this point…I estimate I’ve had 32 hours work done and am still having to shave every day on the chin. But from reading other posts I see its not unusual for it to take up to 18 months and I do have quite an excessive amount of hair.

In terms of the problem of plucking I was asking about in my original post, this has improved greatly. It seems that the hairs are getting easier to treat as time goes on (perhaps now that she has removed the more stubborn ones). There are still certain areas where the hair seems to be particularly resistant to treatment (mainly the clavicle and under the chin) where my electrologist does seem to just pluck the hair if it won’t come out easily. If this happens I just tell her that I can feel it isn’t working and ask her to increase the intensity. I do often feel uncomfortable saying this as I don’t want to tell someone how to do their job and think she should have the skill to make this adjustment herself. But she has said to me she doesn’t like people being in pain so maybe this is what holds her back from making the adjustment until I give the go ahead? I really don’t know.

As I said, there is definitely been a reduction in hair so overall I am pleased but I won’t deny it has been a bit of a slog in terms of the amount of time I have spent on it and the pain I have to go through every week. For me its definitely worth it if one day I can wake up one day and not feel self conscious about my facial hair. I just hope that day comes soon :slight_smile: