Question for James

Hello James

I am considering electrolysis but cannot find any that seem to be worth while in my area. It seems like from your posts that you can remove hair at an extremely high rate. Because of this I would actually consider traveling to your area. I’m very far away (about 2000 miles)so it would require plane fare, hotel stay, etc.

  1. Do you have clients that actually go to these extremes?

  2. If I were to travel that far, I would need to gat as many hours done as possible. What is the maximum amount of time I could actually get treated during one sitting? I mean could I really lay there for 10 hours a day for two days straight?

  3. If I get treated on my face, will there be temporary scarring?

  4. What methods do you use and what is your hourly rate?

  5. What % of hairs that you would remove would regrow?

  6. Would you recommend waxing 2-3 weeks before to ensure all treated hairs are in the growth stage?

Thanks

Yes, I have many clients who do travel and stay over for a period of time.

I have cleared out full faces in one extended stay.

Most work in 3 to 4 hours sessions, break for a meal, and get back to it.

You will have swelling if we strip you bare in a straight march to clearance, but you won’t have scarring, although some short term scabbing is not out of the question.

I use what ever works best for the client, as I can perform galvanic, blend and thermolysis. Of course, fastest clearance is obtained in thermolysis.

Don’t wax your face prior to treatment. I would only suggest shaving 2 to 3 days prior to the start date of treatment.

The hairs I remove would have a low regrowth rate, but you would not know how good that was until a year later, when those hairs would naturally be back in phase, but no longer exist. You would still need additional treatments when your next phase of growth comes in, however. The most optomistic treatment schedule possible would be 4 treatments spaced over 9 to 12 months.

If I can find a place to host the pictures, I will put up some pictures of this type of work. As it happens, I have a client who has done just what you are talking about on the face, and has given me permission to post the pictures. I just have not gotten around to doing so.

James,Is it always a minimum of 9 months to permanently clear any given area?

hypothetically, if one were trying to permanently clear an area the size of a golfball, would that still be a minimum of 9 months at least from before the area is ever touched to the point where it is cleared completely,forever ? Can it not be finished sooner, realistically?

I was under the impression that if you are clearing an area, and many hairs are not in growth phase, then once those hairs are zapped out, the next time they come back (which Im guessing may be in 2-3 weeks or so) they would be in growth phase, and then if zapped again , theyd be gone and if they were going to regrow,that might take another 4-6 weeks for them to come back again,albeit weaker or thinner, and then if they are zapped theyre gone for good, but if theyre gonna go another round then it might be another month or so, and so on… and so on…?

Am I on the wrong path of thought there ?

I was just thinking that if you zap a hair that is out of grwoth phase, at the root , then the next thing that comes through that follicle can only be a new,growing hair right?
perhaps I have got it wrong as to how long that new,growing hair would take to be visible ? surely it isnt gonna take 9 months just for the follicle to regenerate a hair visible enough to zap is it?

*8 months of treatments later …and still so confused about it all…

cheers,
Hank

“James,Is it always a minimum of 9 months to permanently clear any given area?”

Electrologist’s take on this varies but most say - the least I have heard is 6 months - somewhere between 8-12 months.

“hypothetically, if one were trying to permanently clear an area the size of a golfball, would that still be a minimum of 9 months at least from before the area is ever touched to the point where it is cleared completely,forever ? Can it not be finished sooner, realistically?”

Same duration of time but you would just not be forced to go as often as you would with a large area since there was not as much hair there to begin with.

What you see poking out of your skin at any given time is roughly 1/3 of the total amount of hair you have in that area. You must complete all three hair cycles to make sure that each of these hairs has had the glorious oppurtunity to be put to their grisly death.

Hello James

  1. Would you recommend waxing 2-3 weeks before to ensure all treated hairs are in the growth stage?

Thanks

I dont think waxing an area a few times could really cause all the hair there to be pushed into the growth stage, all at once.
surely this couldnt work could it James?

Hank

No, waxing won’t push all hairs in growth phase, what it will do is take out all the shedding hairs, and what does grow in over the next couple of weeks is, of course growing. So you will have nothing but growing hairs, but there will still be hairs that have not yet poked out above the surface of the skin.

As for the 9 month question, it takes that long for all hairs to make an appearance above the surface of the skin just once. As far as zapping a hair that is growing, but not doing a good job, that hair would be back in a matter of weeks, or it might take until the next year to show up again.

No, waxing won’t push all hairs in growth phase, what it will do is take out all the shedding hairs, and what does grow in over the next couple of weeks is, of course growing. So you will have nothing but growing hairs, but there will still be hairs that have not yet poked out above the surface of the skin.

As for the 9 month question, it takes that long for all hairs to make an appearance above the surface of the skin just once. As far as zapping a hair that is growing, but not doing a good job, that hair would be back in a matter of weeks, or it might take until the next year to show up again.

many thanks for the reply James, prompt as usual…

first off , wouldnt it then be worth it to wax a couple of weeks beforehand if only to ensure that any single hair that is treated is most certainly growing ? that way the electrologist would not be wasting time zapping resting hairs, which will only grow back anyway… just as they would have after being waxed.

and also… What would be the distinguishing factor in whether a zapped growing hair comes back a few weeks later or a whole year later ? or is it just one of those things thats impossible to say?

cheers James,
Hank

It is worth it for the reasons you discussed on a first clearance, after that, it is counter productive.

One could not say which hairs would be back in a few weeks, and which ones would not be back until next year.

this is just so i get more of a clear idea here…i have some questions james could you please clariify since it seems u have quite an experience on this

after reading a number of posts sav, rachel and their experices it seems they keep going in for hours at a time…maybe they getting a number of areas treated thats why so long 2-6 hours a week and evry week for months from what iv read

this is just an example…say if some1 is getting treated a very small area a few stray hairs on chin for example 10-12 hairs(far-fetched, but for making my explanation easier) anyway say that was the case then im pretty sure you can get a clearence of that in your 1st treatment probly within 15 minutes right

now iv read that electrolysis destroys 50-60% of hair in initial treatment right so say one may need to go in for about another 3 sessions for my example above every week…

and then what hapens after week 4? here wait until for hairs to get back in anagen phase i.e. (4-6 weeks)…or still keep going to electro every week? thats what im confused about? (bcoz james u mentioned in a couple of posts i read here that one should hit it hard at first then later on its easier)
but my question is after youv had that area cleared meaning hairs with probes inserted at least 2twice…do you really need to go every week still or go in like 4-6 weeks?

by cleared you mean the whole area treated right ?

as i myself have a small area that i want to get treated and im prrety sure if i get a good electrologist i could get it cleared(i.e. all the area treated) in 30 minutes probly less in 1st session…so what next

just asking so i can be sure and if i do decide to go ahead with this i will have a good idea of what to expect from the electrologist that i go to and no whether im getting conned or what

Please read this old post:

http://www.hairtell.com/ubbthreads/showf…=true#Post20273

Simran,
Sav and Rachel are getting a number of areas treated and they are not going every week.

I needed just chin and upper lip and started going one hour/week. In month 3 that got cut down to 45 mins. In another 3 months I only needed 30 mins/week, etc.

At any point I could have gone less often. But I really wanted to work on every hair as soon as it sprouted, so I chose weekly appointments. Sav, for example, goes every 2 or 3 weeks and shaves between electro appts. (And less and less as time goes on. Way to go, Sav!!)

You also ask

but my question is after youv had that area cleared meaning hairs with probes inserted at least 2twice…do you really need to go every week still or go in like 4-6 weeks?

All your hair doesn’t grow in in unison, with each wave sprouting every 4-6 weeks. Each hair is kind of on its own cycle. For example, one treated hair may grow back in 4 weeks, but its neighbor, treated on the very same day, may take 8 weeks to grow back. For that reason, there is always hair to be treated on a weekly basis. If it’s a small area, like eyebrows, there might not be enough new hairs every week to justify an appointment. If it’s a larger area, there will always be enough hairs to keep busy weekly. But it’s up to you if you’d rather deal with a weekly appt of 30 mins, for example, or save the hairs up and go every 2 weeks for 60 mins. (Get what I mean?)

As you near the end, your hair growth will be more sporadic. Around the one year mark for my upper lip/chin, some weeks I’d have a huge sprouting and need a full 15 minutes on the area. Other weeks, there were maybe 5 hairs there, so I started on new body parts.

i hope this helps!
–susie <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

ok thanks for clearing that.
i also had other question for electrogists here and for people who are or have had it done

Is there a some treatment as this perfored afterwards???


After each treatment Cataphoresis is used using a metallic roller applied to the surface of the skin. This acidifies the skin restoring the ph balance and reduces redness and discomfort

Aftercare using a product with plant extracts and a hair retardant, then a sunblock is applied.

Homecare is recommended ie Tend Skin, Thalgo Bio Depyl or Depileve for 3 days following each treatment.


just got this off a website i was browsing…an electrologist that does this in NZ and on the site it says 23 years experience : http://www.skincareplus.co.nz/tm-electrolysis.php

her price is though 60 bucks for half an hour

Simran,
I believe that rolling thing is used for the galvanic type of electrolysis. (There are 3 kinds of electrolysis, in case you didn’t know.) I’m not familiar with that type, but one of the pros on this site would know.

For care after a treatment, everyone here swears by aloe vera GEL (not lotion) and tea tree oil. Tend Skin is also good for preventing ingrown hairs. Some people also use an antibiotic cream (NOT an ointment).

Sunblock is good all the time, regardless of getting electro treatments or not.

I don’t see the point of using a hair retardant cream. I’d think you’d want those suckers to grow so that the electrologist could kill them. But maybe the pros will tell me otherwise!

good luck,
susie <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

Use of the roller after treatment is done to sooth the skin and reduce any swelling, while returning the Ph levels to normal. This is used more after Galvanic and Blend treatments than Thermolysis, but it is a good idea.

I would agree that one might not want to use “so-called Hair Inhibitor” potions. Most of them are just acid in a cream or lotion designed to dissolve some of the hair, and make it softer. Needless to say, this is not a good idea if your skin is still healing from treatment. Sounds like a good way to get scabs to me.

ok kool

on her site it says ‘specialised computerised system, The Sequential Blend 128 from Canada’
and says ‘very successful with permanent depilation’ is that same as permanant hair removal <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

Anyways i thought she might have been good with 23 years expereince and all she does specialise in IPL too but
NOTE TO SELF STAY AWAY FROM HER <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

THANK YOU both of you (vespasusie and james) for your help

i dont stay without sunblock not even at home lol just that roller thing and those creams sounded abit confusing since i dint read it here before

also i called this other electrologist and she said she used the blend method with progressive epilation <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

and this other one i called thought must be good coz advertised her place as electrologist clinic in NZ in the phone book…she got 13 years experience asked her what she used she said…she used direct current and i asked her again but which method…thermalysis, blend etc…she told me galvanic, direct current…so i asked dint she do the 1st one (thermolysis) and she said she did both but her clients asked for the other one so does that now usually as its faster because she did mens backs and stuff

now m confused again as people here mentioned thermolysis is the faster method but this women telling otherwise

She sounds like she has her 13 years of experience doing galvanic, so she is probably much faster at that than she is with thermolysis! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Galvanic has its advantages too: higher kill rate per hair than thermolysis. So in the hands of an experienced and capable person, it’s better than thermolysis from someone who isn’t too sure how to do it.

advantage of thermolysis people said its faster,
you say galvanic has a higher kill rate

what is the advantage of the Blend? does that work at all <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />…the number of electrologists iv called here they all use blend

james which one do you use?
and approx how long does an electrolysis treatment take on any given area…that is the area treated doesnt grow back any hair at all and is cleared and smooth. one year maximum? or 2 years maximum?

hi james,
since your the pro here and seem quite knowlegdable and in a number of posts of others here you mentioned you cannot say unless u see a pic
i was thinking if you dont mind, could i send you a pic of the side burn area which i want to get treated…and possibly you could give me an estimate how many sessions or treatments and possible number of hours, i should expect in order to get my first clearence and possibly an estimate of the number of follow up treatments?

assuming half an hour per treatment a week.
if half an hour might be too small for the area to be cleared maybe 1 hour

now i have not touched the area since my last laser treatment 4 months - 5 ago and it is really anoying me now but i dont want to resort to waxing or plucking. and also could you possibly tell me if i need to shave the area a week before the treatment…its fine downy hairs and my skin is indian skin color olive i think but i do tan easily and have pigmentation probs

now before laser i did wax about once 3-4 weeks but was for about a year or so but since 2003 been having laser and my last treatment was in february and only have shaved the area on the day of laser treatment or 2-3days before
(what a waste of time and money that was and to think i could have had a clearence n not been in this WORSER situation now that i am in after 2 years now <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />)

please inform about the pic james
thanks

I have no problem with you sending me a picture. If you can make it to Buffalo NY I don’t have any problem with clearing it up in one session either. Then who ever you have at home can just keep it bare in your weekly sessions.

There are two privious posts that will explain everything you need to know here. I will make it easy on you by cutting and pasting those here.

Hair Percentages by method used:
When you start treatment, the hair in your treatment area can be anywhere from 20% to 80% in growth phase. Those are the only hairs that can reasonably be expected to be gone and gone for good. Now on the hairs that can be treated, the electrologist’s effectiveness for insertion and treatment energy will dictate the percentage kill rate on hairs that could be killed at that time.

Let’s assume that you start with 80% hairs in growth phase, and your electrologist has an 80% kill rate on growing hairs, this means that of all the hairs you remove the first day 64% are gone and gone for good! (In the case of 20% in growth phase, 16% would be gone and gone for good based on our model) The key here is to keep in mind that if you stay on schedule, and never let hairs leave the growth phase after your first clearance, you will have even better results the rest of the way.

In your clearances after first clearance, if you have stayed on schedule, you have 100% hairs in growth phase. If your electrologist has an 80% kill rate then 80% of the hairs treated after the first clearance are gone and gone for good! It is possible in this stage of the treatment to have 100% effectiveness, whereas it is not possible to have 100% effectiveness on all hairs in a first clearance because you never have 100% available hairs in a first clearance.

If you live near enough to your electrologist, it is possible to get to first clearance, and keep the hair at bay so that no one knows you have hair but you and your electrologist once you get to first clearance, assuming you are working on an area that your electrologist can clear from start to finish in a week to 3 weeks each time. This is where being able to get large volumes of work done in short periods of time in the beginning will lead to short appointments in the end stage and quicker project completion times.

Now to expand a little on the subject of modalities:

If we assume 100% kill rate for straight Galvanic, and about 90% for Blend, and we agree to short change Thermolysis with a kill rate of 50% (your practitioner should be better than that, all the way up to the 80 - 90% range) we then can get the following breakdown of treatment results.

Galvanic = 1 hair per minute, or more (it can take more than one minute to treat one hair) so at the end of an hour, it doesn’t matter if it is single needle, or multiple needle work, 60 to 100 hairs per hour is what can be expected, with a kill rate near 100% on hairs in growth phase

Blend = 3 or 4 hairs per minute with a kill rate near 90% on hairs in growing phase. That gives us 180 to 240 hairs per hour removed in Blend per hour with a high kill rate.

Thermolysis = 5 to 10 hairs per minute in most shops and can be faster than that! Although it is possible to exceed 80% kill rate in thermolysis, if we short change it at 50% kill rate, we still get 300 to 600 hairs removed per hour, and between 150 to 300 hairs that will never come back. If your practitioner is better than 50% (and good ones are) you could expect to have 240 to 480 of those hairs never come back if they all are in growth phase. Even the ones that are not in proper phase are at least treated, and removed from your face.

So you see, even granting Galvanic an exaggerated efficacy of 100% Thermolysis still beats Galvanic on number of hairs permanently removed per hour, and edges out Blend, while cosmetically removing even more hairs.

And another past explaination:

Most Times Per hair

This seems to be a common question that requires fine tuning the understanding frequently. I will copy the answer here, too bad we don’t have a sticky, or a Quick-FAQ’s page for stuff like this.

The reason you might think you see nothing being gained in the early going is that you can’t see what has been done for months, or a full year. Take before, during and after shots to really appreciate what is going on here.

Think of your skin as a grid. Think of this grid as being 10 x 10 spaces in square form. If left to their own devices, the follicles in the first row, (1 - 10) will present hairs in spaces 1, 3 and 9. These hairs will cycle, and as they get ready to fall out, hairs in spaces 2, 5 and 10 begin growing, and brake surface just as hairs 1, 3 and 9 fall out.

Now it looks to the naked eye as if nothing has happened, because one saw 3 hairs in that area, and there are still 3 hairs in that space.

If one removes the hairs in spaces 1, 3 and 9, one will be targeting spaces 2, 5 and 10 when they come out in 6 to 9 weeks, and later, hairs will present in 4, 6 and 8. It takes a full 9 months for all these hairs to present. By the way, space 7 never grows hair in this example.

One should never have to treat a follicle more than 2 times. Three times is the most I can see, unless the practitioner is very bad or the client doesn’t show up on schedule. If the client is the problem, the practitioner might never actually get to treat that hair while it is in growth phase, if ever at all. (If you never come in during the months of November, December, and January, there are hairs that the practitioner will never, ever see, or treat, and you will always have those hairs in winter.)

So your skin grid starts like this:
X = Hair and _ equals empty space

X_X_ _ _ _ X
X X _ _ X
_ _ X_X_X _
X_X
_ _ _ _X
X X _ _ X
_ _ X_X_X _
X_X
_ _ _ X
X X _ _ X
_ _ X_X_X _
X_X
_ _ _ _X

Now, in 6 to 12 weeks, the grid changes to this:

X X _ _ X
X_X
_ _ _ _X
_ _ X_X_X _
X X _ _ X
X_X
_ _ _ _X
_ _ X_X_X _
X X _ _ X
X_X
_ _ _ _X
_ _ X_X_X _
X X _ _ _X

And it will change again in another 6 to 12 weeks. As you can see, there is the same number of hairs in the grid, but their placing has changed.

In most cases, one’s electrologist won’t be clearing all these hairs the first time out, so one is chasing the grid, looking to catch each hair as it comes out in growth phase, which gets easier to do as you clear hairs, because there are fewer left to present in the first place.

Does this help you understand how it is possible for the CLIENT to frustrate even the best electrologist by not coming in on schedule? Can you see why going long and frequent hours to start with costs you less in the long run, because you get more hairs in the growth phase, and have an easier time keeping up with the growing hairs as it comes in? Can you see how many people THINK their electrologist was failing them, when they just never really gave the practitioner a fair chance?

hey james cannot PM as it says u exceeded your PM quota.

also i emailed you the pics please mail me your feedback on it
thanks