Questions....?

Hair Removal Methods Professional Electrolysis
1

So I just went for electrolysis (thermolysis) for the first time last week to remove facial hair (beard). This is all well and good, but two things concerned me.

  1. When she did the work, she did one pass to do the actual thermolysis and another to pluck the hairs. This was all well and good, although sometimes it felt like she was plucking more hairs than she actually zapped 0.o

  2. I still felt it when she plucked them.

Is it bad that I could feel it when she pulled the hairs? Granted, she did it in two passes, and what she SAID was that it’s not supposed to come out painlessly because that means you’ve used too much juice…

My question is, is this true? Is this a sign that she’s doing things badly? I’ve read other places that if you feel the hair coming out it hasn’t been properly fried… She’s been doing this for about 15 years and she works with trans people all the time, so my default is to give her the benefit of the doubt… but…? I’m a little worried…

Thanks for the feedback!

~mooseyfish

2

Hi:

I am assuming that you are a trans patient by your reference to that in your post?

Generally you should not feel the hair being removed, except for a bit of a tug when a root bulb is too big for the follicle. The hair should come out fairly easily after treatment.

If she is treating a whole bunch of hairs, and then removing them, it may be possible that she missed some and is accidently plucking some of them. It probably depends on experience, and the technique of the electrolygist, but mine only treats a few hairs or single hairs at a time.
Occasionally a hair may be undertreated and plucked, but she can usually tell if that is the case, and will ask me if it felt like that.

It takes a while to learn what settings work best for an individual and their skin and hair type. If you are concerned with the possibility she may be plucking some of them you should mention it. It may be possible for her to use a slighly higher current if needed and it does not damage the skin or hurt too much.

Alicia

3

There’s a bit of a trade off to be had with the technique you describe …

When you zap a patch of hairs and then go back and tweeze them, you get a much better rate of hairs treated per hour. (Which is possibly why she’s using this on you.)

However, (and here’s the trade off), there’s a danger that you might then tweeze hairs that you didn’t treat, or miss tweezing hairs that you did treat.

I suspect there’s a happy middle ground with this sort of thing.

The problems with treating testosterone induced facial hair are that the hairs are very thick and tough, and they need a lot of juice to zap them.
They’re also close together, which poses another problem if you’re using thermolysis … heat spreads through skin tissues very easilly, so there’s a risk of overlapping treated areas and damaging the skin tissues.

It sounds to me like she might be slightly undertreating each hair to prevent overlaps (and therefore to prevent skin damage).

Or maybe your hairs are so tough that it’s not possible to kill the hair outright without skin damage? She may be aiming to weaken the hair with this pass, and kill it off a few months later with a subsequent treatment.

It sounds like she probably knows what she’s doing.
I don’t think you need to panic, anyway. The worst that could happen is that she’s undertreating the hairs, and distorting the folicles when she plucks them.

Is it possible for you to ask to see or speak to a client that she’s treated who is done and happy?

Failing that, how about asking her to concentrate on a small well defined area (such as the upper lip), and then you can check your progress. If you don’t see an improvement, you’ll know to look elsewhere.

(Also, I totally recomend you take James’ advice and take photos! It’s very hard to gauge progress without them.)

Hope that helps - Toni