quick questions - that anybody could probably answer

Hair Removal Methods Professional Electrolysis
#1

  1. can electrolysis be performed on skin that has a tattoo on it ? and if so … could this ruin the tattoo/ink colour ?

  2. How common/normal is it for my skin (back and upper arms)to be covered in red and white raised bumps as well as whiteheads, 24 hours after having a first time 2-hour galvanic session ? how long do these usually take to disapper or form scabs? ( and how long do scabs usually stay for?) ( roughly speaking)

  3. Is the pain supposed to be so very excruciating, and what can I take orally to prevent/reduce/relieve this pain (aside from topical agents)?

  4. what is the influence of hot/humid weather on the healing /recovery of the treated area ? (with avoiding sun exposure)

any help/advice would be most welcome

#2

Over the years and of course most recently we have treated patients with tattoos and we had no problems. What we do is less invasive then the process of tattooing colors into the skin, which can become rather bloody.

We stopped using any form of galvanic 35 years ago. It is not cost effectve because it is to slow and more painful.

The after effects of electrology are normal and will go away in most cases within 2 to 3 weeks. Remember ear piercing causes much more tissue damage, it is more invasive and even so the hole will disappear if a gold post is not inserted. How much less would normal electrology heal?

#3

I agree with Fino, galvanic is too slow to be cost effective on the back and upper arms if you have more than a little hair there. You would do better with blend, and would have the fastest first clearance time in Thermolysis.

You will find that the newer machines are more comfortable for treatments, and make pain management either a thing of the past, or less needed during treatments. In fact, in beta testing the upcoming product from Apilus, I had hair removed from my lower lip line (where you girls apply lip liner pencil) without so much as a numbing cream and it felt like a quick drop of hot water. Of course, everyone is different, but there is no two ways about it, the newer the technology in the epilator, the more comfortable the treatments are, assuming the practitioner is good at choosing settings.

For best comfort I like the Silhouet Tone VMC and the Apilus SX-500 (and the soon to be released Apilus epilator whose name I can not give you till the end of October)

The reason you avoid the sun and try to stay out of hot and humid conditions for at least 24 to 48 hours after electrolysis is because sweating would introduce salt to your broken skin, and cause scabbing where it would not have occurred. Sun exposure tends to cause freckling that could take 3 months to fade.

You want to keep the treated area clean and dry to the best of your ability.

Electrolysis works, and in order to have the fastest results, you need to get as quickly as you can to the place where you are cleared of all the hair each and every time you have a treatment. Once you get there, it is only a matter of time before you are having a 15 minute nit-picking appointment where you are getting a few stray hairs no one notices but you, anyway.

#4

Hi James- i might be breaking a rule by asking a non-related question in someone else’s thread, but I wanted to contact an electrologist. I apologise for thr breach of etiquette!
Last week, i went for a laser apt. Even though I had heard that it was not permanent and only spoke to one person whose results lasted longer than a year, i went.
But as the technician was zapping a light beam onto my legs and i was experiencing excrutiating pain, I thought- this can’t be good! Electrolysis is so much cleaner.
Also- laser left the same little scars as electrolysis, so why not go for the tried and true?

So. . . I am going to return to electrolysis, but my pressing question is: how long should i wait until needles can again be inserted into my skin?

#5

Thank you very much Fino and James for your prompt and very helpful replys.

Just to clarify something James - when youre saying “the place where you are cleared of all visible hair”, you are saying that once you have (after numerous sessions) finally gotten to the point that all available hair has been removed, then every time you are returning for a session (when you have reached this stage), it is in order to treat 3 possible kinds of hairs…

  1. those hairs that were just growing (during the period of months that it took to clear all the present and visible hairs) but still beneath the skin ? OR…

  2. The odd hairs whose follicles were not entirely destroyed and have managed to re-grow ? (I believe this figure to be something like about 5-10% of all treated follicles ? OR…

  3. aNY odd completely new hairs,that have unluckily sprouted from scratch, during the months in which a person is having electrology sessions.

Is this a correct understanding of what you mean?

( And technically, if one were very diligent in achieving the required hours for a given area/s , then technically it could be possible to remove all hairs, regardless of their phase of growth within 9-12 months of day 1… Is this also a correct understanding?

thanks

Hank

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

#6

Sounds like you have read a good number of my over 1,000 posts on this board. You have got it!

As you start hair removal, you are clearing a space and trying to keep it clear, and expanding the clear space as the treatment appointments add up. Unless you clear out all unwanted hair in the first week of treatment, you have some hairs that come in outside of the treatment area that one may be working on that week, and you will need to get them next year. Those would be the odd hairs that you would get along with the ones that were not in proper phase and grew back thinner and weaker the next year.

Once one has fully cleared the area over the course of 9 to 12 months (assuming fastest clearance) one could then have new hairs in follicles that never grew hairs before if one has something that is creating them, (puberty, hormonal imbalance, drug reaction, menapause…)

As for Nancy, You could have electrolysis in as little as a week after LASER, although it would be wise to wait the 6 week healing time the LASER brochures tell one to allow for the skin to heal. Your bigger problem is finding an electrologist who is good, AND willing to work on you after your LASER experiment.

Many electrologists don’t want to deal with a situation where they believe they may easily be litigated against for some side effect of the LASER treatment that you don’t notice until after you have begun treatment with them.

Good Luck