Skin reaction to electrolysis treatment - PICS

Hair Removal Methods Professional Electrolysis
#21

Since you asked, here is a picture of the bikini area just seconds after I have done the last hair in the session. There has not yet been any post treatment. It looks even better after post treatment pherisis, aloe, and tea tree oil.

This is what I am talking about when I say that higher end vision equipment, Up to date computerized machines, and a high level of skill make all the difference.

I give thanks to the owner of the skin shown in this image for allowing us permission to view it, however, she won’t be named, as agreed.

[image]http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~ti24/electrolysis/James_work.jpg[/image]

#22

This is what I am talking about when I say that higher end vision equipment, Up to date computerized machines, and a high level of skill make all the difference.

I guess you are right James, b/c this picture looks too good

James is king!!!

[image]http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~ti24/electrolysis/smilies/animated/hailtotheking.gif[/image].

Way to show off there, James !!! smooth, real smooth

The rest of us unfortunates, not lucky enough to recieve your holly magic, off we go to get [image]http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~ti24/electrolysis/smilies/animated/electrocuted.gif[/image]

#23

Here is an update. The scabs from the last two weeks are taking a long time to heal, but i know it will eventually be fine, so i’m patient.

The pictures were taken 30 minutes after treatment on 2/10/05

Method: Thermolysis, .3 to about 1 second

Intensity: 5

Equipment: Instantron, #3 UniProbe needle

Time: 1.5 hours

Areas treated:
chin and troat(nothing but transparent long blond hairs, invisible but palpable)

Both nipples and chestplate (a few black ones missed from last time but mostly long thin blond ones)

[image]http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~ti24/electrolysis/2-11-05/left_nipple_2_11_05.jpg[/image]

[image]http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~ti24/electrolysis/2-11-05/breast_plate_2_11_05.jpg[/image]

Left bikini with LOTS of EMLA (This area is “virgin” never worked on before)

[image]http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~ti24/electrolysis/2-11-05/detail_2_11_05.jpg[/image]

IT HURT A LOT… this time it really hurt a lot, but i think it’s becuase I’m sick and my immune system and tollerance are down. I hope that’s the reason b/c there is no way i can get the brazilian if this is how it will be. Hoepfully by next week, i’ll be well again and it will not hurt this much.

#24

that redness is ok when you are treating body areas, but what about the face? where anyone can see it and where skin is a lot softer? it seems that one will have to stay home for ages till it heals let alone possible permanent damage. and just imagine repeating it every month…it is scary. puncturing and traumatazing your skin, wait till it heals and then do it all over again, for 2 years…

#25

it seems that only James can do that magnificent work. the area treated looks great.

#26

james what do you mean by saying that blend and galvanic would work differently? skin would look better or worse than in the pics ivelina posted?

#27

that redness is ok when you are treating body areas, but what about the face? where anyone can see it and where skin is a lot softer? it seems that one will have to stay home for ages till it heals let alone possible permanent damage. and just imagine repeating it every month…it is scary. puncturing and traumatazing your skin, wait till it heals and then do it all over again, for 2 years…

Vanessa:

The photo’s I am seeing doesn’t raise red flags in my mind. These area’s will heal fine. Could this particular electrologist refine her/his levels and change to a different probe to lessen the side effects? Maybe,yes. Huge,hormonally dependent hairs that have been waxed or tweezed over time require more energy and time to destroy. Virgin areas where hairs are deep and close together can sometimes look raw after treatment. With proper care and the right amount of time in between treatments to heal, one will be left with smooth hairless skin. Enough intensity has to be used to destroy the hair growing tissue. Things will calm down.One shouldn’t have to stay at home for ages after a treatment. If you do,then tell your electrologist so she can find another “recipe”. There are a lot of roads to choose from ( flash thermolysis, manual thermolysis, blend and galvanic) to destroy a hair permanently with electrolysis. If she can go outside the box and try a few different strategies in those beginning appointments, she will find the best levels of timing and intensity for your skin and it’s healing apparatus.

We don’t puncture the skin repeatedly when we do electrolysis. The hair follicle is just a pocket,just like the pocket in your shirt, where the hair sprouts from. The probe is gently slide into the already open pocket - no puncturing of the skin, unless one’s insertions are off. Yes, the skin has to endure some trauma. How else are we suppose to destroy the hair follicle? But it heals well if the practioner is meticulous with finding the proper levels of intensity and timing for your skin. Your comment about having to repeat it all in two years after it heals??? Electrolysis is permanent. Whatever do you mean?

Dee

#28

Ok, I have cleared very large areas now on both sides. I did it at home by myself with galvanic currant. It took me more than 15 hours to do about 2sq.inches but for me that was totally worth it. unfortunately, the areas i’m clearing are getting more and more intimate so i can’t keep posting pictures.

But i have to say that with galvanic, the skin right after treatment looks fresh and baby pink like it never grew hair at all. Galvanic does not hurt in the pubic area…

HOWEVER my treatment with the electrologist are becoming impossible. I am NOT a cry baby by any means. I’m a tomboyish girl, and I’m screaming when he works on the closer genital sections now with EMLA and all. It’s so painful (the first time i though that it was b/c i had a cold and was sick) that i just don’t know how i will go through with it at all. I need to be knocked out cold for him to work in peace. He can’t even do a dime size in an hour now where before he was clearing HUGE areas, HUGE… so i am not sure how i will solve this problem but something will have to be done …

#29

wow iveline! you did your own work? what equipment do you have/use?

yeah pain is a pain in the butt. i dont see myself doing any “intimate” areas ever! I am going to live with shaving and waxing the rest of my life. Its all good, no one ever sees that area anyway. Its where the sun dont shine right. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> hehehe. problemo solved (at least for me).

face though is something else and hence me focusing on my hairy face <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

-R

#30

I have a Fischer SE-4 with pedals. I LOVE doing it myself but there are only so many areas that i can reach comfortably. And my back hurts a lot when i get up from having bent it like a pretzel for so many hours. but again, as i said, it gives me great satisfaction to do this, so i don’t care how long it takes and how difficult it is. when i start seeing results i will be that much more motovated. Of course ideally my b/f (who promised) should be working on me and me on him… but for now he could not be less interested in learning this stuff <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

#31

what i mean is, all people say that electlolysis takes around 2 years to remove hair permanently. so if you are treating the same areas every 2-3 weeks or so, causing each time a wound to the skin, wait to heal, and when hair grows, insert the probe again, wait to heal and so on for 2 years, i am just wondering what condition the skin will be in. it is true that a great deal depends on the practitioner’s skill. i have had blend electrolysis one time and i was left with large red blotches like burns that have still not faded and scars. then i had a few hairs removed by another electrologist, and she was so skillful that i inspect my skin using magnifying glasses, and i cannot tell where she inserted the probe. there is absolutely nothing, no redness, no bumps, nothing at all. so i guess a good electrologist would make all the difference. but yet, like you said, you cannot destroy a hair follicle without wounding the skin and that’s what is bothering me. because if you could do it once and then be hair free it would be fine. but repeatedly wounding the skin for months, even years…i dont know, it just doesnt seem very healthy.

#32

If you read enough posts here, and at Hairtfacts.com, you will understand that you are misunderstanding the process.

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.

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?

#33

Outstanding explanation, James. It would be great to put that post in a sticky or start developing a FAQ.

#34

HOWEVER my treatment with the electrologist are becoming impossible. I am NOT a cry baby by any means. I’m a tomboyish girl, and I’m screaming when he works on the closer genital sections now with EMLA and all. It’s so painful (the first time i though that it was b/c i had a cold and was sick) that i just don’t know how i will go through with it at all.

I don’t think it’s practical to do any significant pubic area electrolysis without local anesthetic injections.

#35

I found that if you schedule longer sessions that the genital hair removal becomes more bearable. It was the first 15 minutes each session that was the biggest problem. After that I would get used to it and stop flinching each time the needle was inserted. Although I found the removal of the hair from the bony part of my chest more painful than genital hair removal. If you had your underarm hair removed,how did that go?

#36

well… my electrologist says that he does the bikini and brazilian for most of his clients. he says that is the bulk of his work and that NO ONE OTHER THAN ME uses EMLA. He swears that everyone else just takes it and does not say that it hurts more than anywhere else. I told him many times that there is no way that i will ever believe that.

The other day there was a lady before me and i was in the waiting room for 45 minutes keeping the EMLA on. After i went in and started my usual jumping off the chair, he told me that that lady was having the same area done without any anaesthetic… and i didn’t hear anything from the room (you can hear regular conversations, let alone an OUCH!!!)

so i don’t know what that means. all i know is that it hurts me very very much and i will ask him to switch to blend or galvanic and see how well that goes.

I have not had the underarms done so i don’t know. at this point i think that it’s 100% individual b/c i hear from other that the nipples hurt and the mustache hurts… and for me they are completely painless, so you just have to try and see for yourself <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

#37

It turns out that when I don’t use EMLA at all the pain is comepletely gone!!!

last night he was cleaning some areas that had been treated and had new growth and then he moved onto the more delicate areas where i used to apply EMLA b/c he was done with the cleaning up and we had more time. But, I was talking away and did not realize where exactly he was working. It was not until the end of the session when i looked that i realized that he had been zapping hairs where i had normally been jumping off the chir in the fast couple of weeks.

he said, “I told you so!” So it turns out that the cream actually makes the treatment extremely painful and wihtout it i didn’t feel anything.

The ONLY explanation that i have is that the cream moisturizes the top layers of the skin and they are getting burned by the needle.

#38

That could be your problem.

One of my problems with EMLA and LMX is that they are water soluable. There is a lidocane topical that is oil based, that doesn’t react to the treatment current, and I like that better. I will get some information on the name, and if it is available in the US. My Canadian Clients usually have it.

#39

Have you tried the LMX? There is a small percentage of the population that has an allergic reaction to the 2% Prilocaine that is in the EMLA. I would try the 5% LMX and occlude it for 1 hr before the treatment, just as a test.

#40

Yes I’ve tried the LMX5 as well. same exact effect as the EMLA. It’s not allergy b/c i don’t hurt FROM the cream but it makes the treatment painful.

It does not really matter what and why the anaesthetics don’t work well for me since without them i feel no pain. I don’t need anything <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

me happy!!! [image]http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~ti24/electrolysis/smilies/animated/jumping.gif[/image][image]http://www.cs.drexel.edu/~ti24/electrolysis/smilies/animated/clapping.gif[/image]