Starting over my electrolysis journey ☺️

[MissIslander]

First I would like to give a big thanks to all the wonderful people on this forum that have provided me with so much information and newfound positivity after having a bad experience with wasting time and money on ‘expensive plucking’ lol I am now ready to give it another go and provide an additional ‘case study’ to anyone else who ends up finding this amazing forum!

Background/History with electrolysis:

So at first electrolysis was just something I stumbled upon after being interested in hair removal So I read a couple articles, but laser is just so much more popular that many just end up choosing laser over electrolysis. Laser places and specialist are just about everywhere so it ended up being more convenient and seemed like it could get you permanent results much more quickly than electrolysis. At the time electrolysis just seemed like something for pesky hairs that maybe your grandma would get while laser was like that cool young thing so that was where I screwed up lol

Long story short, I got laser on my face where I initially had some hairs mostly concentrated on my chin, and side of my jaw and then some months after my last sesssion I grew longer thicker hair where I did not have them before ugh if only I had known before what I know now but I’m moving forward. It’s a bummer, sure but All is not lost.

So after this crazy induced hair growth (now on my chin, jawline, cheek area and right under my face. Basically a bearded pattern but with much less density ) I set out for a more permanent treatment. I was excited because I had the money and the time after graduating college so I began my journey in March 2019. I just picked the closest and most affordable electrolysis places I could find on a google search. One lady never answered and the other did so I went with her. Let’s call her Margot shall we?

Now Margot is a pretty sweet older lady but that doesn’t make someone a good electrolysis unfortunately. I stopped going to her in September 2019 after doing about 1 hour sessions a week and sometimes going in every two weeks so I did about 15-20 hours and she charges $70 an hour. At first I really didn’t know what to expect with electrolysis. I wasn’t really think about how skill based it was. I just firgured once you put the probe in and zap it and take the hair out then it’s gone right? Thankfully now I know better.

To sum up my experience with her, I felt a lot of plucking (not all the time but the vast majority of the time) and I would always feel the probe going into my skin which hurt (more on this later). She did write down the different energies and places she worked on and would go up more based on my sensitivity. She’s cleared my face like 3 times (not all in once session but over the course of 4 hours which I did about every month) now and as you’ve probably guessed I haven’t seen much reduction. Luckily I didn’t waste any more money or time with her after learning that her methods would not be very successful. I do not believe she was intentionally giving me a bad treatment and we actually became pretty close so it’s a bit of a bummer.

Now fast forward today. I’ve been collecting the info of all the electrologists in my area and set up a couple consultations which is what I should have done initially. Starting over fresh feels pretty good actually so I’m excited for better results.

I’ll document my consultations and treatments in this post. I actually went to a consultation today and it nearly blew my mind (in a good way lol). I did a 15 minute treatment and the biggest thing I noticed was that the insertions did not hurt at all. I felt nothing. She used thermolysis and has the Apilus machine and I only felt the heat being applied which did hurt a bit. I Didn’t even feel any hair plucking so I’m feeling good about her so far but I still want to do some shopping around. She explained that all my hairs are curled (she showed me the root of my hair extractions and indeed they were) so what she did is insert the probe and move it all around in the follicle to get all the directions it could be growing from and the hair came right out. I’m assuming this is a normal method for curly hair right? Either way it got the job done. Next consultation is tomorrow so stay tuned!

*i definitely want to include some pictures to make my journals more thorough and informative so people can see what I’m working with, but I saw in some posts that pictures were taken down so I’m not sure if maybe it went against the community rules or the author took it down themselves

[Deedra]

Your photos won’t be removed, unless you remove them or something else occurs on your end. So, please post QUALITY pictures. It really helps.

For facial hair Ike you describe, you probably need more than 15-20 hours spread out over 18-24 months, especially for laser induced hair stimulation.

No traction or pulling should be felt. Stay on a schedule and no tweezing or doing anything that pulls out the hair. It’s good that you found an electrologist that appears to be treating the follicle with good principles of care.

[MissIslander]

So Consultation number 2 went well.

She was very knowledgeable about laser, electrolysis and skin care and put me at ease with my skepticism. She did a couple practice hairs. She actually worked on me for 30 min but only charged for 15 min because she wanted to remove the really obvious hairs which I appreciated a lot. And And Apparently the laser specialist I went to for my face awhile back used Alexandritte laser! *cues suspense music! That type of laser is a No bueno for darker skin tones so I think I may have found my culprit as this electrologist explained.

I still prefer the last consultation I had because she is a lot closer to me and I believe her methods for curly facial hair was more effective than my consultation from today. Today I felt some plucking/resistance and it was explained that those hairs were shedding so not in the best phase for an effective treatment. I hear a lot of electrologist state that anagen hairs are the best hairs to treat but after a lot of research on this forum it seems like that is an older theory and as long as the hair is present on the face and the root is properly targeted then the hair will be gone and not feel plucked??

I like the fact that she put some sunscreen on my face afterwards too. Her methods is less aggressive than my first consultation because she wants to preserve my skin as best as possible and although that is a great consideration I do not think that using lower heat and trying to angle the probe and sort of guess where the hair is distorted or curled at will be beneficial. Compare this to my last consultation where she moved the probe around the follicle to essentially hit all the angles the root could be at which actually resulted in a smoother and pain free extraction.

I have one more consultation scheduled and I’m excited to see her because she uses microflash (the other two use thermolysis) and has a more open schedule (due to taking time off for family affairs) so she wants to clear my face in one session because she believes it will benefit me more so than coming in once or twice a week.

On the other hand: Consultation #1 didn’t really have a ‘strategy’. She just wants me to come in once or twice a week for 30 min. And she doesn’t really recommend shaving either because she wants the hairs present for her to treat during our session. I don’t mind this because I’m pretty good with not shaving at all because the hairs grow so quickly now it just seems pointless to shave but I do trim it

And consultation #2 suggested for me to shave the area so that the hairs that pop up right after will be the fresh anagen hairs which are the best to treat.

So here are some photos that were taken earlier this week. I wish I would have taken a picture of the hairs she extracted that were really curled but I will do That next time because it just look cool to me lol

*side note: this isn’t my full hair growth. As stated in my last post I haven’t been to my old electrologist in about 3-4 weeks and if her methods were not effective (which I believe it may not have been) that means essentially my hairs got plucked so they’ll be growing back. Some of them already have but I guess time will tell

I’ll take a picture next time of my face right after treatment and during the healing stage so others can know what to expect too. So far my face ends up red and swelling which subsided after a couple hours and leaves a teeny tiny scab which I’m sure will resolve itself

[MissIslander]

Hello thank you for your response and the heads up about the treatment time.

I suppose that 20 hours over 6 months probably isn’t enough time to really determine the effectiveness of her treatment but during this time she has cleared my face at least 3 times by now and due to a lot of the plucking I felt from her I knew it was best to find someone else.

Also a lot of the information she told me contradicted with what I’ve learned from this forum and what I’m learning now from my consultations. It’s still crazy to me how much I’ve learned from all of you.

In my pictures you’ll see that I have some ingrown hairs and according to my old electrologist she said that’s a good thing because it means the hair follicle is getting weaker so the hair can barely break the skin hence the ‘ingrown’. I’m not sure at all how accurate that is but it stumped me for a bit because i thought if the hair was treated successfully it shouldn’t grow back ‘weaker’ into an ingrown state. It shouldn’t grow back at all lol

[Iluv2zap]

bably isn’t enough time to really determine the effectiveness of her treatment but during this time she has cleared my face at least 3 times by now and due to a lot of the plucking I felt from her I knew it was best to find someone else.

Also a lot of the information she told me contradicted with what I’ve learned from this forum and what I’m learning now from my consultations. It’s still crazy to me how much I’ve learned from all of you.

In my pictures you’ll see that I have some ingrown h

If I’m right about what I’m seeing in these pictures you are looking at a minimum of 60 ( more likely 80 ) hours over 2 years minimum time frame to clear the area. There’s evident hormonal issues driving the growth, and evident in the skin’s condition, these need to be addressed through endocrinology, or you will continue to generate new hair follicles thus lengthening the removal process.

I’d go with Consultation #1 because anagen only theory is BUNK! IT has been directly disproven by electrologists on this board who have proven that not shaving waxing threading or doing anything to the hairs increases the number of hairs present for treatment and increases the overall ill rate as a result. Consultation #1 seems to be following exactly that protocol. I have several clients who have done this, and the reduction in the first clearance has astounded me. Go with #1

[MissIslander]

Thank you for the input

The breakouts that you see on my skin isn’t normal for me. I don’t have sensitive skin and never had an issue with acne but after talking to the two electrologist they both agreed that it could have been due to improper technique (the fact that I could feel the insertion going in with my old electrologist and it hurt) and also unsanitary conditions (my old electrologist dropped the probe sometimes and never replaced it. She just kept going eeek! Lol) And these new ingrown hairs is unusual for me too. They mentioned that an improper extraction of the hair could lead to the hair breaking off under the skin. But I definitely will get checked out by an endrocinologist just to finally rule out if I have any hormonal issues. My second consultation actually referred me to someone in my area so I’m going to check them out!

The hair pattern of my face now definitely looks like it could be PCOS to me but when I asked my PCP about it he doubts that I have it because I have no other symptoms of PCOS or a family history of it, but he will run the test if I want to proceed. (Ive been told that sometimes men don’t take facial hair growth seriously on women since they’re use to having hair on their face so they don’t realize it’s a big deal to us! Lol) Also when I got laser on my face instead of the laser specialist only going over the spots where I actually had hair they went all across my cheeks and down my neck as if I had a beard so it doesn’t surprise me that now I have actual hair growth in all those places.

I’m going to be as transparent as possible for anyone else who had a similiar ‘reaction’ to laser and may want to at least rule out any hormonal issues to get a better grasp on the severity of the issue so as soon as I get that checked out I’ll post the results

[MissIslander]

I had my third consultation this week and it went as expected. She’s a bit further away but she seems to work quickly using microflash and educates me as she’s going along. We worked mostly on my chin, sides of face and under my chin/face for a little over an hour. I didn’t feel the insertions either just some heat being applied and no plucking or any resistance from the hair coming out the shaft. She has good experience with curly hairs and was able to angle the probe to target the follicle the first time most of the times. I’ll be seeing her again in the next two weeks and she wants to try to clear my face even if we go over an hour again.

I’m confident with sticking to her because she’s not on a time crunch, she specializes in Electrology, she has updated tools and a lot of what she says coincides with what I’ve heard from the experts on here. And if anything I know the first consultation I went to can get the job done as well. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to find some good electrologists in my area because it’s not like a busy city so I’m very thankful for that

Now here’s some pictures:

This picture is some of the hairs that were removed and you can see how some of them are curled

And this is a picture of part of my face a couple hours after the treatment. It was red and little sore but healing very nicely now. I’ll take another picture when my skin is healed almost fully in a couple days and those teeny tiny scabs start showing.

[MissIslander]

I haven’t posted in a couple weeks because I’ve been so busy with the holiday season and sick yuck! But I’ve been able to keep up with my appointments. I’m happy to say that I feel like the hair is becoming manageable and even my boyfriend has noticed (he’s been very supportive throughout this ordeal)

My appointments are now down to every two weeks for an hour. I can’t believe it only takes an hour to clear my face now! My electrologist tried a couple mustache hairs on me during our last appointment because we had some time left over and they didn’t hurt much like I was expecting so Next appointment I’ll have her remove those pesky lip hairs.

But anyways so far so good. I’m very satisfied in my treatments right now and I’ll give another update after the New Years!

[Deedra]

Thanks for the update. It’s working!

[Zack]

I have those same bumps on my face after my first session, its been 6 months and still have those bumps. Did you ever fix this issue?