I live in Portland, Maine and I’m looking for an electrologist. I’m wondering what questions I should ask a prospective electrologist before going ahead with treatments?
Furthermore, what answers should I look for? watch out for?
I’m of lebanese/arabic descent and I have course, dark hair on my face and neck. Laser did not work for me - in fact, it made my hair problem worse.
Lastly, if anyone has a recommendation for the southern Maine region, I would be appreciate it very much.
Can you please describe in more detail what happened with laser? Do you know the machine and settings that were used? How coarse is your hair? How much of your face does it cover? Generally, induced growth or lack of results on your skin type result from using inappropriate type of laser, inappropriate settings, treating hair that’s too fine or all of the above.
Have you read the “how to find an electrologist” sticky post? That will help you already. Electrology.com has some questions to ask.
Generally, I would recommend looking for:
Someone who has a good amount of experience (in years)
Someone who removes the hair without you feeling it being plucked and leaves your skin undamaged. The hair should slide out without resistance after being zapped. Get a sample treatment at each place you check out.
Someone who uses a variety of electrolysis methods, including the fastest thermolysis type (since it sounds like you have a lot of hair to treat, this is important for you). It would also be nice if they had a newer computerized epilator like Apilus, but it’s not a requirement. Apilus does offer thermolysis, blend as well as even faster microflash thermolysis methods.
I have no idea as to the laser machine or settings used when i had laser done. it was 7-8 years ago and i went to 2 different practitioners and i had at least 20 treatments done. the hair would go away and i’d have severe redness, then it would come back progressively faster each time.
how coarse is my hair? i’m not sure how to measure coarseness, but i think it’s quite coarse. more coarse today than it was before laser.
Hair size itself can be measured in lye units, or ULs. It is related to the amount of lye units generated by galvanic (or blend) electrolysis needed to destroy a hair of a given size. For density, what I was told to do was take an area (a square centimeter or such), and count the number of hairs in that area at the time. The density and size of the hair will vary, even in the same general area of the face or body, which is why giving people even a rough estimate as to time it will take to complete is difficult.
Picoflash is the fastest (only available with someone using an Apilus Platinum or Platinum Pure.) Microflash is more commonly available, and more machines offer it (we have a thread related to this going on right now.)
There are different types of electrolysis. Thermolysis, blend, and galvanic. Thermolysis is fastest, i.e. removes about 5-10 hairs per minute. Galvanic is slowest at 1 hair per minute or so. Microflash is a fast type of thermolysis, so it’s even a bit faster than regular thermolysis.
Coarse hair is the type of hair you have on underarms and bikini.