Questions About Electrolysis

Whether you are looking to clear up a crop of hairs on your chin or you require more extensive body work, it’s crucial to find answers to several electrolysis questions before you begin. Permanent hair removal is an investment of both time and money so it’s important to choose your electrologist wisely.

There isn’t a lot of information on electrolysis available on the internet or in the library so it can be difficult to get objective information on what is an acceptable level of care by your electrologist. It’s very easy to get bogged down by technical information that simply doesn’t matter to you as a client. Following is a list of questions to ask potential electrologists.  There is not one absolutely correct answer to any of them, but hopefully you can use my list of electrolysis questions as a guide to help you assess your treatment options.

Important Electrolysis Questions To Ask

1. How effective is electrolysis?  There actually is one right answer to this question, and that is that electrolysis is 100% effective in permanently removing hair when it is performed properly. For a woman’s face there simply isn’t a better option to ensure that fine peach fuzz or coarse chin hair are eliminated without damage to the skin. Electrolysis can easily eliminate the unwanted hair without causing lasting damage to the skin. Electrolysis hair removal is permanent – no other hair removal method can truthfully make that claim. Furthermore, there are no incidents of electrolysis stimulating a dramatic increase in hair growth (whereas there are many instances of laser-induced hair growth on the face, see my essay).
2. How effective are your electrolysis treatments? Surprisingly, I don’t get asked this question very often, but I think it’s the most important one. An electrologist practices quite a bit on herself and friends and family before offering electrolysis services to the public. Certainly most of us have cleared our own legs, arms, bikinis and anywhere else we can reach so it’s fairly simple to observe whether our treatments are effective – or not. My own success rate is quite high, my best guesstimate would be that 85-95% of hairs treated will not grow back once I’ve treated them. The variability depends on area of the body; for example, it’s fairly easy to estimate a 95% kill rate on a bikini line where most of the hair is the same texture and in the same stage of growth. In contrast, at any given time the face can have both coarse, thick hair and fine dark hair in various stages of growth so it can take a bit longer to gauge the success rate. Variability in the success rate also depends on a client’s pain threshold. I have had clients literally twitch me out of the follicle many times in one hour! My personal opinion is that a 75% success rate is the absolute minimum for a professional electrologist.

Electrolysis Questions I Am Most Often Asked

The two things that come up most often when I communicate with potential clients are the the risk of scarring and the hygiene practices I follow. I understand the concern about hygiene because it’s important to have confidence that you receive a single use electrolysis probe and sterile tweezers at every appointment. Hygiene is generally a concern only when you’re dealing with semi-professional “electrologists” working in a spa or hair salon or some other makeshift setup. You can put the same trust in any business dedicated to electrolysis hair removal that you would in your doctor or dentist. There is an assumption that your dentist is treating you with sterile equipment, a dedicated electrologist deserves the same level of trust. For more on electrolysis and hygiene, please read this essay.

Concern over the risk of scarring can be eliminated through an understanding of what is going on during an electrolysis treatment. An electrolysis probe does not pierce the skin during a treatment, rather the probe slides into the follicle when it is guided by the hand of a capable electrologist. Electrolysis hair removal is not a mini-electrocution, it is the controlled delivery of current into the follicle. The hair-generating cells are destroyed and the small wound in the follicle heals in time.

Image showing that skin is not pierced by electrolysis probe during a correct insertion.

The image above is an accurate representation of how electrolysis hair removal is delivered. The probe is inserted into an opening in the skin from which a hair is growing. The electrologist slides the electrolysis probe to the bottom of the follicle and delivers the current. There is some mild redness and swelling because the treatment irritates the surface of the skin, but no significant wound is produced when electrolysis is performed on the face. Electrolysis hair removal treatments on the body will produce some pinpoint scabbing and you will heal from that just as you would from a minor cut or scrape.

The question of effectiveness is, in my mind, the most important aspect of choosing permanent hair removal services. To provide an effective electrolysis treatment a person has to have both skill and ethics. If an electrologist has these two traits, then everything else just falls into place.

Further reading:
https://www.follikill.com/2013/06/24/electrologist-part-2/