Electrolysis Overtreatment
One of the biggest complaints I hear from people is that electrolysis didn’t work for them. Although it irritates me to no end, I really can’t blame people for believing in their personal experience because it’s highly likely electrolysis hasn’t worked for them. Many electrolysis services are offered by people who quite simply have no idea what they’re doing or what the machine is doing so their technique is pretty much poke-and-pull, that is poke the probe into the skin and pull the hair out. There are a number of reasons that electrolysis doesn’t work for people – poor training, poor equipment, lack of ethics, and fear of overtreatment are just a few.
Electrolysis Overtreatment
Fear of electrolysis overtreatment is the issue I am most concerned about because I think it’s responsible for a lot of the undertreatment that leads to poor results. Poor electrolysis outcome in turn leads to a bad reputation for electrolysis as a whole. I think a lot of people performing electrolysis fear high levels of current because they fear causing a skin reaction they can’t explain to clients.
I was a client of electrolysis services years ago and now that I’m a professional I realize that the only practitioner who achieved a high level of success zapped the heck out of my hair. By the standards set in electrology textbooks I would say she went way over the top in terms of energy levels and the skin reaction could have been considered electrolysis overtreatment.
But she was effective.
I tend towards a higher current level as well simply because I want to kill the hair in one shot whenever possible. The important thing is to watch the skin reaction on the surface. Even on the face I rarely see anything but swelling and minor redness. If you come up with lots of puncture marks then a bad insertion is the most likely culprit (occasionally a drop of blood appears with even the most competent electrologists so that’s nothing to worry about but it is fairly rare).
This isn’t to say that there is no such thing as electrolysis overtreatment.
Some epilators are too powerful. If you see blistering then that is definitely a case of electrolysis overtreatment. There is very little risk of long term damage from electrolysis overtreatment so don’t worry if you do get a stronger skin reaction than you expect. Your skin will heal.
In my opinion, electrolysis undertreatment combined with inaccurate insertions do the most to undermine the possibility of a successful outcome.
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