I recently started electrolysis.  I've had two separate hour long sessions on my chest.  The sessions went well, but it's now a week since my second session and I have a hairs growing back in the area that was cleared. 

My quesion is whether this could be regrowth of hair that the technician had cleared.  Or could these hairs be ones that were not visible and in their dormat phase during my last session. 

I had expected to be hair free.  I was disappointed to see these hairs.  two steps forward and one back....

Yes, there are many dormant follicles in all skin. It really takes about 6 full clearings about 30 days apart to kill all the follicles.

In my experience, anti-androgens and removal of the testes will do more than anything else to get rid of hair below the neck.

yeah, i've only been on spironalactone for two weeks.  I'm hoping it helps

Quote from: Becca Kay on October 29, 2017, 06:25:25 PM
I recently started electrolysis.  I've had two separate hour long sessions on my chest.  The sessions went well, but it's now a week since my second session and I have a hairs growing back in the area that was cleared. 

My quesion is whether this could be regrowth of hair that the technician had cleared.  Or could these hairs be ones that were not visible and in their dormat phase during my last session. 

I had expected to be hair free.  I was disappointed to see these hairs.  two steps forward and one back....

Assuming your tech is using a good machine and knows their stuff then you are right what you are seeing is going to be a tiny amount of regrowth but mostly new growth. Unfortunately each Zap will not kill every follicle first time, most of them, yes it will but there will always be a small percentage that survive the first zapping. But the hair cycle continues and as Dani said there a many follicles and some will be dormant...you will notice that they come back less and less as time goes by.

Doubtful that your recently treated hairs grew back that fast. It is most likely hairs that didn't reach the surface at the time of treatment.

going in for another session tomorrow.  I go in every other week.  more regrowth in the area i've had cleared three times now. 

So frustrating.

Expectations beforehand are not quite how it seems to work.

I started electrolysis on my face over two months ago, and am still not nearly as far along as I had hoped. My cheeks and neck have been cleared, but they were rather thin to begin with. There still keeps being some regrowth on my neck.

I'm thinking I'll basically have to do guy mode much of the time even into next year as I'll have to have a mustache and goatee grown out much of the time.

The way I understand it, the growth cycles can take as long as a year and half for all hairs to not be dormant. This is going to be a rough next year for me.

Quote from: Becca Kay on November 13, 2017, 08:49:14 PM
going in for another session tomorrow.  I go in every other week.  more regrowth in the area i've had cleared three times now. 

So frustrating.

Every other week! 

I go twice a week and would do more often if possible. I guess some of us are just harrier than others. 

i'm thinking that after thanksgiving i might stop the electrolysis and start doing laser on my chest instead.  i thought i'd be able to get my chest and abdomenal area cleared faster with regular 1 hr electrolysis apts than doing laser, which would take up to a year (with appointments every 6 weeks).  Elecrolysis is slow going though.  After 5 appointments only the very top of my chest is cleared.  Hairs pop back in the area last cleared, and part of each session is going back over the same area again, before clearing new.


why is this soooo damn hard?      And painful

i want this hair gone.  I'm on HRT now and i'm kind of worried that soon I'll start getting noticeable breast development.  I don't want to have to be doing this once my breasts start to grow.   

Quote from: Becca Kay on November 15, 2017, 05:30:38 PM
i want this hair gone.  I'm on HRT now and i'm kind of worried that soon I'll start getting noticeable breast development.  I don't want to have to be doing this once my breasts start to grow.   

Why's that? I'm afraid it's inevitable if you're on HRT. I'm not saying this is the case for you, but I know I was really worried about what the techs would think when I started getting laser. Now I actually enjoy their company while getting lasered and they know all about my transition.

Even with laser you can expect it to take at least a year for every single hair to be gone imo. They usually laser you every 6 weeks on the body. If the hairs are dark you should definitely do laser and forget electrolysis.

What's your facial hair like? If you wanna get rid of that I'd start with laser ASAP too. I'm almost up to 20 sessions (one every 4 weeks) on my face and still not quite done.. about 90% of the way there.

I know the feeling. I was excited when my mustache area was finally cleared and lasted for a while after many painful hours of electrolysis, then all of a sudden it's back. It's expensive and frustrating.

You have to remember that a hair growth cycle is between 8-10 weeks. These growth cycles are typically clustered by area. For me it about a 2 inch by 2 inch area around my whole body.


You should plan on 4-6 growth cycles for each cycle (one is active, the other dormant for a total of 1.5-2 years. Yes it sucks. Yes it's biology and we can't get around how long each growth cycle is.

The kill rate is what you're hoping for. In an ideal world it would be 100%. In reality a good tech will be closer to 80%. If the follicle isn't killed off, it's damaged and will return finer and lighter.

Hitting stubborn follicles more than once in a growth cycle (regrowth after 2-3 weeks of any zap) results in a far greater chance of a follicle being killed in a single cycle rather than just damaged.

Laser and electrolysis compliment each other.

For instance I'm working on my surgical site now and my schedule is as follows

Week 1. Laser
Week 4- electrolysis
Week 6- electrolysis
Week 8- laser
Week 11- electrolysis
And so on.

A full purge after laser can take up to 3 weeks.

Hang tough! I'm coming up on 18 months of hair removal and am about 98% cleared on my face, 80% on chest and torso, and 75% on surgical site.


I count myself as lucky as a friend of mine is in her 3rd year of hair removal for the face and is only 70% finished.

It hurts, irs expensive, and yes it's completely worth it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Take heart.  Electrolysis will clear your facial hair.  It just takes a lot of time.  Not all the follicles are killed in one treatment, and, as someone pointed out, the hair you see in the next few days comes from different follicles which are just coming into their growth phase.

It will work. 

As for being done before the rest of your body changes, my best guess is that your face will be cleared enough to cause less misgendering by the time your body reshapes.  That said, I still do a few treatments of maintenance electrolysis per year when there is enough to treat, and I shave every couple of weeks to clear stray hairs.  What is left is light and fine, and not really noticeable on a day to day basis. 

Lots of women occasionally shave/wax/pluck by the way.  Shaving is actually the least likely to toughen up the follicle.

Keeping going can be the tough part, I have been doing this for over 2 years now at the rate of about an hour a week and I am almost done....Laser is much faster if you have the right skin hair colour combination. Electrolysis is good for those hairs the laser won't take care of.

Hang in there once you start to see some real results then it makes the motivation a bit easier. You can make  it    

Quote from: Ellement_of_Freedom on November 15, 2017, 06:06:43 PM
Why's that? I'm afraid it's inevitable if you're on HRT. I'm not saying this is the case for you, but I know I was really worried about what the techs would think when I started getting laser. Now I actually enjoy their company while getting lasered and they know all about my transition.

Even with laser you can expect it to take at least a year for every single hair to be gone imo. They usually laser you every 6 weeks on the body. If the hairs are dark you should definitely do laser and forget electrolysis.

What's your facial hair like? If you wanna get rid of that I'd start with laser ASAP too. I'm almost up to 20 sessions (one every 4 weeks) on my face and still not quite done.. about 90% of the way there.

I'm doing laser on my face.  Two sessions done.  Now at the end of the shedding phase after my second session.  My facial hair is very thick.  I could grow a beard very easily.  Unfortunately i have a lot of red and blond hair on my face so i'm eventualy going to have to suffer a lot of electrolysis there as well.

My chest always seemed to me to be sparce in terms of hair.  But sparce is relative once someone starts shoving a needle into you. After the holidays I may just start doing 6 electroysis sessions per month instead of two.  I simply want to see progress, which will make me feel better. 

Quote from: Becca Kay on November 16, 2017, 05:10:55 PM
I'm doing laser on my face.  Two sessions done.  Now at the end of the shedding phase after my second session.  My facial hair is very thick.  I could grow a beard very easily.  Unfortunately i have a lot of red and blond hair on my face so i'm eventualy going to have to suffer a lot of electrolysis there as well.

My chest always seemed to me to be sparce in terms of hair.  But sparce is relative once someone starts shoving a needle into you. After the holidays I may just start doing 6 electroysis sessions per month instead of two.  I simply want to see progress, which will make me feel better. 

If you can afford it and you can handle the pain, more power to you girl. You'll get there eventually. <3

I'm feeling a little out of place here in this discussion ... But, I had electrolysis on my underarms over 30 years ago.  The area has been clear ever since.  I went once a week for the better part of a year to get it all gone for good.  But that was 30 years ago, and the techniques and machines have improved since then ... But the message is, it takes several treatments to eliminate the hair for good, but it WILL be gone ... just have patience.  I recently had IPL (Laser) under both arms as a "touch up" as there were a few pesky hairs trying to come back after all this time, go figure.

HRT eliminated all of the hair on my legs over the course of decades, and my beard disappeared on it's own except for pesky "wirey" hairs long my jaw line, which I am now (finally) attacking with electrolysis.  It's worth doing.

Electrolysis of the underarms?  Ouch.   

I suppose laser wasn't widely available at that time.  Depending on hair color and skin tone, laser actually works rather quickly on underarms.  Belly hair and anything close to the genitals is pretty resistant, but laser is very economical for body hair clearing in my experience.

I am relatively new to this also. I had a mix of very coarse dark hair and a little gray on my face. I have done 3 laser treatments on my face and all of my dark hair has gone, though after the session for about a month the burnt hair grew out so it appeared as if noting was gone, but after a month that stubble fell out and the area was clear. Now I still have some thin light hair on my face which I am having electrolysis done on. In a one hour session my tech ususally can clear a 2 inch by 2 inch area. 3 months later about half the hair in that area is gone so I guess the other hair were out of cycle when she cleared that.  6 months ago I had to shave everyday to keep a beard from growing. If I put on make up I would have a 5 o clock shadow after about 7 hours. Today I only need to shave once a week or so . I can wear normal make up now and no need to put it on thick.
   So I would not get discouraged after 2 sessions. I had hoped that I could just do 3 sessions of laser and be done, but it will probably take me at least 10 more sessions electrolysis for my face to be totaly hair free.