Electrolysis

Electrolysis refers to the process of permanently removing hair from parts of the body where you don’t want to have any hair growing. In order to perform the hair removal, one has to be a trained practitioner. During the procedure, this practitioner slides a thin metal probe into each hair follicle, but does not puncture the skin. Electrical currents flow through the probe and causes damage to the hair root.

There are three different methods of hair removal in electrolysis – galvanic, thermolysis and blended. There is no one method that seems to work better than the other. The success of the procedure depends on the type of skin and its condition, the amount of pain that the patient has and the type of hair. Some patients report having a lot of pain, while others don’t seem to mind at all.

In the galvanic method the body is the electrolytic cell and the probe is the cathode of that cell. The sodium hydroxide that forms at the cathode kills the hair cells. In modern electrolysis, the voltage of the electrical current can be adjusted so that the cells receive constant current. The thermolysis method uses a radio transmitter that puts out 0 –8 watts at a frequency of 13.56 Mhz. In this method the overheating cause permanent damage to the roots of the hair so that they won’t grow back. The blend is a combination of both of these methods.

It takes an average of 1 to 4 years of treatment to complete the electrolysis although most people are satisfied with the progress after two years. This procedure is by far the best one that has been developed for permanent hair removal, but it can be quite expensive. It also works best for the removal of small amounts of hair. However, there have been some patients who did not respond to the treatment at all.