Short-term Hair Removal
Shaving, Cremes, Waxing, Plucking, Threading, Epilation
Day 18/30 of writing everything I know down daily.
There are a few main methods of hair removal. I will discuss the main things below about shorter-term options (ones that you need to do consistently, that don’t address longer-term growth), and in the next post I will discuss longer-term options.
Preventing Hair Follicles from Forming
You probably want to make sure that the hair follicles have stopped forming. These are mostly downstream of DHT levels. If your estrogen and testosterone levels are in the female range, growth of new hair follicles should be minimal. Otherwise, you may want to consider anti-androgens, or especially DHT blockers, for which the discussion is mostly the same as in the retaining head hair page. This should make hair growth slightly less overall also.
Short-Term Hair Removal
There are ways to remove your hair in the short term. These can be fine, but you will need to keep doing them.
Surface-only Methods
Shaving
This one is mostly obvious. You run a blade over your skin to cut the hair that is sticking out off. It does not cause your hair to be thicker, but it can appear so due to the larger cross-section at the cutting site.
My understanding is that Multi-blade razors can cut slightly below the surface of the skin, which makes the time until it’s visible again slightly longer, though for some people, especially with curly-haired people, this can cause razor bumps/PFB.
Hair Removal Creams
Thioglycolate creams somewhat dissolve the keratin disulfide bonds, at or just below the skin surface. Also obvious, lasts longer but non-permanent
This can lighten and thin out the hair somewhat, also temporary.
Some people (~10%) get dermatitis, so it’s worth patch testing if you haven’t tried it before. Don’t apply to broke skin or more often than every 72h. Creams used on face should be weaker than ones used on the body, don’t get burned.
Deeper Methods
These involve pulling the whole hair out, regrowth takes 2-8 weeks.
These should NOT be done in the prior 6-8 weeks before you do longer-term hair removal such as Laser or Electrolysis.
Waxing & Sugaring
Most commonly known, pretty obvious. You apply a wax strip or sugaring substance to your hairy skin, and pull to take out the full hair down to the root.
There is some risk of getting some folliculitis (spots from your follicles getting slightly infected).
You should, avoid applying retinoids to areas you intend to get waxed for ~5 days, as it can increase risk of epidermal tears.
Threading
This is mostly a higher-precisision way of pulling out hairs, where you use a twisted cotton loop against across the skin, and hairs get caught and pulled out.
Most commonly you will see this for brows, but it can also be done for upper lip and jawline.
Tweezing, Plucking, Epilation
This is essentially the same method. Epilation just plucks more hairs at once.
Repeated plucking can rarely cause focal scarring or distorted growth.
I will discuss more about longer-term methods in the post tomorrow.