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13 Ways To Remove Unwanted Hair

Did you know there are 13 ways to remove your unwanted hair?

These first 4 hair removal methods just remove the hair that’s visible above the skin, so they are only temporary solutions that need to be repeated often (eg men shave their faces every day)

  1. Shaving (the most common – with razor or electric shavers)
  2. Trimming (makes it a bit shorter)
  3. Dissolving creams and powders (like Veet, which chemically dissolve hair)
  4. Buffing (light sandpaper to buff away hair with friction)

These next 5 hair removal methods yank out the hair and root so the procedures are repeated less often. You will appear hairless for longer (days or weeks). But the hair root will soon grow back and create another hair

  1. Waxing (apply hot or cold wax, apply strips, and yank out hairs by the roots! Ouch!)
  2. Sugaring (same process as wax, but with a sticky paste instead of wax)
  3. Epilation (using a needle to remove the hair from the root – one hair at a time!)
  4. Threading (a twisted thread catches hair as it rolls across the skin, yanked out by the roots. Also called fatlah or khite)
  5. Tweezing (Plucking out hairs with tweezers or your fingers. Ouch!)

These next 3 hair removal methods kill the germ cells around the hair root so can be permanent

  1. Electrolosis
    • A fine probe is inserted into each hair follicle. The germ cells which grow hair are killed with a small zap of electricity
    • This technology is 135 years old!
    • Works on all hair colours
    • The only true, life-time, permanent hair removal
    • Painful. Slow. Expensive.
  2. Lasers
    • Will heat/kill dark hairs (black or brown hair) but leave light coloured skin cool. Usually not for use on people with darker skin
    • You may need 3-8 treatments (about 10 weeks apart) to ensure hairs in all stages of the hair life cycle are killed
    • Some hair may grow back after a few years
    • Fairly painless (brief heating of the skin)
    • Fast (60 times faster than Electrolosis)
    • Expensive
  3. Intense Pulsed Light
    • Similar technology to laser but faster to use and cheaper (this is why it has become so popular with practitioners)
    • Will vaporise dark hairs, the root, and the papilla (the germ cell that grows new hairs)
    • Leaves light coloured skin cool. Usually not for use on people with darker skin
    • You may need 3-8 treatments (about 10 weeks apart) to ensure hairs in all stages of the hair life cycle are killed
    • Some hair may grow back after a few years
    • Fairly painless (brief heating of the skin)
    • Faster than laser
    • Fairly expensive when treated by a Hair Removal Salon ($1000 to $3000+), but inexpensive when you buy your own hand-held device for home

That is 12 hair removal methods so far, the 13th is prescription medication for hair removal. But the hair grows back when you stop taking the drugs, so just forget about this one.

Next, let’s set the record straight about “permanent” hair removal.

The truth about “permanent” hair removal.