Nearly everyone who shaves, waxes or plucks will encounter ingrown hairs at some point during their regimen – from armpit hairs to bikini line ones. They can appear anywhere along your hair growth trajectory from armpit to bikini line.
Laser treatments for ingrown hairs can be extremely painful and annoying, yet laser therapy has proven successful at stopping their reappearance by altering the growth cycle of your follicles.
What Causes Ingrown Hairs?
Most ingrown hairs can be treated at home with ease; however, others require professional assistance. If an ingrown hair hasn’t penetrated too deeply into the skin, use clean tweezers to extract it; however, avoid picking or popping cysts that appear on your skin as doing so may introduce bacteria that lead to infection and lead to further issues.
Ingrown hairs typically form as the result of blocked or clogged follicles. Shaving, waxing and other methods of hair removal often contribute to this clogging by cutting too short or irritating the skin during removal processes. Dead skin cells also clog follicles forcing hair regrowth back inward instead of out through it; this causes bumps that look similar to pimples with pus. Curly or coarse hair can bend back into itself more readily; while pregnancy and puberty hormone changes may stimulate extra hair growth leading to ingrowns becoming even more prevalent than usual resulting ingrowns becoming even more frequent.
Ingrown hairs can occur anywhere on the legs, arms and face; however they can also develop on women who regularly shave their pubic area. When this occurs ingrown hairs can sometimes be mistaken for warts, boils or herpes which can be extremely uncomfortable and itchy as well as difficult to diagnose and treat effectively; many doctors suggest topical exfoliants as a treatment and refraining from shaving, tweezing and waxing until your ingrowns have cleared up completely.
How Do Ingrown Hairs Develop?
Ingrown hairs form when the sharp tip of a hair gets caught in or grows sideways into the skin surrounding a hair follicle. As it grows larger, an ingrown hair becomes red like a pimple and may feel itchy or painful; if left untreated it could progress to become an infected cyst that requires professional dermatological care to resolve.
As well as shaving, hair removal methods that pull or yank hair can lead to ingrown hairs when skin damage around the follicle occurs. They tend to appear in areas with thicker hair such as bikini areas for men or beard areas for women as well as underarms or legs for both.
Hair-removal methods may compound the issue further, causing the sharp end of the hair to bend back towards or through the skin, which in turn reenters pores and causes ingrown hairs; or break off nearer the surface, increasing its likelihood of curling back into its original position within a follicle.
Razor bumps or ingrown hairs typically aren’t serious and can often be treated at home with some patience and treatment. But if they become large, painful, or filled with pus, medical intervention should be sought to diagnose their cause and drain or remove the cyst as soon as possible.
How Do Ingrown Hairs Get Infected?
When hair grows out of pores and becomes trapped beneath the skin, it can clog them and lead to ingrown hairs forming within. When this happens, inflammation and infection set in. An ingrown hair typically presents itself in the form of an itchy bump that’s both itchy and painful and sometimes pus-filled; although such infected ingrowns usually don’t pose any major danger, they must still be treated.
If an ingrown hair goes untreated, it can spread further beneath your skin, eventually becoming ingrown itself and looping back into its original follicle to cause further irritation and inflammation. When this happens, red spots that look similar to boils will appear on your surface skin – this condition is known as pseudofolliculitis barbae.
Ingrown hairs may be uncomfortable and itchy, but they generally won’t lead to serious infections. However, if the ingrown hairs are very deep or persistent with pus-filled sacs that ooze pus, seeking medical advice is strongly advised – particularly in areas that are frequently shaved such as armpits and bikini area.
Ingrown hairs are an all too familiar sight and can occur anywhere on the body, though they’re most frequently found after shaving. Exfoliation and using an effective moisturizer can help minimize ingrown hairs from appearing.
What Can I Do to Prevent Ingrown Hairs?
Preventing ingrown hairs requires taking several simple steps. First and foremost is to stop shaving, waxing and using depilatories which cause irritation; if necessary for some reason (ie if shaving becomes necessary), switch your razor for one that is gentler on the skin like an electric one instead.
Use topical treatments to draw out and soothe ingrown hairs, including tea tree oil, retinoids, glycolic acid & salicylic acid products from trusted skincare lines like Olay. Regular exfoliation can also be effective against ingrown hairs. You could also consider laser hair removal treatments to permanently eliminate unwanted hair; lasers remove hair faster & more comfortably than plucking, shaving & waxing methods.
Laser hair removal works by destroying hair follicles so they cannot grow hair, effectively stopping ingrown hairs from forming and stopping their reappearance in future. It is the only method that completely prevents ingrown hairs instead of temporarily stopping their formation under the surface of skin. If you want to say goodbye to ingrown hairs permanently, contact SpaMedica now and schedule your free consultation! We provide effective laser hair removal for men & women of all skin tones – and the results are sure to delight.
What Can I Do to Treat Ingrown Hairs?
Ingrown hairs are irritating, painful bumps that form when shaved or waxed hair grows back into the skin instead of out. They appear as red, inflamed & itchy lumps filled with pus, typically treatable at home with razor, tweezers or topicals; in rare cases they may require professional medical intervention such as pilonidal cysts which form around hair follicles & usually appear near tailbone.
In most cases, ingrown hairs can be prevented with regular shaving techniques and skin care routines that include exfoliation. People should also refrain from scratching at ingrown hairs as this will only make them deeper and cause further irritation, infection and pain.
Laser hair removal is an extremely effective solution for ingrown hairs. At Fox Vein & Laser Experts, we utilize the GentleMax Pro from Candela as it has been FDA-approved to successfully treat ingrowns & prevent them from reappearing. The GentleMax Pro emits pulses of light energy that damage hair follicles to disable their ability to produce new hair growth; with each treatment session it becomes further disabled until eventually producing no more hair altogether.
Laser hair removal can be one of the most effective means of treating and preventing ingrown hairs, but it should be noted that it only addresses issues in the area where treatment was administered. Therefore, multiple laser hair removal sessions may be necessary in order to fully prevent future ingrown hairs.
Can Ingrown Hairs Be Removable?
Ingrown hairs not only look unsightly and painful, they can also become infected and even cause scarring if left untreated. When this occurs, hair follicles fail to push through the skin’s barrier and instead curl back into itself, creating reddish-purple bumps with trapped dead skin cells, oil and dirt. Left untreated they may even become infected resulting in infection and scarring; fortunately there are ways to both treat and prevent ingrowns hairs.
Instead of plucking, an effective ingrown hair treatment would be using topical solutions such as tea tree oil, retinoids, glycolic acid or salicylic acid to draw out and soothe ingrown hairs on affected areas of your body. Laser hair removal offers another great alternative option to help prevent and treat ingrown hairs effectively.
Laser hair removal involves sending pulses of light pulses directly onto the surface of skin to destroy hair follicles at their roots, rendering them incapable of producing hair growth and leading to reduced or eliminated ingrown hairs. Patients undergoing this form of treatment typically see reduced or eliminated ingrown hairs after receiving treatments; it takes multiple sessions until fully clear complexion is reached but remains the most permanent solution to ingrown hairs compared with waxing or shaving which only remove surface hair while laser hair removal reduces or stops it altogether in problem areas like chin and neck where ingrowns occur frequently.
