tips / Ingrown Hairs

Prevent ingrown hairs

We spend many hours and lots of dosh trying to make our skin fully smooth, only to have ingrown hairs appear a week later and mar our beautiful, smooth skin! Not fair!

What causes ingrown hairs?

When a hair begins its growth cycle, it is still under the skin. Normally, as the hair grows it would push up against and through the skin, and continue growing. Sometimes though, the hair doesn’t manage to break through the skin, and instead curls over and continues growing under the skin. This is an ingrown hair. If you leave it, it can continue growing for quite some time. They are often slightly raised and have a dark colouration.

Ingrown hairs are more common in areas that you have removed hair from, for two reasons:

1. the lack of hair can cause the skin to become dry, making it harder for the hair to break through, and

2. because you have removed a lot of hairs from the area, there are a lot of new replacement hairs trying to break through the skin at the same time.

So, what can you do to prevent ingrown hairs?

• exfoliate regularly in between treatments. This removes the dead skin build-up, reducing the amount of skin that the hair has to push through.

• moisturise the skin. This softens the skin, making it easier for the hair to push through. Just use your normal moisturiser.

• you can buy creams that claim to reduce ingrown hairs. I tried one that cost $64, I used it for 4 or 5 waxes and still got ingrown hairs. Did it reduce them? It’s hard to say. The only way to tell would be to use the cream on half the area, and on the other half just use a combination of exfoliation and moisturising, then see which area had the least ingrown hairs. But I haven’t tried that experiment myself. If any of you have tried it I’d love to hear from you?

Learn more about: IPL, Epilator, Laser, Electrolysis on fullysmooth.com.