One topic of great consideration to Electrologists is the effect that tweezing has on hair growth. Many women attempt to remove unwanted hairs, especially those around the eyebrow or on the chin by plucking them out.

Granted, when a woman tweezes out unwanted hair it does take longer to grow back than if, say, it has been shaved off at the skin level. But what this woman does not realize is the fact that repeated tweezing eventually causes most hairs to regrow more quickly and to become darker, coarser and more firmly rooted.

Only a fraction of all tweezed hairs are ever permanently eliminated. Thus, a woman who tweezes is simply compounding the hair problem. Rather than solving her problem, she is worsening it. As with other topical causes, increased blood supply is the cause of the accelerated growth of tweezed hair.

Each time a hair is tweezed out of its follicle, a good portion of the bottom half of the follicle is torn out. The damage is not sufficient to prohibit future growth, but it is enough to cause the follicle to reconstruct itself a little sturdier with a better developed capillary system each time.

The difference from one tweezed hair to the next may be imperceptible. But eventually what may have been a few annoying vellus hairs will have become full blown terminal hairs, bristling in defiance of their owner's attempts to evict them.

Articles on this page are excerpts from Female Hirsutism: An Enigma by Linda C. Edsell
and an article from The Daily Advocate by Linda Moody