Giant ingrown hair

Today before work I was picking at a pimple on my chin that had been there for a few days. I noticed a hard black mass at the center of the crater that wouldn’t pop out. So I take tweezers and pluck it.

Oh…My…God:eek:

Out comes this hair a quarter inch long and as thick as the lead in a No. 2 pencil. The root must’ve been anchored im my chinbone!

Well, I will remember that when I am tempted to eat.

Thank you for sharing.

I have a mole on my chinnie chin chin that does the same thing, No hair for months then all of a sudden, a thick, black inch long hair springs forth overnight. When that happens it is a plucking emergency.

FIRST VILLAGER

   We have found a witch.  May we burn her?
                           ALL

   A Witch! Burn her!
                     BEDEVERE

   How do you know she is a witch?
                           ALL

   She looks like one. Yes, she does.
   Burn her!  Burn her!  Let's make her into a ladder.

I get those on my neck everytime I shave. Even though I use the Mach 3 razors and shaving gel especially designed for sensitive skin, a day after I shave my neck will have several/many red bumps with ingrown hairs on it. My solution thus far has been to just use hair clippers to trim the beard but the downside to that is that I can’t get a smooth shave. Anyone got any advice?

Penumbra - exfoliate! The reason the hairs may be getting trapped is that there is dead/dry skin in the way. Exfoliating means the hair will break the surface easier. You can get good exfoliators for men at The Body Shop.

A lot of people get ingrown hairs when they shave. So do I. And the bumps can get infected, leading to folliculitis or (for ten-dollar dermatologists) parafolliculitis barbae (PFB). Some racial groups have this more commonly.

You might benefit from using an electric razor and living with a shave which is less close (closer shave = worse problem). Some stop shaving and just wear beards. The bumps can be minimized by taking daily oral antibiotics like erythromycin. I deal with mine by alternating between electric shavers and disposables, and removing the ingrown hairs using a stick pin to gently free an ingrown hair and a pair of tweezers. But it’s a pain in the neck.

Wait till Opal sees this.

b.

Funny, when I shave using blades, I never get ingrown hairs or irritation of the skin. When I use the electric (which I’ve been doing since my bathroom is being remodeled), I get ingrown hairs quite frequently. YMMV, but my advice to Penumbra is to try to shave daily, and maybe shave the neck in both directions. I’ve found that a close daily shave prevents ingrown hairs, whereas a less close (read: electric) shave means irritation. Then again, I have a fairly heavy beard.

I don’t think it was my razor’s fault: the follicle itself was so abnormally thick it wouldnt pass through the pore, so it just kept pressing deeper and deeper into my skin.

Tend Skin is a pretty good product (see my thread on my waxing nightmares), available in beauty supply shops and at your local salon. It prevents a lot of ingrown “issues.”

Enola, I wish you had video of this experience.

I get these all the time.

The thing that confuses me, is that I only get them in the place where I have hair, in my goatee.

Might be time to grow a beard.

I get these ingrown hairs as well. It’s surprising to find a mutant strand of hair whose thickness can be measured by a ruler (exaggeration). Does this mean that the hair cells are piling up when the hair grows back into the skin and that’s why it’s so thick?

Sometimes I have a “hair” which is actually several individual follicles, side by side, expressing from a common pore.

Not this time.

This big momma was a single stalk of hair fiber…hard, keratinous, and coarse textured. It felt kind of like a rough, square toothpick.

My most common kind are the type that have several hairs coming out as one big bundle.

However, I sometimes get the one huge solid hair type, too. Hard, too. You could stab someone to death with one.

This pimple on my chin is only a pimple.
This pimple on my chin is only a pimple.
This pimple on my chin is only a pimple.
This pimple on my chin is only a pimple…

Yeeeeeargh. Now I’m afraid to touch it… :eek:

Flodnak, you know what you’ve got to do. Lay a warm compress on that sucker till it comes to a head. Then, after limbering up your fingers, get into a good position and squeeze that sucker. Best to get it over with. Don’t forget the neosporin afterwards.

I just dropped in to say that in my mind I never pictured Coldfire with a beard.
I just can’t picture him with a beard in my mind.

A quarter of an inch? Feh!

Way back when, while in the Army, I started growing a second head on my jaw. It hurt like hell, so I just left it alone–hoping it would go away.

Nope.

One night, after consuming a liberal amount of wine, I decided it had to go. Squeeze…pop!

That damn hair was at least three inches long! It was all wiry and spiraled around itself, but when straightened out, it was quite impressive. I showed it around a bit, but it didn’t seem to be as interesting to everyone else as it was to me.