Talk:Ingrown hair

Ibruprofen (sic)
How do you treat an ingrown hair with ibruprofen? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.8.116.87 (talk • contribs).


 * I suspect that the ibuprofen is for pain and swelling. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:27, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ibuprofen targets inflammation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.88.228.158 (talk) 00:04, 10 December 2011 (UTC)


 * They aren't painful enough that you'd ever need to take something for it. I don't know why this info would be included. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.1.156.204 (talk) 15:16, 11 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Speak for yourself. Not all ingrown hairs are "razor bumps"; I currently have one that's quite swollen & painful. It's too swollen to even see where the hair is to fish it out. I have a scar from another memorable ingrown hair that I got on my honeymoon. It was right where the leg meets the torso, & the leghole of my underwear rubbed against it; we were walking around Cape Cod & it got more & more painful, to the point where we had to go back to the hotel. I took a look & there was a HUGE, infected bump, it was purple in color with a greenish-yellow head. God bless my husband, he helped me drain it; I put a hot compress on it whenever we were in the hotel room & we went at it twice a day & spent a few minutes each time expressing this yellowish stuff with the consistency of mayonnaise. It took 3 days of that before the swelling was down enough to find the hair & tweeze it out.  I'm trying to do that now with my current one before it gets to that stage, but I'm not having much luck.


 * Ingrown hairs most certainly can be painful & swollen enough to require ibuprofen! Kailey elise (talk) 14:59, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Wristwatch as cause
I would like to add to the article that tight wristwatch bands may also cause ingrown hairs. The evidence is anecdotal (from personal experience with the problem). How should I do so? (searching the literature turned up no causal relationship between tight wristwatch bands and ingrown hairs). 89.129.135.115 03:21, 1 October 2007 (UTC)


 * You click the word 'edit' at the section that you want to change. A tight watch band is essentially a special case of tight clothing.  WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:27, 28 December 2007 (UTC)


 * If it's just your own experience it's original research and inappropriate for wikipedia.--98.210.233.15 (talk) 03:25, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Salicylic vs glycolic
Reading article in case any new treatments cropped up. A while back I stumbled on some skin care sites (hard to differentiate the "beauty" sites from the "dermatology" sites, isn't it?) claiming salicylic acid has a special property of encouraging turnover of the skin (keratinocytes? been a while) 'throughout' while glycolic acid basically only burns off the top layer. As someone who's had problems forever, and used salicylic acid forever because of its supposed anti-acne properties... this does seem to make a big difference; namely glycolic or most other acids will 'just' exfoliate the scarring over the top and hopefully encourage the hair to pop out and grow freely without 'encouraging turnover' beneath while the situation is still scabbed/inflamed (making things worse). Still searching for the holy grail but avoiding salicylic acid has been a huge improvement. (Careful with strong glycolic products, easy to dry or burn yourself with strong concentrations.)

Inexplicably for me, avoiding all dairy, particularly the casein/milk-protein portion, also reduces the "purulent" response markedly, which reduces inflammation, which allows faster/less-scarred healing, which helps break the cycle. I didn't try that until I'd been dealing with this for 20+ years; obviously it's quite difficult to keep up with but anecdotally I have to say it's really worth testing when nothing else is working. (Go figure, after much experimenting, butter is fine but foods that concentrate the milk proteins take the situation from 'maybe a small blackhead around the trapped hair if anything at all' to 'giant oozing boil' for me.)

Good luck and wish there were an actual reliable treatment, systemic ibuprofen certainly helps with the "skin-wide" inflammation when you've got multiple situations going on at once and the less damage around the site, the less scar there is to trap the hair and let you enjoy a relapse in the same spot over and over again. 24.184.118.91 (talk) 19:59, 27 February 2014 (UTC)