American Laser Center

Hair Removal Methods Laser hair removal
1

In my experience at ALC, the last two times I went they used 2 new lasers on me.
The Soprano and the AmeriLite.
First back in November, they used the Soprano, which I was told replaced the LightSheer. They told me it was just as good but less painful. They were right, it was a lot less painful. I didn’t feel anything on my back and nothing nearly as painful on the back of my neck. I like the shedding results. My only complaint wa tons of ingrown hairs on the back of my neck, I had never got this before and it lasted for like 3 weeks, yuk.

My next visit a little over 2 weeks ago, I told them what happened with the Soprano, so the used their other new laser.
It was called the AmeriLite. The said it replaced the Aurora (thank goodness because that machine was garbage, it didn’t do a thing for me) anyways they used it full blast on my back, I didn’t feel a thing and just a tad turned down on my neck and I really didn’t feel much.

Results, no ingrown hairs but also no shedding yet and it had been 2 1/2 weeks. I usually see results by now.

Boy I miss the Lightshear, best I ever used, except for the pain!
Anyone had any experience with the Soprano and/or AmeriLite??

2

I think the problem here is that they don’t yet know how to use the Sorprano well. Everyone here who’s used it says the same thing as you. Run a search for “soprano” on this site. If you didn’t feel much, it’s probably because you were undertreated. Pain varies, but not by that much. At a point, if you’re not feeling much pain, the treatment is not effective. Even if the hair shed and you didn’t feel much pain, the settings were probably too low to kill it permanently. I think the “no pain” concept is just a sales tactic. It really just helps them sell their treatments and/or lasers to you, but really what you should be looking for is results, not lack of pain. I would stick with the Soprano since it’s at least a diode, not an IPL. Ask for high joules, low pulse and low spot size for most effective treatment.

3

Ok, so the AmeriLite is an IPL?
I didn’t know that. I would have told them I didn’t want them to use it on me because I knew it wouldn’t work.

I will stick with the Soprano. Any ideas why I got the ingrown hairs so bad? I had never got them before.

4

it’s hard to tell. could be the result of a bad shaving job beforehand and friction from clothing while irritated etc

5

Ask if you have the option of using the Amerilase. It is the diode that they are currently using. It is a combination of IPL and Diode. The Amerilight is just an upgraded Aurora, the technician does not have a choice of inputting your RF it is already set to Bony or Normal according to your skin type. This is most likely the reason your not feeling anything.

6

laserhawk, would you mind sharing what your affiliation is with this company? your insights seem to be only related to them.

based on everything reported on this forum, RF is more of a gimmick than anything else and the combo machines seem to work worse than the true lasers alone. I would stick with the true diode and make sure they’re using high settings. Not feeling anything is due to that. If you set the settings too low on any machine, you won’t feel anything.

7

I actually believe in RF technology, it is not attracted to pigment whereas other technologies are. So when you are a blonde hair or a grey hair the laser with RF is able to treat you. It may take longer but your able to get results. As with this you need to feel pain, to an extent it is correct but when the pain is unbearable the laser is turned up to high. What the RN or technician wants to see is a little perifollicular edema.

8

you conveniently skipped my first question.

there has yet to be a post here in the past 2 years (and on the other forum) from anyone who’s actually seen any results on blonde or grey hair with RF or not. The experts here like sslhr who’ve been doing this for 10 years also agree that LHR doesn’t work on blond and grey hair. actually, the only people who say that are those from the clinics with these lasers and they have a motive.

If a person can’t handle the pain, ice packs and numbing cream can be used. I don’t think trying to make the treatment painless and thus less effective would be preferred by most consumers. If they know it’s a “no pain, no gain” situation, they probably won’t be choosing to get undertreated. It is very possible to just disrupt the hair a bit and not kill it by using less than optimal settings. If you’re trying to get the customer results, I’m not sure why you would opt for that unless you just want them to come in forever for “comfortable” treatments and bring you money.

9

Laserhawk, I’m saying this in all honesty, do you know of anyone personally that has had blond or grey hair successfully removed with a an laser/RF unit, IPL/RF unit, or solely RF unit on a permanent or at least shedding stage level? I would seriously like that person to come here, discuss their treatments/ timelines/ clinic and possibly post photos of the shedding in future treatments.

When I was treated with diode/RF, the RF was cranked up to almost unbearable levels. I seriously think the only thing it did was make my skin less healthy. If it had any chance of working, the odds were there for it to be successful on multiple treatments, but it was not. And I’m a much more better candidate than a type 1/ natural pale blonde. The RF is meant to only assist the heat levels around the follical in a general sense, and of course it does this by indiscriminently baking all of the upper layers of skin. RF can’t be targeted. If this is applied as destructive energy it’s naive to think it’s not harming other skin components as well. Hair removal gets alot safer than pure RF technology on blond hair individuals where a standard laser can’t get enough heat to the papilla. I personally believe even a blond individual is safer to go with an alexandrite, banking on what little pigment there is within non exposed roots. At least then they’re getting moles and blemishes diminished as a bonus.

In this game of hair removal, you really need to listen to personal experiences. As a whole, those first person accounts are very telling. A new device’s website will go into all this psuedo-science to convince that it is the ‘new ideal treatment method’, but out in the field of practical use, there will be few or none that can vouch for this ‘new great theory’. Success comes from sticking to the basics, refining the application of the basics, and improving with common sense and proven efficacy. This is how electrology evolved, and this is how laser will evolve.

Mantaray

10

I’ve been curious about RF technology for hair removal. If it works, then why would it be associated with a laser or IPL? Couldn’t it get rid of hair on its own?

I believe that RF technology is basically like microwave technology for cooking. The RF engery, or microwaves, pass through the food and stimulates the molecules. The stimulated molecules create heat (friction). Microwave cooked food is basically cooked from the inside out. So, if RF energy is used to try to kill hair follicles, it has to pass through the skin to get to the follicle. It may, in fact, cause the heating of a hair follicle but it will also heat the skin and other tissues (made up of molecules) from the surface, to the follice, and even further below. I just don’t see how RF energy can discriminate between the surrounding tissue and the follicle except the follice might absorb tad bit more of the RF energy becuase it is a tad bit more dense than the surrounding tissue. Either way, everything is getting zapped.

11

good post Mantaray

12

I got to tell you, when I watched this and they said this lady paid over $500 PER TREATMENT on an Upper Lip I had to shake my head. I might have cleared her whole lip from start to finish with that amount of money!

13

Let’s talk about this.

The way that a microwave oven works is that it sets up a standing wave in the oven that ocillates something like 20 million times a second. Water molecules which are weakly charge try to line up with the wave and so are constantly turning back and forth. This creates friction then heat, and the end story is your lunch. Microwave safe objects just don’t have any water.

Now microwave technology and RF technology for hair removal work on a very different concept. The idea was that an RF or microwave field would be created within the skin and that energy would be absorbed by structures within that field. The more dense the structure, the more absorption. Hair is the densest structure in the skin so it would absorb the most energy and hence would be selectively destroyed. The theory is not psuedoscience. Of course, the question is whether it translates to reality.

In fact, based on that theory and our desire to explore every technology to really tell what works or not, I purchased a microwave device ($50K) from Microwave Technology to test. Did it kind of work? Yes. Was it consistent? No. Did it have problems? Yes. The effect seemed to be only a generalized heat effect and not really able to destroy hair effectively. I haven’t entirely given up on the science but right now it is a dead end. And it cost me $50K to find this out. But that was the cost of learning.

The RF is based on the same theory. I had significant doubts because unipolor RF is used in Thermage at much higher settings and didn’t seem to have any effect on hair but this was bipolar RF, so maybe it could work. So we borrowed a machine from the manufacturer and tested it. The results were negative. We actually did side by side comparisons with an alexandrite.

So for example, we treated a man’s back of the neck who had mixed black and white hair. On the alex side, he had practically no remaining black hairs but plenty of white hairs. On the RF side, he had a mix of black and white hair. In other words, the alex did a good job of removing the black hairs, the RF did an OK job of removing the black hairs, and neither did much with the white hair. This pattern was repeated over and over again.

And by the way, everyone said that the RF machine hurt a hell of a lot more.

Now why do you need it to be associated with a laser or IPL? Hmmm.

If I were cynical, I would say so that there is at least some result. But the reason from the company (and this has been discussed as theoretical consideration) is that the RF and laser pulse preheat the target, making the subsequent treatment more effective.

14

Good point, and if it cost her 500 per treatment it must cost me about 2-3K for my treatment area. If I need 8 treatments, that is 16K and with no proof that it will actually work. Might as well just go electrolysis and actaully go for a process that you know works for the last hundred years.

15

Just a correction here: $500 for a package of six treatments