Are these settings too low?

Hair Removal Methods Laser hair removal
#1

Hi everyone!

I had my first session a few days ago and I’m just not sure the most effective settings were used on my skin. There has been very little discussion over Gentlelase Pro so I’m looking for some feedback.

My skin type is probably IV. My skin tone is olive and I’m capable of getting very tan but I’m not right now. My treatment areas included legs and Brazilian and the areas do have coarse, black hair.

The settings on the GentleLase Pro machine ranged from 8-9 J at 18 mm spot size.

That’s an image of the screen.

The treatment did hurt a bit, but should I ask for more aggressive settings? I talked to the nurse a bit and she said the highest settings she uses were 12 j or so on the palest skin. That doesn’t sound right to me…

Thanks for your input!

#2

From my (PIL) experience i can say that photoepilation always should follo rhe limit of acceptable load of the skin in order to be efficient. 8-9 J (per cm² i guess) seems way too low for me.

The spot size is relevant to the load on the surrounding skin, but for each inividial follicle to be killed the only thing that counts is the energy arriving at the target area.

#3

Yes they are too low. I doubt if your skin would be handle to higher settings on this laser though

You need a YAG laser like GentleYAG/CoolGlide.

#4

The office I visited also offered Palomar lasers for people who have darker skin. I talked to the nurse about it during my treatment and asked her if that laser may be best for me. She said that Gentlelase Pro is more effective than Palomar and “3 palomar treatments are equivalent to one Gentlelase Pro treatment”. Is this true?

#5

The Palomar is an IPL, so yes, it is true that the Gentlelase Pro is more effective. However, that being said, the settings they are using on you are too low to be efficient (even for low settings on that instrument, those are LOW.) I would encourage you to look into finding another laser place. Try this:

http://www.candelalaser.com/patients/index.cfm?task=practSearch

Look for a place with either a GentleYAG or a GentleMAX (which has a YAG portion to it.) High settings with the YAG portion on those will do you a world of good. I am a big fan of Candela lasers (I’m very light so I use the Gentlelase rather than the YAG), but I have found them to be very effective. Candela is the only one I know of with a practitioner locator, but I know some people have good experience with the apogee lasers, so if you’re willing to share your location, perhaps someone might have a suggestion on where to get treated.

#6

Not only are the Joules ( 9 ) low, the Pulse width at 20 ms makes your treatment a waste of time and money.

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#7

Thank you for all of your input! The laser place I go to is called Prolase laser clinic in Tarzana, CA in the LA area. I hope potential clients will see this and know to stay away from Prolase. I should have known better just by judging their insanely low prices. This place was too good to be true. :-\

#8

Oh you’re by LA? I would suggest looking at this:

Hope that helps!