I have had around 14-18 full face treatments with laser. the results have been pretty darn good - babysoft skin and an obliteration of almost all my coarse hair. I normally have a ‘topup’ twice a year.
I have had one treatment for my body hair (arms, underarms, chest and legs) with IPL which has taken a lot of the thick, dense growth, but otherwise the results are kinda mediocre, the skin is not soft at all, and really isn’t worth shaving. I doubt I would spend the money I did again on an IPL treatment; compared to laser I find it second rate.
For both of these treatments I am thinking of switching to electrolysis. Will it affect or undo the work? And if I wanted to, could I change back again to laser if I got bored or a little frustrated by the length of time the electro is taking?
Of course, I would only be shaving the aforementioned areas, definitely no plucking or waxing.
My opinion is that your twice yearly top-ups are basically akin to waxing. There is hair that the Laser will just never be able to destroy but may be just causing shedding of and giving you temporary hair removal.
Proper electrolysis should permanently destroy the follicles you have treated. If anything, you should be wondering what affect your Laser treatments will have on your electrolysis treatments. I would suggest not having a Laser session for 6-12 months before embarking on electrolysis so you have real idea of how much hair you actually have remaining after Laser.
You can go back to temporary hair removal Laser sessions. I don’t see the point though. If you want total permanent hair removal, a skilled electrologist can get rid of the remaining pesky follicles.
I think laser + electrolysis is a wonderful way to permanently get rid of hair. The reason the FDA calls laser permanent reduction is because in most cases you can reduce the amount of hair permanently, and often the vast majority of it. So what a lot of people do is get the full laser series of treatments (6-8), and whatever is left, usually 1-25% of it, they finish with electrolysis.
Some areas of the body respond very well with laser, check out my siggy. Some areas are tougher. In all areas some hairs will not be affected by the laser, so those will keep popping up b/c the laser is not effective on them. Those are what you should remove with electrolysis because touch ups don’t help on those hairs (tried with my undie arms).
IPL is not laser and the results are poor. (STOP USING IPL AND FIND A LASER). Neither electrolysis will undo the effects of laser, nor the other way around. HOWEVER, in some cases laser done on certain areas and certain skin types have been known to stimulate new hair growth, most often laser on brown skin in the neck, upper arms and some areas of the face, and i have never heard of it stimulating hair after laser on legs, undie arms or bikini). And i am personally convinced that laser on my brazilian from an inept tech years ago made my brazilian area hair so strong that now good laser techs can’t seem to get rid of it. But who knows. That being said, it cannot have an effect on electrolysis b/c the needle goes in and electrocutes the follicle and no hair is so strong it can escape such a fate.
For sure do legs with laser (true laser). I do not have any knowledge of what results are like for chest, and again, upper arms a few people have had issues, so i’d go for legs for sure if you have dark coarse hair. Make sure you have a good laser and tech. : ). For undie arms, it’s such a small area and tends to have lower reduction rates (60-80 i think), that it could be the same amount of time and money to just do elec on it from start to finish, if not less, if you find a good electrologist.
This post has a tiny bit on how to find sometimes affordable laser hair removal at good clinics and what lasers to look for.
