I wanted to share my experences using IPL. I am trying to finish up removing male type facial hair as part of a gender transition. I had previously had around 100 hours of quality electrolysis. The results had been fairly good with agressive settings. But it was taking forever, was embarrising, and i was slowing down my 20 year old life considerably.
So after returing from my major surgery I decide to try an IPL system. I am blessed/cursed with irish skin tone but italian colored hair. I shopped around a good deal and found a local practioner who had just set up shop. He had been educated in light based medicine at Harvard and had been using this IPL system since the end of his residency.
He was confident but not cocky, he read what the system was cleared for, explained his and his education’s intepretation of this. Quite simply given certain hair type and skin types he could permanently reduce the amount of hairs after each treatment, which after enough treatments could eliminate most of the hairs.
On top of that he tailored his hours (nights and weekends) and pay rate (at cost for those people in my situation) so i decided 150 per session for my entire face and neck made this a good risk.
I found that my first two sessions were somewhat helpful. There was probably a 10-20% reduction for both, the redness lasted only 3 or 4 hours. After the first treatment the doctor doubled the strength of the pulse and did double the pulses. After the second treatment he increased the strenght of the pulse by a 2x factor again.
Perfect! I knew right away that the third treatment would be better for the most odd reason.
Pain, glorious pain! I noticed during the third treatment that the pain level was much closer to what i would get during my most effective electrolysis apointments. The big differnce being it was 20 minutes worth vs hours and hours of pain. The redness also took
So far i have been quite happy with the results, a net decrease of around 40-50 of the hairs in the previously well treated areas. Areas like my upper lip had more hairs and showed amazing improvement…in the range of 75-90% after four treatments.
I am happy so far, even though in know the truth is still 12 months away, after a solid 6 monthsf rom the final treatment.
I am thinking of having some areas on my body done, would it help the hair removal community to do before and after pictures?
Kristin