Hello everyone. I have been reading your site for a couple of weeks now and find it such a great source of information.
I have just had a second treatment using the machine noted above. If anyone has any experience with this machine, your comments would be appreciated…
In addition, my experience so far seems to differ (or i am misinterpreting your quotes) from your posts. Firstly, I do not seem to be experiencing this ‘shedding’ process. I shave before treatment and so I look ‘hair free’ to start with. I then notice that the hair re-growth is a lot slower, but i still had to shave more regular after a 2/3 week post treatment period after the first laser session.
On both sessions of laser treatment, I have remained in doors for a few days, waiting for the hairs on my upper lip to feel loose enough to tweeze out. I have been doing this (rather than shaving) to ensure that I do not end up with pepper spots that have been appearing in adhoc places on my legs and bikini line.
Quite a few of the hairs on my lip and chin are course and black. However, after reading some of your comments, I am rather worried that the lighter hairs inbetween the sporadic black hairs will grow with more vigour… In addition my consultant has tidied my upper eyebrow area and lasered off the fine hairs on my cheeks at no extra cost; but after reading your comments I worry that this may stimulate hair growth in these areas…
Finally, reading your bloggs I notice that your recommended visits have been alot further appart than mine. I had my first session in February & then went back for my second treatment 4 weeks later. I did have hair growth, so I did not feel that the trip was unnecessary. But after reading other peoples bloggs I am worried that having treatments so close together may encourage hair softening rather than hair reduction.
Any comments you may have with regards to my queries would be more than welcome. FYI I am probably skin type III, maybe borderline II.
What areas are you getting treated? Just the upper lip?
What settings are being used?
Are you tweezing hair that still has resistance or is it coming out without resistance?
What area are you shaving after getting treatments? It’s not clear. It sounds like you’re doing bikini, legs and upper lip? Is this correct?
Is the hair on your upper lip coarse? It sounds like there may not be enough course hair to justify laser
Yes, I would recommend not touching any fine and sparse hairs on your face
Yes, your treatments are way too frequent. Facial areas should be 6-10 weeks apart, legs 12-16, and bikini 8-12. If there isn’t anything to treat yet, you’re going in too early
Shedding takes 2-3 weeks. It’s best not to shave during that time to speed up the shedding process.
It sounds like you may want to switch to electrolysis for your upper lip, especially if it’s an issue waiting for shedding on that area
I thought I would be brave and have all areas requiring attention done at the same time!! Full leg, bikini, line of hair from navel to top of bikini line (think you refer to this as the happy trail), underarms, lip & chin area.
I have no idea of the settings used as the machine is behind me and out of view.
when tweezing I only extract the hairs that have no resistance.
I would say that alot of the hairs on my upper lip and chin are course, but they are not on masse as with other areas such as underarm.
I thought that you would say not to laser any fine/sparse hairs on my face. However, the areas that were relatively sparse have been lasered on 2 occasisons now and have not grown back at all…But, as you say, they have been lasered with only a 4 week interval so maybe that is why there has been no visible regrowth?
I cannot believe the difference in treatment frequencies. However, when i went for my second treatment I had a lot of hair re-growth on all areas. In addtion, I did not experience any ‘shedding process’ other than on my upper lip. I could see that hair was not growing back as quickly as usual in some places, but there was no hair to shed as I had shaved before my treatment. For example, I had my second treatment over 1 week ago and I still have very little regrowth on bikini and underarm areas. Is this the normal for some people?
Maybe the machine used in the UK is a different style to the machines used in the USA??
The issue is mostly the spacing of your treatments. After 3-4 weeks, whatever is still growing as usual is just the same hair that wasn’t affected due to either being missed or low settings. That’s when many clinics offer free touchups actually. So technically, you’ve only had one treatment, i.e. affected hairs in only one hair cycle.
We usually don’t recommend getting so many areas done at the same time before doing one area and seeing how your results are.
And yes, you can’t really tell what the reduction is like and what is happening if you keep going in that often. A good rule to follow is - whatever didn’t shed or is not stuck as pepperspots 3 weeks after your treatment probably wasn’t affected.
You can call and ask them what machine and settings they used on you.