GentleLase Questions

Hair Removal Methods Laser hair removal
#1

I’m male, 30 years old, have fairly light skin and dark coarse hair pretty much all over my body. I want to get my whole body treated including: legs, arms, chest, back, shoulders, butt.

I want to move forward with GentleLase and was wondering if anyone knows of a good laser center here in the dallas/fort worth area for that laser.

Also, I want to go as high as possible in terms of the settings to get a higher chance of killing the hair. What is the highest setting that I could ask for and should i expect my laser technician to go with the setting that I want as part of my process of selecting a laser center?

Thanks everyone.

#2

If no one responds, exhausted, then read the Laser FaQ’s page thoroughly and thoughtfully. Get a list together and then visit a couple clinics. Ask questions and compare. I believe the GentleLase top joules is 20. The laser specialist will assess your situation and take your desires into account to determine what is best for you as an individual.

Dee

#3

On 18mm spot size, 20 joules is highest setting. However, you need to see if your skin can handle it without burning.

You’ll need to find 4-5 clinics and do consultations to find the right person to do this.

Can you post pictures? Most men don’t really have what is considered really coarse and dense on all of those areas. For most, there is a mix. So you need to be careful about what to treat because you can stimulate more growth on areas with more sparse and finer hair that’s adjacent to the coarse hair. Better safe than sorry.

Run a search here for your city or state and see past recommendations. Do some searching on your own too - Candela’s website has a provider search for GentleLASE and GentleMAX. Apogee alexandrite is also good in good hands.

Make sure to read the FAQs carefully.

Also important: don’t start with all those areas at once. Pick one area and start there. If everything goes well with the clinic you choose, then add more areas. You don’t want to get stuck with a clinic and then end up realizing they’re not as great as you thought.

#4

After searching through the forum for clinics in the dallas area, it looks like the two that have come recommended are Smooth Solutions and Ideal Image.

Some of the posts were a bit old so I wanted to see if these were still favorable in the dallas area. I will definately go in for consultations but wanted to see if there have been any issues with these two in my area.

Thanks for all your help.

#5

There are dozens of other clinics as well. There just aren’t that many online recommendations in general. I would advise you to check out these too, but also use Candela’s provider search on their website and check out 2-3 other clinics you find as well to compare.

Ideal Image is a large chain with good lasers, but centers vary by location. Smooth Solutions is a TX chain owned by an MD who used to contribute to the forum here, though he himself is based out of Houston I believe.

#6

Smooth Solutions seems to have a lot of bad reviews when you google them…I wonder if maybe they changed management or staff in the last year or so.

So I made a consultation appt for Aug 6th with Ideal Image and Nu Body of Dallas. These were the best that i could find after searching around for awhile and reading reviews but honestly there is just not a whole lot out there to find a place that is solid and has a strong track record. Ideal Image called me 5 minutes after I made the appt to push me to come in today and sign up for a special 30% off discount that just happens to run out at the end of July.

I’ll keep looking and see what comes out of the consultations…I really want to know how much experience these technicians have with gentlelase laser treatments.

#7

Don’t go by reviews. The only ones you find are usually for big chains or fake. Try to find some smaller places too and check a few out. Did you go to Candela’s website and use their provider search?

Don’t jump on any promotions or discounts. They want customers bad enough anytime. They will almost always make an “exception” and give it to you after it’s supposedly over, if not a better deal. Compare everything and play off their prices against each other too. They’re negotiable.

#8

Wouldn’t surprise me if August’s promotion is going to be 40%+ off and that’s why they want you in sooner! LOL

But seriously, all the chains always seem to have 30% off. Then several times a year they will do 40%, 50%, BOGO, etc.

Internet reviews are too easy to fake. Just ask Chris from Romeo and Juliette’s. He’s been plagued with the competition posting fake reviews about his business.

#9

I am definately going to do more consultations than the two i have so far. I’m going to come up with a list of questions to ask each clinic to get an idea of how experienced they are, who will be doing the treatments, contract terms if there are any, cost, etc.

Good point Choice…maybe the reviews of Smooth Solutions are not accurate…i’ll probably schedule a consultation with them too. Does anyone know if sslhr is still affiliated with Smooth Solutions…or what his/her real name was so I can ask during the consultation with them?

Thanks.

#10

We already have a list of questions for you. See the link below :slight_smile:

SSLHR is the owner of the entire chain. He’s located in Houston I think. Contact their Houston office and ask for him.

#11

Thanks LAgirl…i used that list and added a few of my own.

One of the consultations that i had last week went pretty well but i was concerned that the technician wanted to use the 15mm spot size instead of an 18mm spot size on the GentleLase with a power setting of either 16J or 18J (depending on how my skin reacts) for my first treatment.

Everything that I have read seems to indicate that the 18mm spot size provides a more effective treatment. Is this true or does the 18mm spot size just allow for a faster treatment?

Thanks.

#12

You’re correct. 18mm is generally more effective, especially on deeper hair. Plus, if you decrease the spot size, you need to up the joules to compensate for it. On 18mm, max is 20J, but on 15mm it’s 30J. So while 16-18J is a good high settings on 18mm, it’s relatively low on 15mm.

#13

Well i went ahead and made an appt for monday for my first treatment…the owner said that she would use the 18mm spot size on me. She said the reason she suggested the 15mm was that she has personally seen better results with it on the same joule settings. But I went ahead and pushed for the 18mm setting since that seems to be what everyone uses and what Candela recommends.

Outside of this one concern on spot size, I feel pretty good about the place Im going to. The laser technician is also the owner and has been in business at the same spot for 13 years…she has been using gentlelase since it first came out in 1997. Everyone was very professional, the place was very clean and there were no sales pitches or package options…just pay as you go. The other places i went to the laser techs looked really young and I just didnt feel comfortable.

#14

I’m still thinking about spot size and trying to understand how it works in relation to the joule setting.

If joules are a measure of energy, if you decrease the area that an amount of energy is being exerted in, wouldnt that area have a higher density of energy hitting it…isnt that better?

It seems like as you decrease the spot size at the same joule setting you would almost be focusing the laser energy on the smaller area.

Ive tried googling this to understand it better…there was a thread on here too but it was confusing…does anyone know or at least know of a web site where this is all explained?

Thanks.

#15

Run a search here for SSLHR’s posts. He explains this in detail in one of his threads. Basically, the effect is in a cone shape.

#16

I just had my second round of GentleLASE on various areas. I have type III skin and dark brown hair. We used 26 fluence, 1.5 ms pulse width and a 15mm spot size (I verified this several times).

We determined this was the best setting (for me) through test patches at various fluences and watching the skin reaction, hair smell/ejection, and pain tolerance.

#17

Thanks ihatebodyhair and LAgirl.

I read through most of sslhr’s posts and he describes it pretty well. He states that as the pulse travels down thru the skin it shrinks like an inverted cone…given that, it makes sense that the larger spot size would go farther since it starts out as a larger area…basically a larger base of the cone if i am imagining it correctly.

A couple of other questions:

Do the majority of laser techs know that an 18mm spot size is more effective in addition to just allowing for a faster treatment?

Is the mini gentlase as good as the gentlelase plus?

Should i expect a 10% overlap when being treated?

During the shedding period, does only the hair that was an anagen shed, or do all hairs shed?

Thanks again.

#18

Hey everyone! Let me know if I should start a new thread or keep this here.

Just had my first GentleLASE treatment here in Toronto and it went really well. I’m skin type 3, male with coarse hair. I did my underarms mostly as a “test” to see how it works. I’ve done 4 sessions on my abdomen at another clinic and it’s worked well but I just found out it’s IPL so I wanted to change it up. I’m fairly tanned but underarms are light so figured I’d give it a shot there first.

Everything went really well it seems. I checked after and she used 18mm spot size with 16 joules of energy. There was also a 31 on there under pulse or something maybe? Not sure I forget what it was but can find out. Does this seem right? Next time I’d probably ask for 18 after reading the above.

One thing I noticed was it hurt way less than IPL, mind you it was a different area though so hard to say. IPL they just cover you in ultrasound gel, but the GentleLASE shot cryogen before every blast so that might have helped. Scale of 1-10 with 10 most painful, I’d say my IPL is around 7 on abdomen, where GentleLASE on my under arms was maybe 5?

One thing I’ve noticed right away is that after IPL I had to put an ice pack on it for a few minutes since it was really sore/red like a sunburn. Then by the time I got home, every hair that was zapped was a red dot. With the GentleLASE you can’t even tell anything happened there, my under arms look normal (not sure if that’s good or not, but it definitely hurt enough to know that it was doing something and not set too low).

Hoping this works, was a really nice place, quick and easy!

#19

16J on 18mm is a decent setting. Max on 18mm is 20J. If you can go higher, I would do it, but 16J should be ok as well.

Underarms are a small area. That may be part of the reason for the pain difference. Also, is the hair less dense and coarse there? The most dense and coarse hair hurts most.

#20

Yeah I’m not too sure, next time I’m going to ask to go higher though like 18 or 20. The hair is more dense and coarse here than on my abdomen, but again IPL doesn’t use that cryogen spray or anything. Also I found the one arm hurt more than the other.

I was reading the above posts though regarding models, GentleLasePlus vs Mini and so on. Mine was a really big machine so I googled it, it definitely wasn’t the mini as the screen on it was only like 2 lines of LED text which is what the GentleLASE Plus looks like, except this machine was all blue and only said GentleLASE small, it wasn’t written huge down the side. Is there any difference in quality between the GentleLase Plus (assuming it was that) and the Mini or newer ones?