Hair removal on legs - need help

Hair Removal Methods Laser hair removal
#1

Hello everyone,

I’m nearly 20 years old, started with laser hair removal in March. I live in the Middle East and I found it was much harder for me to discover which clinics are trustworthy enough. I am now going to one called Silkor (http://www.silkor.com/).

I am doing a full leg treatment at the moment. My skin type is II/III and I have dark coarse hairs on my lower legs and slightly finer (but still dark) hairs on my thighs. The way this place works is that you do one treatment then come in for a touch up session after 3 weeks (you do not shave after the first session so that they can see which areas they missed out and then they treat those areas again in the touch up session) then they shave the hair and go through the areas with normal growth. Afterwards they wait about a month and a half before they do a normal treatment again.

The device they are using with me is the Lightsheer diode laser, if I remember correctly the spot size was 18mm. The strength was set on 23j the first session and on 25 for the touch up session.

During the touch up session the lady only treated some spots on the lower legs, she told me that because the hairs on my thighs were fine that I should shave a lot and wait until it turns darker and more coarse before she treats the area again. In Silkor they have the Lightsheer, Cynosure, Nd:Yag and Lumenis one lasers.

Its been a month and a week since my last treatment (the touch up). I’ve been shaving constantly and there are very few, small and sparse areas that are completely hairless. Most of my skin has ugly little black dots that are not growing and I cannot remove, and I have far more ingrown hairs now which scares me a lot.

My problem is that so far I do not see satisfying results and I want to make sure this is not a waste of money, I literally cannot afford to go through this process again if there are no results. How can one tell if the hair follicles are being treated with the appropriate strength? Also, I would like to know which laser is more effective on a skin like mine, the Alexandrite or the Diode? Below are pictures of the hair in my lower legs:

In this picture you can see the normal growing hairs that the technician missed out:

And in this one the way most of the skin of my legs looks like :frowning: :

#2

The ugly black dots are called pepper spots. Probably not helped out by all the shaving you are doing. You need to exfoliate and moisturise regularly to help them out. Sometimes they don’t come out until the next treatment, where they are burnt away but they will go away. My sister had this over her entire arm after her first treatment but only then. After the second and third treatments, she had lovely smooth skin for weeks.

This lady is wrong to tell you to keep shaving to make the hair coarser. The hair is what is is and shaving will not make it thicker or darker. If it’s too fine for laser, it will always be too fine for laser. Thigh hairs generally aren’t thick enough.

The touch up session should have got the hairs that still growing like normal.

You will need anywhere from 3-6 sessions for the legs though, so you won’t see a huge difference just from one session.

Also, I hope you know from HairTell that you would wait 12-16 weeks for your second leg treatment?

#3

Thank you :), I will start using my loofa more regularly and moisturize. If there is anything that I hate is that I’ve always gotten those ugly black dots no matter what I used to get rid of my hair before. Thats why seeing them appear after the laser makes me so upset! I did read on this website that for the legs I should wait longer so I decided not to book an appointment until later this month.

Also, are the pepper spots considered dead follicles? And do you think the strength of the laser strong enough to kill them efficiently?

#4

As far as my understanding goes, the pepper spots are the remnants of the treated hair, stuck in the follicle. If they weren’t stuck in the follicle, they would shed like normal and that follicle may or may not produce hair again.

As you may know, shedding should always occur from effective treatment but it doesn’t mean the follicle has been permanently destroyed - that depends on the coarseness and darkness of the hair and if treatment settings were high enough.

When you exfoliate, do it on dry skin before a shower in gentle strokes, never in the shower. Then you must moisturise after your shower. You may not notice a difference straight away. Moisturise daily; I neglected to realise how important this was for a long time but it really does make a difference. And exfoliate every few days.

If they are really stuck in they may not come out until the next treatment but the above may help, if not, your skin will be in great condition anyway!

#5

Regular LightSheer spot sizes come in either 9mm or 12mm unless it’s the newest XTC model. It’s not 18mm.

The clinic sounds like they know what they’re doing. Offering touchup sessions is good.

Yes, legs have long hair cycles, so you don’t need treatments more often than once every 12-16 weeks.

Pepperspots are dead hairs stuck in the follicles. Don’t worry. They will come out with time or will be burned off at your next treatment. Exfoliating helps somewhat.

Shaving won’t make the hair more coarse. You’ll need electrolysis for any hairs that are not coarse enough. But it looks from your photos like there is a lot of coarse hair. You’ll be very happy after even 4 or so treatments, in my opinion.

Are they using compression on this machine? That’s important. Those settings are decent if they are, but of course depends on whether it’s a 9mm or 12mm spot size. 12mm is better. Settings could be somewhat higher with a 9mm.

Are you middle eastern or just live there? If you are, you have underlying pigment, which means you’re likely a type IV even if you look light.

What Cynosure laser do they have?