I have heard that it is similar to IPL. Has anyone had good results? Has anyone gone to a hairfree centre in aust?
It’s just a type of IPL. True lasers are always better than IPLs or SPLs.
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Where in Australia? It’s a big country. Please add your location to your profile.
The hair free centres are all around Australia. It is a chain. I was just wondering if anyone has been to any one of them, and if they thought it was a good result?
very interesting. I have read the Q & A on lasers, and it does appear that they are better than ipl. I now think I have made a mistake of booking and paying for SPL or-light treatment. From what I read about it, it seemed like it could treat a larger area than laser and at different wavelengths. Can someone tell me if the reason that lasers are better is because they can penetrate the skin better or something?? Is it likely that ipl won’t kill the hair? I haven’t been able to find any detailed reviews on ipl hair removal yet.
LAgirl - how do you know so much about lasers? Do you use them for a job?
Lasers are better because they use one wavelength that is specific to hair removal. When it’s fired, it goes to the root of the hair and avoids for the most part much of the surrounding skin.
With IPL, it fires every spectrum of light or wavelength. To do hair removal, they apply different filters to it which filter out the other wavelengths and attempt to leave just the one for hair removal but it can’t filter it all out. Because it’s firing all wavelengths at the skin, it can’t specifically target the hair only, and hits the skin as well which can cause irritation as well as wasted energy as it’s absorbed into the skin.
The energy isn’t always high enough to permanently kill the hair, a lot of times it just stuns it and disables it for several months but then it comes back. Now it doesn’t mean they don’t work, I seem to have had good results on my stomach with my 4 sessions of Lumenis One IPL, but I also did 2 or 3 sessions with a real laser after that, so how much of that is from IPL I’m not sure.
There’s really no reason for anyone to use IPL unless there’s no where around them that has a real laser. It doesn’t mean you won’t get results, they’re just not as good as a real laser and it can be harder to use.
One of the main problems is that IPL is designed more for skin treatments, like acne removal, wrinkle removal etc. With a filter or optional piece attached, they can now do hair removal as well. So the problem is that many people that have IPL have bought it because they’re a spa or clinic that does skin treatments, and now they figure “oh, we can just attach this filter and now offer hair removal as well!” The problem is that doesn’t mean they know anything about hair removal, settings, hair cycles etc etc. If all they’re using their IPL for is hair removal then you’d probably get better results.
There are clinics in Australia with good true lasers. If you run a search for Australia here, you’ll find some recommendations. What machine you should look for depends on your skin type. IPLs could work fine, but you may need more treatments. Or they can burn you easier if you have darker skin. It all depends. But true lasers are better if used in good hands, i.e. you’ll get better results faster.
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I’m a consumer like edokid, but have learned about lasers before and during my treatments. I’ve had good results with both laser and electrolysis and have been done for years. We have professionals in the industry on this forum as well.
To add to the above, there’s really tons of information online (most of it on this site!) about lasers and how they work. At first it sounds complicated but the more treatments you have and the more you read here and other sources online, you learn more about it. The fact of the matter is that it’s not overly technical. There’s probably 5 lasers out there that are the most popular, so you hear of them constantly and learn how they work and their specs. Regardless of the machine, or even whether it’s laser or electrolysis, the process is still the same. Hair grows in cycles and if you kill it properly, it will fall out in 2-3 weeks until the next stage of growth.
Thanks for the info. The reason I chose the SPL and not laser was because the place looked good at the time. They use SPL Or-Light. They only do SPL hair removal there, and no other services, and the lady who does it has been doing it for over 10 years and has all the certificates in laser and electrolysis hair removal. I will probably try to cancel my appointments and go to laser if the SPL doesn’t seem to work. How do you know that the hair has been properly killed and not stunned? If it falls out does it mean it has been killed and not stunned?
Another question - I have had it done once and I had no redness at all on the area that was treated, not even immediately after. Does this probably mean they should use a higher setting.
You should see all treated hair shed within 3 weeks. If it doesn’t happen, either the settings were wrong or the hair is too fine.
There is no way to tell whether the hair is killed for good until 6-12 months after you’re done with treatments. Shedding is a good indication that the hair is being affected. But it can be affected enough to shed, but not enough to disable the follicle from producing new hair. That’s why we recommend going with a good strong laser and highest settings your skin can handle safely.
Like LAGirl said unfortunately you can’t really tell for awhile. If the hair doesn’t shed by 3 weeks then that’s definitely bad, but even if it does completely shed it still doesn’t mean anything. The difficulty is that as she mentioned, you pretty much have to stop doing treatments, then wait 6-12 months without any treatments. If no hair grows back then you know it worked. The reason that’s hard of course is because you would need usually at least 3 sessions to notice any major results. So it’s almost impossible to “test”, since you pretty much would do a treatment wait lets say 2 months to do another, wait 2 months to do another to make it 3, now you’re at 6 months. Then you’d need to wait 6-12 months with no treatments to see if it worked. That’s a year to a year and a half just to test it which of course isn’t practical.
When I did IPL, I had a different reaction than I did from laser. I would get a red dot on every single hair that had been treated. So my stomach would look like it was covered in red dots for a good 4 hours.
edokid, what was your end result after you had IPL, did the hair grow back?
I’m not sure what you’re trying to get out of this. edokid has had a couple IPL treatments followed by true laser treatments. It’s now impossible to tell what IPL did because of that.
If you’re happyw ith IPL as you mentioned in your other thread, then go for it. We provide information on how to get the most out of your treatments in the shortest amount of time. All machines work to some extent, if they’re used properly. A good machine can be useless if settings are not set correctly. So what someone else had done and saw doesn’t necessarily apply to you. Everyone also has different types of hair.
As LAGirl said I’ve done 3 laser sessions after the IPL. I do feel the IPL did work though. The reason is because with IPL I only did my abs and about as high as 1 inch above my belly button in a straight line across. WIth the laser I did my entire full front since it was cheaper then the IPL on abs alone! Anyway, I have some fine hair left and when I let it grow out you can clearly see a line of fine hair that stops right above my belly button. Now mind you there’s not much you can get out of that, but I can pretty much assume that it wasn’t from the laser alone since I’d be smooth everywhere and you wouldn’t see that line where the IPL stopped. So the IPL definitely did seem to work but I’d still prefer a true laser. Again I used Lumenis One IPL.
What I am trying to find out is if anyone has had success or failure with IPL or SPL over a larger area of thicker hair, as I cant find any detailed reviews either good or bad on peoples results. edokid - that is useful to know that you think you had good results, so i don’t think I will cancel my appointments yet and see how it turns out since the prices are cheap and the lady is very good at it.
Does it hurt? When I did IPL I found it hurt just as much as a regular laser, so you just want to make sure the settings are really high.
It didn’t hurt too much, mostly only the places where I could hear the hair being done, probably because it wasn’t shaved short enough hurt slightly. I didn’t have any redness even immediately after, so I am not sure if the settings were high enough
Reviews don’t tell you that much. You need someone to have the right type of hair, treated at good settings, and you’d need to ask them 12 months after they’ve finished treatments. Most people post reviews without all those factors at play.
Once again, all machine work to some extent. The difference in results depends on type of hair and settings. And true lasers give faster better results, but those other cheaper machines can also provide results if they’re being used correctly.
If you didn’t see much of a reaction and all hair didn’t shed within 3 weeks, the treatment is not working. Either settings are too low or hair is not coarse enough.