Right I get what you’re saying. It’s just weird how it worked. The thing is I’m just not sure if it is an apples to apples comparison. Take LightSheer and Soprano XL, they’re both diodes but use very different settings in their approach.
There were a few things that really made me trust that it is being used properly but maybe someone here who actually owns the machine will respond too and help us out.
I don’t know if it is the cooling, only because it didn’t really feel any different, and I don’t really find that the cooling does much anyway. Like when I do my face there’s barely any cooling used since having it blow cold air up your nose and mouth is more annoying so they turn it down. It’s possible but I’m doubtful only because the air felt the same and wasn’t noticeably different.
The other thing is that we had exchanged emails back and forth many ties before I went in. So when I did go in and she went over the stuff her first comment was we can skip all of this because she thinks that I know more about laser hair removal than most laser tech’s do! The entire treatment we were just talking about different machines and treatments as well. I told her with the Apogee Elite I was treated with something like 20 or 25ms pulse width and she immediately was like that’s WAY too high you need to go as low as you possibly can handle without burning to get any good results. The entire treatment as well she kept saying our goal is to go to the highest possible settings. I told her my previous clinic was set in their ways and basically wouldn’t go over a certain range but she was like if your skin can handle it and you can handle the pain then we’re going as high as the machine can go.
She was also surprised at how I could take it, she said most men whine about how much it hurts especially at the settings we had it on but I had no issues. My thing is that I’ve used GentleLASE and we did a few spots at 14j I felt absolutely nothing, upped to 15 still nothing so she did 16, I felt it a little, until finally we went to 18 where I definitely felt it.
Yesterday we started I think at 12 with 15ms pulse, she did maybe 3 shots then waited a minute to see if I had a negative reaction. She also asked how it felt on a pain scale 1 to 10 and I said maybe a 3 which surprised her so she went up to 13 right away, did another small area, waited a few mins. She wanted to go higher but because I hadn’t had my arms treated in 5+ months and was new to this machine she didn’t want to go as high as possible first time so she debated on what to increase, and instead lowered pulse to 10ms. I then REALLY felt it to the point that I thought to myself I hope I didn’t exaggerate when I said it felt like a 3, because this time I really felt it, it even made my arm jump a couple times. I remember even thinking going to 14 or 15 I don’t even know if I could handle since the 13 was so strong.
So that’s why I think whatever setting it was on, that 15 is definitely the highest, because I couldn’t possibly imagine going up to 18 or 22 if going from 12-13 hurt that bad. The question is more whether there’s any benefit to using that repetition rate vs one that allows up to 22 joules. I can ask her next time since she knows I know my stuff and I don’t think she would be insulted or anything. It’s just weird because she constantly kept saying that we have to go as high as possible for the best results. Mind you she also did say as mentioned it’s my first treatment in this area in awhile so didn’t want to push it for this time, so maybe next time she would use higher joules as well.
