It has been almost 2 years that I have been having my hair lasered at american laser center. They use both Aurora (IPL) and lightsheer (diode) lasers. I have used both. I have had a countless number of treatments at this point and the results are horrible. I’m a skin type 3 and have dark coarse hair. I am treating various parts of my body including my face. The only place I am really seeing results is my calves. Everything else is just as hairy, if not worse, b/c it turned lighter hairs into coarse hairs. At this point, I feel like I’ve made things worse, that the hair will never go away, and just don’t know what to do. Is this common??? Of course the technicians and manager at laser hair claim this is uncommon, but I can’t imagine that my case is that rare. What are my options? Is there still hope? I just don’t know what to do and need advice. I can’t bear the thought of being hairy for the rest of my life, but is this a reality that just have to accept?
Firstly, do not and I will repeat again do not use laser on fine sparse hair, period. As you said it causes fine, lighter hair to become darker and more coarse due to stimulating the hair follicle.
Apart from your calves what other areas are you having treated?
Secondly, IPL’s are infamous for not yielding the best results, however the diode is not a bad laser. What settings are they using, joules, pulse, spot size and so on?
Thirdly, be very careful with American Laser Centers, if you do a search on here you should find several posts which will make clear what I mean.
FInally, in regards to treating the fine, lighter hair the only real suitable method is electrolysis, as it can treat all hair types, on any skin type. Read the FAQ’s in the electrology section to find a good electrologist in your areas, or otherwise try the American Electrology Association. www.electrology.com
hi. thanks for the responses. i am oblivious to why american laser centers are bad. can you please let me know? i just found this website b/c i’ve finally had enough. i am doing full body, which you can imagine, hasn’t been the smartest of decisions in hindsight. what do i do about the hairs that have already turned from fine to course? will those go away with more laser treatments or is electrolysis the only option. at this point, i have accepted taht i am going to have to do electrolysis, but there are too many hairs to see that as an option yet. the center i go to just purchased the diode laser and i have had one treatment on my entire body at 20. does that sound right?
If the coarse hairs are surrounded by fine hairs I would stop having laser. It can cause the finer hairs to also become thicker, coarser and terminal.
On the areas that are far more coarse such as calves, male chests (on some men) and so on, laser should be fine.
Although electrolysis may seem a daunting option, if you set up a good schedule with a experienced practitioner with good tools and so on, you should see the problem reduced then eliminated.
It is not absaloutly certain whether the coarser hairs will become reduced with further laser treatment, it is up to you whether you wish to take the risk by having further treatments.
This is not really a true statement. Part of the problem is that we really don’t know what we are referring to. Very very fine hair will not respond to laser. No question about that. But fine hair will and can be easily treated by laser.
The problem is that first, we don’t know what kind of hair we are talking about and the kind of hair (how fine it is, color, skin color, etc) has an impact on the treatment results.
Second, the quality of the practitioner and the equipment they use is even more important. I haven’t spent much time reading through the electrolysis section of this website. But I recently looked through it. There were a lot of messages from people complaining about lack of results and the prevailing response was “that you need to find a quality electrologist” to have good results. I have no problem with that statement. I am sure that it is true. But I will argue that the reason the majority of people on the laser hair removal section don’t have good results is because of the quality of the person providing the services and the machine they use.
I use to own a Lightsheer diode. I put over 5 million pulses on that laser in five years. I will let others who do laser hair removal comment on whether that is a lot of pulses or not. I don’t own a Lightsheer anymore for a reason, the reason being that that system is inferior to other systems that I have used.
So to keep implying that fine hair can only be treated by electrolysis isn’t correct. Though I will agree that it is better to use electrolysis than a laser center that doesn’t know what they are doing.
The comedian in me can’t resist saying, “So we agree that incompetent electrolysis providers permanently remove more hairs than incompetent LASER providers.”
We hair removal specialists are not unique. Just about every career is dependent on “practitioner skill” followed by using the best equipment. Whether you are a star cyclist or a soy bean farmer, the end product is dependent on your know-how and equipment used.
We have to reiterate the skill part in every post because people will come back with statements like, “my electrologist has over 30 years of experience (and a fifty year old machine!)” or “I actually prefer going to a medical doctor for my laser treatments rather than a nurse or technician, because after all, she’s a doctor!”. Then there are the others that, if you leave this practitioner skill part out of your post, will jump in and say, “It doesn’t matter what equipment one uses, it all comes down to practitioner skill!” Ask that soybean farmer how productive a horse and plow are when it comes to planting 400 acres. I’m sure he or she will give you an earful about modern tools of the trade.
I’ll agree that wasn’t very well articulated and may have been a rather sweeping statement.
Laser can treat fine hairs (one’s that are dark on light skin), however, they are (or I have found at least with myself and a couple of other male friends) usually surrounded by very very fine hairs. Especially on the shoulders and upper arms, so although they may be able to be treated, it may stimulate the other lighter hairs.
Thus making more sense to treat them with electrology rather than risking treating them with laser, especially on people wih darker skin types, which has been demonstrated in a couple of studies.
I have two female clients that see me for facial electrolysis, but are also seeing a laserologist for hair on their forearms that I think are not dark enough or thick enough. Skin color may be a problem, too. They were assured that laser would work for them, so who am I to question the experts. I am anxious to see how things work out in a year or so. I sure hope the laser people are right because these “kids” are college students spending school loan money, I’m sure.
to find lots of (bad) feedback on this laser center, just use the Advanced Search feature on this site (top right).
before we can provide you with a plan of action, you need to provide us with more information. please first list the following: each area you’re treating with specific type of hair you have on each one (color, coarseness, density, etc), how many treatments you had on each area, whether you have ever seen any shedding, what you usually saw happen after each treatment, etc. Also, please read the FAQs below and provide your skin type based on the chart listed there.
the general answer to your issue is that you went to a clinic that cares only about your money and not your results, as well as employs people who don’t know what they’re doing, even on the better machines like LightSheer diode because it takes skill to know how to set effective settings on those machines to get results. in addition, there are some types of hair and areas that should not be treated with laser in the first place, and obviously some clinics like this one do not care about this and will treat whatever you want as long as you’re paying for it.
it would also be very helpful if you can find out joules, spot size, and pulse setting for each treatment. without all these numbers, it’s impossible to tell what 20 or 22 is, because all three variables matter when determining the strength of settings. Plus, settings cannot be compared among various machines types simply by comparing numbers. In general, at least 25 joules or so need to be used on LightSheer to be effective, but if the pulse was very high and no compression was used, they would be too low. Basically, if you didn’t see shedding after each treatment, you probably weren’t affecting much.
