laser hair removal-thin hair

Hi,
I have had 5 treatments of laser hair removal done on my stomach and lower back. I didn’t see much of an improvement until they increased the settings. They increased the settings becauase the hair on my stomach was quite thin and the hair on my back was thicker than my stomach. I’ve heard that laser hair removal doesn’t do well on thin hair but I have seen at least a 50% reduction on my stomach and back. I spoke to the pratitioner after the 5ht treatment because I didn’t know if I should continue and she told me that 3 more treatments would get rid of the remaining hair. Do you think I should continue even if my hair is quite thin but dark.?

You didn’t provide enough information. How long has it been since your last treatment? You can’t really judge how much reduction you have seen until you give it a good 3 months at least.

Are you male or female? How coarse is the hair? Do you have pictures or can you describe it better? What machine is being used? What settings? What is your skin type?

It has been about 9 months since my last treatment. I am a female and the hair on my stomach is quite thin and not considered coarse. But the hair on my lower back is thicker than the hair on my stomach but not that coarse, probably like the hairs on my arm. THe machine that was used was the lightsheer diode laser and my skin is type II. I not completely sure about the settings but they increase it on the last two treatments, I think it was somewhere around 40-45 joules. Also they set my treatments one month apart. Are the treatments supposed to be spaced a little more than that, like every 6-8 weeks? My last treatment as two months after the previous one and also the settings were brought up a little higher.

You can try it, but I don’t think you’re likely to get much more reduction than the 50% you already got. It’s up to you. You can try it out, but there are no guarantees. If you’re going to use the same machine, low pulse setting could help target the finer hairs better.

I had the stomach area with finer hair treated as well and stopped after 4 treatments because I felt I wasn’t getting any more reduction. I think I got about 40-50% after these 4 treatments as well.

Thank you for the advice. Sorry, I have two more questions- why should low pulse settings be used, because when the practitioner noticed my hair was fine, she increased the settings so that the thinner hair would be targetted?

Also, should the treatments be spaced 6-8 weeks apart or once 1 month apart for laser on the body?

There are 3 different settings on the machine and all 3 are adjusted. High joules, low pulse, and large spot size are best for attacking fine hair. LightSheer spot size is usually not adjustable, and comes in eitehr 9mm or 12mm.

Treatments should be spaced 8-12 weeks apart. Basically, after shedding, you need to wait until enough hair is there to treat, which is usually 8-12 weeks after the treatment.

Thank you for the information, yeah I didn’t knwo that the machine had three different settings, I only that that it had the joule settings.

Hi , I agree with everything you wrote higher Joules and low pulse duration but doesnt spot size just affect the depth of penetration e.i. the bigger the spot size the depper the penetration? Also I would suggest @sunshine44 to go with a clinic/medspa that uses an Alexandrite laser specially since shes a fitz 2 because Alex lasers have a higher affinity to pigment/melanin so even if the hair is quite thin maybe an Alex can pick it up.

Dude this thread is from 2008…