LB500s on ebay....whats it about?

Ive seen lots of auctions on ebay for an LB500s home laser hair removal device (and a very crude looking device it is) going for $200 to $300. Feedback on ebay from the buyers has been almost all positive, saying the product works. I tried searching for it on google, amazon, etc. but came up with nothing.

Does anyone know more about this mystery product or has anyone bought one?

you can’t tell if something works just after receiving the device, which is when the eBay users post it. You have to have several treatments over the coarse of a year and then see if hair doesn’t grow back. Just type in “home laser” in the search box here and you’ll find that these machines (or any home laser machines) simply don’t work if you’re looking for permanent removal.

well ok, but ive paid 1000+ to have laser done at a clinic and its not permanent either…so even if this little puppy works 1/5 as well as the fancy ones used at clinics, it may be worth the 250 bucks. i just want to know if its fda approved or whether it will fry your skin off. then again all of us whove gotten lasered will probabaly get skin cancer anyways.

If I may quickly fly in and fly out… the FDA has never approved any LASER for hair removal, but it is correct to say the FDA has cleared several types of LASER’s for hair reduction. Please understand that there is a huge difference between the words “approved” and “cleared” in FDA terms, but in everyday media terms, the consumer will see such and such LASER “is approved by the FDA!”. You can do a search for a deeper discussion about this issue on hairtell if you care to.

What area did you have done? What is your skin type and what kind of LASER was used?

Don’t waste any more money. The device you are inquiring about is not strong enough and you’ll end up even “poorer” with no results and even less money.

Dee

I have what i think is type II skin with dark coarse hair and i went to a clinic 3x where they used a light sheer diode on my arms and neck…after 3 treatments the neck hair grew back full force in a couple months and the arm hair did the same. i stopped treatments since i had to move. i know it takes more than 3 treatments but it was still annyoing to be back as square 1 after all the time and money spent.

an additional problem i had was that the “technician” performing the procedure looked like a teenager and screwed up in two very annoying ways:

  1. she went over a small birthmark on my arm which is much darker than my normal skin tone and burned part of it off. ouch.

  2. she used the laser on the thin, wispy hair on my upper arm/shoulder area which later caused them to come back as thick coarse hairs thus creating a bigger problem. now i have more hair that needs removing.

well, i have tons of hair that needs removing now and just wanted to give one of these home devices a try before going back to the clinics, especially since that most of the clinics in my price range seem to be a bit sketchy, like the one I went to and got burned…literally.

If anyone knows a decent priced reputable clinic in the LA area please let me know!

check out the clinic i went to here in LA. i had great results. he’s a dermatologist and would never do what you describe. part of your reason was not enough treatments, but mostly it sounds like it was the lack of experience on the tech’s part. i would probably assume they set settings too low too. if you do go back, please understand that you will require at least 8 treatments on your back. that’s a hard to treat area. and yes, make sure they stay away from any fine hairs sparse hairs.

can you provide the name of the place you went to so others can avoid it?

yes, as Dee said, if the professional laser doesn’t work, the “home machine” will most certainly won’t. they don’t have enough power to kill any hair. the only other method would be electrolysis.

Well now, you’ve already said what our resident expert LASER consumers would say to you and that is, three treatments aren’t going to get you any results for the mentioned areas.

What is bothersome, is your comments about a few hairs being treated on your upper arms creating a bigger problem with lots of noticable hair that wasn’t there before. This is said to happen rarely, but I’m beginning to wonder if “rarely” is an accurate term, as I hear consumers reporting this phenomena quite frequently.

Hopefully, the word is spreading near and far not to treat this area with LASER for a few hairs as it may stimulate more hair growth. As far as your cancer comment, there has been no warnings or eyebrows raised by the professional community. Laser hair removal is considered to be safe.

Dee

The place I went to was Cosmetic Rejuvanation on Santa Monica and Fairfax…I went a few years ago and thats when I had the bad experience, maybe they have shaped up by now. Still not going back though.

I have hair everywhere except my back (thank goodness) but I will still need a package deal i think or else it would be prohibitively expensive.

So another burning question I have regarding the strength of the laser being used: Does the short burning/pinching sensation you feel when getting lasered mean that the hair follical has been damaged and that the current hair will stop growing and will not start again until the next growth phase (if at all)? I ask this because this LB500s device supposedly causes that sensation, so something is essentially happening to the hair follicle right? Even if it doesnt fry it as much as professional grade lasers, wouldn’t it be at least as good as waxing then in that you wouldnt have to repeat use of it until the new hair pierces the surface of the skin again? It seems like a good temporary solution until either pro treatments come down in price or better machines are available for home use.

oh, im sorry, you’re talking about upper arms? yes, that and the back are the hardest to treat for men and if the hair is fine and sparse, it shouldn’t be treated with laser at all. if you can provide some pictures, it would be most helpful to tell you if electrolysis or laser is the best way to go. due to hair growth cycles though, you will still need at least 8 treatments at pretty high settings.

calkid, you’d do yourself a big favor if you accept the fact that the LB500s is a complete scam and a total waste of your money and time. All the hoopla on the website is just words to help you part with your money. Don’t believe it. It is not good for anything except an education in hard knocks.

I found this forum while doing a search for the LB500s by Unimed. Like calkid, I saw all the positive feedback and wondered about other people’s experiences with it. While I agree about being very skeptical of home laser devices just on principal and for the reasons already listed, I was hoping to read about someone’s actual experiences using this device. So, what about it, calkid? Or anyone else? What was your experience with this product?

One reason for me to believe that it might be possible for someone to develop a less expensive home version of a device that’s typically employed only professionally is that a similar thing HAS been possible with blue/red light treatments for acne and aging skin. Dermatologists charge a lot for treatment sessions with the professional versions of these devices, which are VERY strong and couldn’t be sold to the general public without some major liability issues. The home versions of these devices DO work even though they are much less strong and require more frequent use.

Anyway, all of that is to say that I wondered if an analogous situation had yet happened with professional vs. home laser devices. If anyone reading this has some firsthand experience with the LB500s, I’d love to read about it.

Thanks!

is that a similar thing HAS been possible with blue/red light treatments for acne and aging skin. Dermatologists charge a lot for treatment sessions with the professional versions of these devices, which are VERY strong and couldn’t be sold to the general public without some major liability issues. The home versions of these devices DO work even though they are much less strong and require more frequent use.

Hope springs eternal . . .

There is no question that LED lights do have some effect on skin. This has been shown by histological studies of skin chemistry. What isn’t known is what this means. For example, I have attended many conferences and done some internal studies and I have serious questions whether there is really any effect on aging skin. We saw no change in our blinded studies and the results I have seen at conferences were non-existent as far as I am concerned. In other words, the presenter could have shown the slides in any order they wanted to. That was how impossible it was to see a difference. So as far as I am concerned, what people are selling with regard to aging skin and reversing long term skin damage is “hope in a flash of light.”

On the other hand, there does appear to be some benefit on acute (short term) damage. A great study was presented on preventing skin rashes on patients undergoing radiation for breast cancer. The results of using LEDs were impressive. And there seems to be a benefit for acne but that may be just the heat. No one really knows.

But here is the real issue. I can go to the hardware store and buy some lights and rig up a system that will be the equivalent of what the "professionals’ are selling. It won’t look as good aethetically but it will be the same functionally. These are just lights. And the professional systems have a very very high profit margin. I haven’t looked at home units, but my guess is that they also have a very very high profit margin and aren’t that different from the “professional units.” And by the way, the professional units I have looked at are not capable of hurting anyone.

But this is very different from lasers. You would not be able to build your own laser without a significant cost. The reason many companies sell IPLs is because they are much cheaper to build and the profit margin is much greater. The home lasers that are available are really very cheap low power lasers that are orders of magnitude different from the high power lasers that are used by reputable companies.

I like to report this as well, I swear atfer having laser done on thin hair on my stomach , it lead to more hair growth, I wouldn’t say thinker hair, but definately more hair…at first I thought I was crazy for thinking this, but now i know that I’m not the only one that’s experiencing this <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />.

this has been discussed here before. if you’re treating hair with fine hair (in my opinion, it shouldn’t be treated with laser, but rather electrolysis in the first place), laser can stimulate some of those hairs to grow in thicker/longer first before killing them on subsequent treatments because now they have enough pigment. another important thing to consider is that people who start having hair removal done start to also examine and pay a lot more attention to the area. so it’s very hard to tell whether the hair quantity has increased if you don’t have pictures to compare. i recommend everyone take a before picture before you start. many people end up regretting not doing that.

also, we don’t enough about calkid’s treatments, so it’s impossible to say exactly why they “didn’t work” besides the obvious fact that 3 treatments is not enough. and assuming that “more powerful laser didn’t work, but this cheap much less powerful thing might, so i might as well try it because it costs 1/3 of what my laser treatments cost me” sounds kind of ridiculous to me. but i guess to each its own.

if this was me, i would look into the causes of WHY the treatments didn’t work that well, although once again this is hard to tell especially after only 3. the settings are not mentioned here and LightSheer is a machine that is pretty difficult to use correctly since there are so many variable settings adjustments on it. someone really needs to know what they’re doing to get results with it.