My leg hair is dark brown but in the summer it goes completely blonde from the sun then stays that way forever. Do the roots still keep their pigment though for a laser treatment or is it basically now like treating blonde hair?
Stays blond permanently? That’s peculiar. I imagine it could turn hair blonde, but overtime as hair cycles, I would think brown hair would grow back. Sun destroys melanin in the hair follicle, which would render laser completely ineffective. My guess is that even if your root happened to be dark (you could probably tweeze out a hair to see if the root is dark), laser won’t work. Think about it this way: before treatment you shave the hair. When you fire the laser, the laser is attracted to the pigment of the hair that’s just sticking out of the skin. That energy then travels down the hair shaft to the root. If you have blond hair, it won’t be able to detect the pigment to travel down the hair shaft. At least that’s my guess on why it wouldn’t work. Now maybe if you shave the hair, and then you can see dark spots from the root, then laser could possibly work in that case. That’s just my theory for why it may/may not work.
“Energy” does NOT travel down the hair shaft. If hair shaft pigment is absent inside hair follicle, laser hair removal will be ineffective.
Fair enough, but it sounds like perhaps only some of the hair shaft has pigment absent (i.e. the part exposed to sun), so if he cuts off the part that does, then he’s left with a hair shaft with pigment. If that much is true, then it sounds as if laser would still work for him.
Laser hair removal has the potential to work only with black to brown hair colors. The procedure does not work with most shades of red and has no effect on non-pigmented hair (grey/blonde). The pigment must be present in the hair shaft that lies within the follicle.
Well I’m not sure if I’m clear here but as mentioned my hair is dark brown, but in the summer the sun just lightens it a lot to pretty much blonde. Not all of it but maybe 50% of it. All winter the hair is all dark brown, so I’m just confused as to how the sun could lighten the hair but also lighten the root which is under the skin. To me that should be no different with just the top lighter. Because if what you’re saying is true, then that would mean those carbon dyes you see people sell to “dye” the root to make laser more effective would work. It would mean people with blonde hair just need to dye their hair black to do laser if you’re saying the root changes too.
I’ll put a hair out that’s blonde and brown and compare the root.
The carbon dye method does not work and was abandoned back in the 1990’s. There are newer products on the market, but they are limited in their ability to increase hair shaft pigment inside the follicle.