Long Term studies/surveys as to the effectiveness?

Hair Removal Methods Laser hair removal
#21

IMHO the topic belongs to both categories equally well. The abovementioned studies compare the two approaches, and the last contributions indended to clarify why these studies are not suitable to judge the effectivenes of photoepilation.

IMO there are two obstacles for long term studies being performed:

a) they are not wanted.
b) potentially more important: science is project driven, and the main work is typically being done by phd students or people on the fists stages of a scientific career. There is a strong pressure to produce much output (papers per time), especially in life sciences. Research projects usually last 2 or 3 years. This does not leave much room for realistic long term studies on subjects which cannot be splitted into several subsequent projects (any long term study on epilation efficacy is too narrow to be splitted into subprojects of scientific interests by themselves) - who should carry out long term studies?

#22

Josefa, with all due respect, I don’t see how you can judge laser studies given that you do not believe laser works (contrary to evidence by others like me who’ve enjoyed permanent results for years now) and you’ve never owned or operated a laser.

Also, posting photos of electrolysis results has nothing to do with the debate of whether a laser study is valid.

#23

Going back to the article You mentionend and quoting from the abstract:

(v) today there is no evidence for a complete and persistent hair removal
efficacy,

which makes a conclusion of

… evidence from controlled clinical trials favours the use of
lasers and light sources …

hard to follow, isn’t it? BTW: an older study of the same group (2001, i think) summarazies the situation similarly but comes to a far more skeptical (realistic?) conclusion regarding the superiority of photoepilation.

Back to permanency of results: afaik, there do exist a few studies on long term results of photoepilation (they seem to me more or less completly referenced in hairtell), and the result was fairly consistent:

  • partial epilation to a high degree is possible with light sources.
  • long term results show a moderate degree of regrowth.
  • permanent full clearance cannot be obtained, but the results may be satisfactory.

Of couse these results are restricted to those situations where photoepilation may be appropriate. And that’s the key point:

photoepilation is suitable for permanent reduction of hair under certain circumstances; attempts to widen the applicability of the approach more or less failed (ok, using chomophores might help to treat medium blonde hair which otherwise would not be treatable any more). The result remains partial; at least there always exists a point where a switch to electrolysis is more economic.

Despite some studies there are several personal success stories - my own is both: success on the chest an breast (for about 4 years) and gross failure in the face. I have seen several results of partial facial clearance by photoepiliation which are stable for years - among my customers who want to have cleared the rest by electrolysis.

So my personal conclusion is that photoepilation may be successful if you keep in mind pretty narrow conditions of applicability of the approach. Speaking of the situation here in Germany, there is much more promised than hold, even or maybe especially by dermatologists (whooften don’t mind to treat blonde or white hair with their Nd:YAG lasers and charge a lot of maoney for that).

Beate

#24

Beate, the problem with current studies is that they don’t distinguish between the TYPE of hair, i.e. coarse and fine. Laser works well on coarse hair, but doesn’t really work on fine hair. Until that distinction is clear and clinics stop promoting that simply “dark-colored” hair is enough, judgement of “results” will be inaccurate.

Also, one needs to keep in mind that new hair and regrowth looks the same. It’s impossible to tell whether the hair is new or regrew. This is only clear if you examine results 6 months after the last treatment or later because at that point the hair cycle of each hair has finished.

I’ve asked Josefa many times how she can explain results by consumers like me who’ve had 95%+ removal and zero new hair on areas which have been treated with laser 4+ years ago. She ignores the question because her goal seems to be blindly repeating that laser doesn’t work when evidence points otherwise.

#25

LAgirl, I wonder how you have come to the conclusion that I do not believe that the laser works in some cases.

I have expressed great passion for Electrology. This may have influenced your incorrect assumption.

It is also possible that this has been for my personal decision not to recommend to my clients the laser prior to Electrolysis, I already explained that this is because I do not want to assume responsibility for a partial failure (or worse) a total failure.

Perhaps the confusion is because I have argued that with Electrolysis, we can get 75% of results on the first clearance.

I have also said at times that the laser has many limitations, but this is what you say daily, here.

What I never say is that the laser never works. Because unlike laser vendors (not all do), I will not use false arguments to promote Electrolysis. I also will include never Photodepilation between the temporary hair removal systems.
I believe in what I see, and have seen success stories like yours.
By the way I’ve seen a picture of your armpit and is very similar to some of the cases I have concluded on my clients. It is a great triumph of the laser, but I would show you that your estimate of 95% is somewhat unclear. If you give me your permission I can prove it.

(I have to copy your picture to prove it.)

#26

  • The problem is that you don’t compare laser and electrolysis on EQUAL ground. You compare GOOD electrolysis to BAD laser treatments. That isn’t a fair comparison, would you agree? Your posts always assume that one is being treated by the absolute best electrologist with the best machine (take your 75% statement for example). What you fail to mention is that this happens in the minority of treatments. You’ve been on this forum for a while now, so you probably have noticed that we really don’t have any consumers reporting these types of results with electrolysis. That should give you the indication that it’s misleading to make such statements as obviously the majority of consumers won’t get such results.

  • The difference with my statements about both laser and electrolysis is, like you said, that I provide an UNBIASED view of both methods and based my recommendations on that. I compare average electrolysis treatments to average laser treatments.

  • I don’t know what you’re asking to prove. I posted a photo of my underarm after 5 treatments on it. It had about 6-10 hairs left. You haven’t seen my underarm prior to first treatment, so it’s really impossible for you to prove anything. Only I can definitely say that 95% of the hair was removed after 5 laser treatments, and that’s a conservative estimate. After that, I removed those few hairs with electrolysis while getting electrolysis on other areas. I have had no hairs at all on my underarms for 3+ years now.

#27

Problem with electrolysis is that it’s too slow and takes too much skill to get good results. Where in laser you need like 1/10th of the skill. The only reason there is still electrolysis left in the market is cause it has ups that laser doesn’t. Truth is, all the big money is in laser because it has more ups that promote business to go with it and not electrolysis. Do you know how hard it is for me to hire laser technicians that i can trust? If I’d choose to do only electrolysis i would probably end up doing all the treatments by myself without any employees doing it and without any solid chance of actually developing my business.
Even though we want to give people results, it is still a business and we wouldn’t be in business unless we could make a good enough return on our investment.

As LAgirl said, the way the hair cycle works, if it didn’t come back after 6 months then it shouldn’t come back at all. If there was evidence that it could regrow 2 years after treatment, maybe someone would have done a research about it. I guess everyone that checked the matter found out that either there is no money to be made there or that it didn’t make sense.

#28

Problem with Electrolysis is that needs a lot of James, Dee, Arlene, etc, people who defend a high speed and act accordingly.
It also needs people like Beate putting a price on their work in keeping with the faster of the electrologists.
All professionals who care more about removing all the hair of all their customers that lift an financial empire.

If you want to give results to all people, you can hire Electrolysis technicians trained and put a reasonable price in relation to the speed of its employees. In a few months of hard work, you can recover the investment

#29

I agree with you totally.

One of the practitioners who accused me of “putting her out of business” because a large number of her clients defected to my practice came to me some years later asking if we could partner up. I welcomed the possibility, as I imagined that I would not have to teach her TOO MUCH to get her up to speed. It only took two weeks for her to wimp out moaning, “This is a lot of work!” and “You want me to learn all THIS?” I was stunned when she gave up and walked out. I was left thinking to myself, "What were you doing in your practice that was SO FAR away from what I do that you find it not worth learning? " :confused:
Imagine how hard it could be to teach someone from scratch. (hmm, perhaps it would be easier, as they would not have to UNlearn so much. Ok, I have taught people from scratch, and some get quickly, and others take a long time.

#30

I’m still waiting for someone to try the ultrasound hair removal machine, if it works, it should be a decent solution between electrolysis and laser. No pain and not as much skill required and works on all colors. Down side is still the speed.

#31

I may be a newbie on this forum but I’m not a newbie to laser hair removal. I was on consumerbeware.com 2003-2004. Please… I educated myself about laser hair removal before my first session

#32

I found consumerbeware many, many years ago, long before I found HairTell. It was no where near as informative or helpful.

It was not until I found HairTell that I realised that Laser was not the right option for my finer hairs i.e. face. I quickly learnt that electrolysis was the better option and how to go about finding a good electrologist.

I’ve had both Laser and electrolysis where appropriate now and all thanks to HairTell.

#33

It seems to me that many of the old “experienced” users here were on consumerbeware before.

#34

Really, carpet? Like who? We all knew of that site when it existed and didn’t use it. This site existed at the same time and still does. The other hasn’t been around for years. Not that it has anything to do with the issue at hand or your anger. Apparently you learned from that site that hair growth is only an issue in a small number of people and that it’s only caused by hormonal inbalance issues. Neither is true.

#35

The reason why most doctors won’t do hormonal test is because the test is FAR from accurate. If you check the levels of “normal” you will see it includes a huge range of different levels. For some people those same “normal” levels are ok and for others it’s a living hell. The imbalance needs to be really off the chart for it to be shown as hormonal problem, which means that for many people it shows as normal where in fact it’s not.

#36

What do you mean it existed at the same time, check the way back machine:
http://web.archive.org/web//consumerbeware.com
http://web.archive.org/web//http://hairtell.com

consumerbeware.com started in 1998, hairtell.com started in 2002.

#37

So who are the old “experienced” users who were on consumerbeware before???

I gained nothing from that forum, I found it around 2001/2002.

I started researching Laser just before I found it and continued doing so for years. It’s only when I found this forum that I felt properly informed about the process and was therefore confident enough to give it a go.

#38

The Kitty’s Consumer Beware site did in fact continue well into the reign of HairTell.com, and its temporary outages, and final disappearance were reported here, as well as the death of the site owner, who assumed the name “Kitty” on the board.

#39

You said 2003-2004 above. Both sites existed at that time as I stated. What was the point again?