My LHR Experience

Hair Removal Methods Laser hair removal
#1

I have been monitoring this board for well over a year and I have been reluctant to pull the trigger on LHR due to all of the negative posts claiming that it doesn’t work. However, there are people out there who claim LHR has worked for them. Therein lies the dilema. Who is right, and who is wrong? I decided that this procedure has to work for most people or the “free market” would come in and shut all of these clinics down with negative press. Besides that, what agenda would people like LAGirl or all of the other regular posters have by pumping LHR? Not enough posters push clinics for me to think that there is some mass conspiracy to get people to do LHR.

I recently got a new job making a lot more money than I was 1 year ago. I’ve decided that I’m going to take the extra money I will make over the next 12 months and invest it in myself. Part of my plan will include LHR. The other part will include me getting off my ass and getting back into shape like I was before college. But that is neither here nor there.

A little about myself: I am a male in my upper mid 20s. My hair is very dark and my skin, for the most part, is very pale. From what I’ve read on the boards, that makes me a prime canidate for LHR. I have an obscene amount of excess body hair on my legs, arms, chest, abs, and small of my back. Those are the areas I wish to clear of hair. My legs are far and away the worst part of my body as far as excess hair goes. I can’t even tell you the last time I wore shorts. It must have been well over 10 years. That will be my main target for reduction.

My expectations: I don’t think I expect as much as most people on the forums. I really would like some type of sizeable reduction (I don’t like to put a percentage to it because I don’t think percentages properly quantify results.) and a substantial thinning and pigment reduction of my hair. I will consider anything that resembles the above or better a success.

I don’t want to spend my life savings on this, so I am going to say I want to go for 4 or 5 treatments. However, this isn’t set in stone. If I see that this is working and more treatments will be beneficial, I will go forward with more treatments. However, I don’t want to go once, be discouraged, and never really give LHR a chance. So I’ve decided to go for a minimum of 4 and save judgement on its effectiveness until then.

Below are pictures of my legs, chest, and arms. I will post again after tomorrow’s consultation and give the details on what was said. Hopefully you can give me some feedback and direction to make sure that I am approaching this the right way.

Sorry about the long post. I tend to be very long winded and analytical when I explain things. I will try to shorten my posts in the future.

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#2

Well, the pictures say it all. Thanks very much for posting them and a warm welcome to hairtell.

Just my opinion: I really like the fact that you have spent so much time watching this site. At least you are educating yourself. I can see why you want to do laser, but I’m wondering if 4 treatments will be enough. My impression has been that man hair needs more than four sessions. I was thinking to myself that that strategy is like someone coming to me for electrolysis and saying that they’re only going to give me 4 months to finish the job. I can’t possibly do permanent hair removal in four months.

Hopefully, you’ll get a nice reduction in that time frame.

We’re rooting for you and I’m sure our laser people will respond as well. Keep posting. Okay?

Dee

#3

My few comments:

  1. I personally think you have an average amount of hair. It’s probably a bigger deal to you, it always works that way. But in reality, I think you’d definitely fall somewhere in the middle.

  2. Your hair is not very dense. It looks like it’s more dense than it is because your hair is basically long and dark. I think it would make a great difference for you to start just clipping the hair before you start LHR. It would greatly reduce the look of a lot of hair that you’re seeing. RC2001 and several others on the forum discuss that at length at other parts of this forum, and recommend the best body hair clippers to use.

  3. You are a very good candidate in my opinion because your hair is no on hormonal areas like the back, shoulders, and upper arms which is what is hardest to treat. Also, the pictures do show that you are quite pale, especially compared to your hair color, which is very good for LHR. The hair is also definitely coarse enough.

  4. I would recommend to look for GentleLASE or another alex laser operated by an experienced technician. I hope you have read the FAQs before you get started: www.hairremovalforum.com/faq.cfm

  5. I agree with Dee on all her points. It’s great that you have been doing careful research. That’s what I did before I started and I believe that helped me get great results because I did everything according to what was recommended by professionals who had no interest in my money. You also have correct expectations going into this and don’t expect a miracle, but rather a sizable reduction.

I do, however, also agree with Dee’s point about only 4 treatments. It’s not a very good strategy mostly due to how long it takes hair to cycle through. If you want to be sure to kill a good amount of hair in a set of treatments, I would recommend you instead do 8 treatments spaced 8-12 weeks apart, but on LESS AREAS. So, I would start with areas that bother you most and concentrate all your energy and money there first. Give it a good go at 8 treatments which is what you should need for a good reduction. Of course, if you’re only looking for a very partial removal, 4-5 treatments might be just fine. The problem when you just start is not knowing how many hairs are in the growth phase at that time. If you start unknowingly when the least amount is, that would make you have more treatments for same results. But there is no way to know in advance. So, like I said, I would start with one or 2 areas that bother you most and then go from there. You can definitely trim the hair in other areas as I mentioned above, which will make a huge difference visually.

Hope this helps.

#4

I have a very similar hair pattern to you, but with a bit more area being covered. I am in the process of finding a clinic to have essentially the same treatments as yourself.

The one mistake I made from my last treatment (on my neck area for my beard) was stopping after 5 treatments. I thought at the time that I had enough reduction, and was concerned about budget (I was using the neck area as a preliminary study to see how many treatments would be needed to be effective before I sank thousands of dollars into getting my body treated - so I was trying to see how few treatments I could get away with) I stopped for about 5 months or so and had considerable regrowth - and since I had stopped for so long, the hairs were out of phase again, and I ended up getting 9 treatments when I may have gotten away with 7 had I not stopped. Wasn’t an issue at $100 a pop for a neck treatment, but would be an issue at $1500 a pop for a body treatment. This time around I am budgeting for 8 treatments to be on the safe side. It would suck to get close to a goal only to have to cut short on treatments due to budgetary constraints.

A couple of other notes that you may or may not find helpful :

I’m using electrolysis to clear finger hair, and will probably do the same for the hair on the back of my hands. Laser clinics up here charge $100 for hands/fingers - that’s $800 for 8 sessions. Electrolysis could get first clearance on this area in a couple of hours, and probably a total of 2 or 3 hours more over a year - at $75/hour, that’s under $400. And it is truly permanent (none of the regrowth risks of laser). I’m thinking of the same approach for feet/toes for the same reason.

I had posted on here several months ago that the regrowth on my neck had stabilized since about 8 months post-treatment. Now I don’t know if I’m imagining things, but since this spring, I could swear that the regrowth is increasing. Seems like I can get away with less and less time between shaving … and the “beard-itch” (with 4 or 5 days of stubble growth) that had been gone for quite a while seems to be back. This is making me think that laser is not so permanent afterall, so I have altered my expectations so that I would be happy with a couple of years of serious hair reduction, and then the possiblity of requiring more treatments, using electrolysis on finer hairs, or just slowly becoming hairy again.

Hope this helps. Would be interested in comparing our results as our body types (skin pigment, hair characteristics) are almost identical, and we will are both looking into the same treatment.

#5

MonkeyMan how old are you? Have you considered that the regrowth could be new hair that you didnt have before?

#6

31, and it is most definately not new hair. It is finer than my beard hair, though has gradually thickened from the results seen 8 months post treatment.

There is a detailed summary of my experienced posted on here somewhere.

#7

Hello all. Thanks for the responses. Tonight I had my consultation and I thought I would share my thoughts. But first, I wanted to clarify a few things. I don’t plan on going for 4 treatments and stopping. I meant that I was going to reserve judgement until 4 treatments. I have read too many people who have gone for 8+ treatments and are still unhappy with the results. Since my bar is not set as high, I think I’ll be able to gauge whether or not this is going to net the results I want after 4 or 5 treatments. This may not me the right thing to do, but I also do not want to go into this blindly without some type of “exit plan”. I think 4 or 5 treatments are enough to determine whether or not this is working. Please let me know if you disagree.

Okay, so here’s how it went…The reason I decided to go to this place was because they posted there “maximum rates” online. Right or wrong, I saw this as a good thing. I thought, “There is going to be no hard sell when I get in here. You know upfront about what it is going to cost, so the bulk of the consultation should be focused on how they are going to rid me of my hair.”

I arrived right on time: 5:45. The receptionist was very nice. She kindly greeted me as I walked in the door and had me fill out a 14 question questionare. She then informed me that they were running late and there will be a bit of a wait. As I waited, I noticed 2 things: 1. The sound of the machine pulsing in the other room. 2. The distinct smell of burnt hair in the air. It almost smelt like a tanning salon. Finally after about 1 hr 30 mins the Dr. came out and greeted every single person in the lobby with a friendly hello and a firm handshake. He also appologized for the wait. That was enough for me to be okay with the wait. He acted like what a good business owner should act like under the circumstances.

He pulled me into his office and gave me the rundown of how LHR works and he told me that my skin type/hair type made me a good canditate for the procedure. Basically he told me exactly what everyone on this board has been saying for the last 1+ years since I’ve been reading. He was quite frank about everything. Told me it’s not for everyone, but I should have good results. He liked that my expectations weren’t to come in and be 100% hair free. He told me a lot of times guys like myself want to come in for a reduction rather than 100% smooth skin. Overall I felt like he was very honest and not pushy at all. He basically handed me the quote and told me to give a call back if I decide to move forward with the treatments.

He will be the only one performing the treatments (which I like). He has been doing this for years (I also like). I decided to do a test patch. He used the same machine that he would use on me if I move forward with the treatments: Apogee 9300. (Please let me know if this is good and if it is the right one for me.) The treatments will cover my entire legs (incl feet), my chest/abs, and my arms (elbow to finger tips). The cost is going to be $948 per treatment with $10 for the numbing cream each time I go. On an aside, he suggested that I put the cream on an hour and a half early and wrap myself up before I go in. Seemed logical to me. Also, after 4 treatments, the price goes down 10%.

With that said, he performed a test patch on my inner forearm by my elbow. Half of the "square’ was thick and dark, the other half was thinner. He started out with one zap at 21 joules/15 mm. The next was 22/15 and finally 23.5/15. He wanted me to get a feel for how the treatments were going to feel. He said he would start me at 21 and move from there. I must say, it kinda hurt. It feels similar to getting a tattoo. I couldn’t imagine that for 2 1/2 hours straight. So if I decide to do this, I’m getting the cream for sure.

I posted a picture of the test patch below. This is about 4 hours after. The skin was smooth after he shaved it. Once he zapped it with the laser, hair popped right up to the surface. Now it looks like what hair looks like after you use nair.

I will post more when I feel that I have pertinant information to share. Please let me know if I’m missing something or if you think something isn’t right with what I said.

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#8

You are really not that hairy.

But as far as what to make of the various opinions on this board? Let me make this point. My impression is that there are at least as many men posting here as there are women. Maybe even more. But there are a lot of them.

We’ve treated something like 40,000 people over the last nine years. Only about 10-15% are men. At the most. Yes, the percentage of men is greater today than it was nine years ago, but it is still very low.

So the bottom line is that this board skews toward men. I would also say that it skews toward people with results that are less than satisfactory. The ones with excellent results for the most part are not here posting. For most of them, they want to get rid of the hair, and get on with their life.

#9

That machine is an alex and good for your skin type in good hands. You didn’t indicate what pulse setting they were using, which is very important here since this laser’s pulse varies a lot. The lower the pulse, the more effective and this machine goes as low as 5m/s, but they could have had it set at 30 or 50 for you, there is no way to tell, which would mean those joules are pretty low in that case. 21, 22, and 23 joules on the same spot size is not that different also. It would give more insight to see reactions from say 25j/15mm/20ms, 30j/15mm/5ms etc. I would still suggest you start with a smaller area than all of that, but of course it’s your decision.