new member - Looking for LHR advice

Hair Removal Methods Laser hair removal
#1

Hey folks,
I’m looking for some advice on getting LHR treatments. Please see my previous post my my past experiences with LHR. Here are some details about me:

Location : Ottawa, Canada
Age : 30
Skin Type : III with dark hair.

Dense, medium coarse hair on lower arms, 1/2 of upper arms. Very dense and coarse hair on chest and abs. Very fine, short, light hair on shoulders/back. Dense, medium coarse hair on butt/pubic region, upper and lower legs. Looking to get complete body treated - ideal would be hairless, but I realize that the best I can probably hope for is significant reduction - then maybe regular wax treatments.

I probably won’t get the back and shoulders lasered (for fear of triggering dormant hair growth). Will probably just wax (with few dark hairs on shoulders done with electrolysis). I would like to get between the eyebrows and the bridge of the nose done too - but I’m leary of having the laser that close to my eyes. Any thoughts?

I’ve done a body wax before and will not do that again - far too painful with this amount of body hair. Also far too long a procudure and by the time the skin has healed, I only had a couple of days before regrowth. Hopefully if I thin/remove most hair with laser, waxing will become a feasible course.

I wasn’t too happy with the Nd:YAG laser - I should have went with Alexandrite or Diode. I figure I will go with the GentleLase or Lightsheer this time. I’m kinda skeptical on the EsteLux IPL - it seems better with the light/fine hairs but I dunno… any thoughts here?

Budget is also a major concern. I am looking to get the whole body treated at the same time - every six weeks going in for 3 days or so and getting the full body deal. So I have to ensure that I’ve budgeted properly, and that I set a correct expectation for the number of treatments. From my experience with my neck - I’m trying to budget for 8 treatments to be on the safe side.

So - I would like to get as much feedback and advise as possible. Which laser would you recommend (I’ve done as much homework as I can, but don’t have much practical experience). Any advantage of alexandrite vs diode? Do you know of any good practitioners in Ottawa? Do you see any problems with how I plan to go about things?

Also - what settings should I go with? From reading (and somewhat from experience) I’ve found that if you don’t start at a high enough level - you will thin the hair rather than kill it, and it gets harder to get rid of as it gets thinner (less pigment to absorb the light energy). The techs that I have had test-spots done with have used settings that were all over the place - so I’d rather have my homework done and be suggesting to them what settings to use (esp. considering most places I’ve found up here aren’t actual “clinics” but more like estheticians who have a laser machine - I’ve found one doctor who does laser in my area, and his prices are double everybody else’s). Any setting advice - pulse width, pulses per second, fluence? Please see my other post for past fluence settings I’ve used.

I’m hoping to start at the end of summer (I’m actually hiding from the sun this summer so I’m not too tan come September … which is making for a crappy summer, but it will hopefully be worth it). I want to make sure I am wearing long sleeves and pants during any shedding process!

Thanks.

#2

  1. Alexandrite would be best for type III. GentleLASE would be your best option. Please check the FAQs sticky post at the top of the forum for link to provider search on their website.

  2. You’re right. Leave the back and shoulder hairs up to waxing for now. Electrolysis should be the only thing you use on this area to remove the hair permanently.

  3. Treatments every 6 weeks are too often. You should not need treatments more than 8-12 weeks apart. Please read the FAQs I wrote for explanation etc: www.hairremovalforum.com/faq.cfm

  4. Settings on GentleLASE for a type III skin should probably start at 14-16 joules range and go up from there. It’s impossible to tell you what your skin can handle. They should do some test spots. If you can do 20 joules with 18mm spot size without adverse reaction on your skin, start with that. Have them do a few test spots beforehand. Later, to increase the joules, they can descrease the spot size to 15mm.

  5. Your eye/eyebrow region should be treated with electrolysis as well. That’s a small area and too close to the eyes to be done with laser anyways. You can also wax if you’re not looking for permanent removal. Lots of men I know get the eyebrows waxed. It’s a very small area, so doesn’t get irritated for more than a few hours and it lasts for a while.

  6. You shouldn’t wax after you’re done with laser treatments on those same areas. Waxing causes hair to get thicker with time, so you can undo the process in some sense if you are left with fine sparse hair as a results of laser. Electrolysis should be done on any areas you want permanent 100% removal after laser, or just shave for a temporary result.

  7. You should count on at least 8 treatments on all areas. You might need less on the legs or lower arms if you’re not looking for complete removal and will be happy with a reduction.

#3

Thanks for all the feedback lagirl. A lot of the researching I have done has been from this forum, and the information provided by yourself and some of the other active members. Just a few follow-up notes to the above points that you made:

  1. Great, thanks. I kept seeing that both Diode and Alexandrite were recommended for my skin/hair type, and wasn’t sure which to go with. I’d really like to find people’s testimonials about places in Ottawa from this board. I’ve been to a bunch; and I can’t find any places that have male technicians, or are willing to do male bikini. Honestly, I’m getting tired of scheduling appointments! The place I used to go to seems to have gone out of buisness.

  2. Thanks for confirming this. I can’t really do electrolysis - my body is essentially covered in hair everywhere - even though the hairs are very fine and short in these areas … there is an uncountable number of them (I’ve got some serious Missing Link action going on here). Periodic waxing should hopefully do the job.

  3. Thanks - this is the general guidelines that I was looking for. I was a bit surprised when some places would mention 15J settings when I had been doing 45J settings on the Nd:YAG. I didn’t know how these settings compared between laser types.

  4. Thanks for pointing this out. I had a technician (who primarily did waxing) tell me an anecdote about a guy who started with a very hairy back and had painful waxing sessions; yet as he continuously got it waxed, it kept getting finer and finer and the waxing process got easier and easier. I didn’t do any reading to research this claim - I just assumed that’s how waxing would work. Of course, she was trying to sell me a service so it serves me right for not looking into it further.

I’d love to get complete removal - but I don’t have $25K to sink into this process. I’m already expecting this to cost between $10K and $15K, so I’ll have to live with what that provides me.

So do you think it is a realistic plan to try taking on all body parts at once. I keep hearing of people doing one area before moving to the next. Are there drawbacks that I’m not seeing? (other than a really uncomfortable week every 2 months or so!)
thanks

#4

there is no drawback other than figuring out if the place you’re getting it done at is the best one you can find and is getting you results while being interested in your progress AFTER they get the money from you, and not being stuck if you’re not happy.