NG:YAG and cheap price questions (male face)

Hair Removal Methods Laser hair removal
#1

Hey, I just wanted some thoughts on LHR that seems a little different than the protocol I’ve seen here.

There is a LHR place in Liberty, MO operating out of a doctor’s office (not a dermatologist .) that is offering $800 for full male facial hair and neck removal.

The machine seems “normal”, it’s a Laserscope Lyra YAG:NG type. The technicans have vendor training and are certified aestetics (I forget the word).

The part that is a little weird (other than the low price) is the frequency, they are having me come in every two weeks (originally every month) which seems REALLY frequent). There is no cost difference for more sessions, but they told me to expect to go in for up to 2 years.

I have seen some significant overall reductions, though it’s patchy with some technicians obviously missing areas. I haven’t seen any hair free times or noticable shedding, though I am not paying that close of attention to it.

The power settings are around 50J @ 40ms with an unknown spot size.

I’m a white male with what I think to be type 2 or 3 skin (don’t tan very often, burns pretty easily) getting removal on my face and neck.

For what it’s worth, I’m recording the settings and (almost) weekly pictures on a blog site

blog link http://laserfaceguy.blogspot.com

Anyway, does any of this sound fishy to those on this forum?

Thanks

Satsuke

#2

Yeah, that is really funky, and obviously it’s not working. It’s great they are willing to redo it a bunch, but they shouldn’t be missing the hair the first place, and you should be seeing nearly full shedding.

Can you get a (partial) refund and try another place?

#3

So the $800 is for unlimited sessions and you suppose to come every 2 weeks?

Also, YAG on type 2? Unless you tell me that you are screaming during the treatment, something is fishy.

#4

it certainly stings, but not enough to cause say tearing up or involuntary squirming (though I’m a grin and bear it kind of person).

So with YAG:NG I should be seeing full shedding after a few weeks? Like have all of the dormant and active hair fall out?

My blog has the progress, though it’s still sandpaper face all the time (though the shadow has largely disappeared).

Oh … should have mentioned I’m dark hair on light skin …

#5

Lyra is not a very good Yag. It has a tiny spot size. That’s likely why you’re seeing so much patchiness. There is no problem with treating this area often. However, with this machine, it’s difficult to do it well. 40ms is also a very high pulse width for your skin type. They should be able to use a much lower one. It doesn’t sound to me like this is a great clinic, especially for trusting them with a difficult area to treat like a male face. I would switch.

Yes, all treated hair should shed within 3 weeks after each treatment, no matter what.

#6

Sorry to keep the back and forth, but when you say all the treated hair, do you mean all of the hair that was in a growth phase and was treated or all hair in general?

Only thing else I can think of is I just did another visit today and did an against the grain shave … which generated a lot more pain and smell of burning hair during the session than otherwise (I usually shave with the grain and don’t get very close at all).

I am not aware of the significance of teh pulse width, had thought the 40ms was the duration the laser fires during the treatment. I don’t see many charts or other data on what to expect in terms of settings … from some of those I’ve talked to before, the 50J is quite high too.

#7

Lower pulse width is better, but if you’re skin type 2 or 3 you shouldn’t be using a Yag. They’re not as effective for one thing and are designed for people with darker skin. You should be using an alex laser like GentleLASE or Apogee. $800 to go every 2 weeks is a really good price, but keep in mind if it’s working properly, at week 4, 6 etc there really shouldn’t be any hair there to treat since it should have all fallen out. For your first 2 months or so, you may have hair in between, but after that it should pretty much get to the point that every 2 weeks is too soon. You really shouldn’t have any patchiness though if you’re going that often, since you should definitely be treating every hair fully. From what I understand though, a Yag using it’s “ideal” settings on someone less than skin type 4 should hurt like crazy…

#8

  • When we say ALL hair, we mean ALL hair. It doesn’t matter what phase it’s in. If it was affected, it will shed. If it wasn’t, it won’t.

  • It doesn’t matter which way you shave. Burning of hair is more prominent when there is more hair above the skin’s surface left after shaving since laser singes that hair. It’s best to be shaved almost clean to avoid wasting energy on hair above skin’s surface and burning the skin along with that singed hair.

  • “Settings” are a combination of 3 factors: joules, pulse width, and spot size. ALL THREE matter. If one is good and the others aren’t, you’re still not getting good treatments. The COMBINATION has to be good. That combination is high joules, short pulse width, and large spot size. To give you an idea, GentleYAG Yag is one of the best on the market because it has the largest spot size of 18mm and goes down to 3ms pulse width. Now, Lyra as something like a 7mm spot size and doesn’t go down below 10ms or so in pulse width. If you look at your settings, besides the fact that you’re using a machine with a tiny spot size (that is not very effective no matter what you do with the other two variables), you’re also using a high pulse width (technically necessary for darker skin, but not necessarily as high as 40ms and even worse given that it’s with a 7mm spot size).

Once again, I would highly recommend finding a different clinic with a better machine and someone who knows how to adjust settings for your skin type. Otherwise, I suspect you will be coming back here very unhappy with your patchy results which make you shave even more often than before you started because of it.

#9

Points taken. I had asked the technician about their recommendations for skin type and she indicated they treat primarily caucasians and that she thought alexandrite laser was a brand name, not a laser pump type.

Though I am curious how a shorter burn duration would be preferable to a longer one in terms of damaging or disabling the follicle.

The place I am going is called Beautification by Boulware in Liberty Missouri and unfortunately the $800 is paid whether I complete the course of treatment or not. I know one other male with slightly lighter beard than mine that has been going to this place for 2 years every other week and still isn’t completely hair free (so 48 sessions on his face …).

#10

Wow. That’s a lot of sessions. Btw, you CANNOT get rid of all the hair, on a male face especially. If this is your goal, I would adjust expectations unless you’re prepared to switch to electrolysis to finish and then get touchups. Once hair gets too fine, you’ll need electrolysis to treat it. And since your body will develop NEW hair in the future, you’ll need touchups.

However, with 8-10 face GOOD face treatments, you can get a very good reduction where you don’t need to shave that often at all and there is no shadow.

I really would want my money back if someone treating me were not only using a Lyra, but also didn’t even know what an alexandrite type of laser was. That speaks volumes about her lack of knowledge. The male face is HARDEST to treat area. You really need someone who has experience treating this specific area.

I would NOT have more treatments here. Like I said, you’ll end up patchy and very unhappy.

#11

I’m looking at other options locally … If I should see shedding of everything by 2-3 weeks and am only seeing patchyness at 5 visits and no widespread shedding (I see a line on my neck where she treated everything in a line over the line and not on it …) than it’s time to move on.

Unfortunately the only other place locally that does this service at a similar price also uses a YAG (gentleYAG)so I need to do some research.

And yeah, I am not expecting to be completely hair free from this … at a minimum I have some white / gray beard hairs that would have to be done individually anyway and my goal in any event was to get rid of the shadow and course feel of skin so much as get rid of all the hair (though one leads to the other).

Unfortunately, the candela web site appears bunk, as 4 of 6 providers in my area are either disconnected or ring to spam dating sites. (The remaining two are both Ideal Image shops and I’d rather not deal with them due to cost and VERY high pressure and weasel words salespeople.

#12

GentleYAG would be much much better. That’s a great machine for you. A YAG is good in your case, just not the Lyra Yag because it’s not a good Yag. Other good Yags include Coolglide, Sciton, GentleMAX, Apogee Elite, etc.

After 5 visits, it would be very hard to fix this patchiness as all hairs would be in all kinds of different phases. They should touch up anything that doesn’t shed within 3 weeks for free to minimize this.

#13

That could be why they have the 2 week treatment interval instead of something longer. Attempt to treat missed hairs at both ends of it’s growth phase.

They did have one other type of laser, I believe it was a Ruby that she said didn’t get much use. Used more for skin resurfacing / acne scar removal and in general feeling like you skin is being flayed.

Is the Lyra YAG bad because of it’s spot size limitations and pulse width settings? I actually see them on ebay for a few thousand bucks and I wonder if anyone had bought one to use on themselves. FWIW, the yag used on me so far they have completed the sessions in 5-15 minutes, with each session getting more intense treatment of lip and chin areas (in terms of time spent). The only positive soe far has been basic eliminiation of shaving bumps on neck.

You’d think the technology would be trivial by now to do a 3D topographical map of the face or body part using say a infra-red laser and X-Y-Z matrixing software and than feeding to a motorized rig to catch all the skin points. They do this with LASIK eye surgery. If you’ve ever been to the San Jose science and technology museum you can see the matrixing software there.

The only factors I’m not aware of is if the laser is required to be used at point blank range or if a couple of CM focal range is possible. If the amount of energy just needs to be in a certain range rather than a specific amount to disable the follicle that such a system would work (to allow for differing angles and distance from the emission point to the skin surface)

#14

Maybe. But they shouldn’t be charging you for treatments every 2 weeks. Those are not “extra” treatments. Those are touchups for areas that THEY missed.

They still have a ruby type laser? Jesus. They haven’t updated their machines since lasers first came out…15 years? Wow.

Yes, Lyra is bad to the 7mm spot size. GentleYAG has an 18mm spot size by comparison. It doesn’t even compare.

Sciton Yags actually have technology that allows for not missing hair.

There needs to be enough heat applied at the right depth to disable the follicle. That happens with a combination of spot size, pulse width, and joules. It works in a cone shape.