Pre treatment skin preparing products & aloe vera

Hair Removal Methods Laser hair removal
#1

The clinic I go to(have had one IPL session) have sold me lots of products to increase the safety of the whole process. I was just wondering if anyone is using them as well, if you think they are actually useful or am I just being extremely gullible. (All these products are really expensive, about £40 per bottle but hopefully they’ll last for most of the treatment).

  1. A face wash containing salicylic acid to break down the pigments in my face.

  2. Skin lightening cream. I’m most worried about this one. Apparently it’s not a bleach but again works by breaking down pigments. I’m still not sure I want to use anything to artificially lighten my skin tone.

  3. Sun Block. I totally agree that I should be using sun block irrespective of any any hair removal treatment. However, this one is SPF30 and I’m not sure I won’t get something similar with a higher SPF, as well as conserably cheaper?? I do like it though because it’s not too greasy or too whitening.

  4. Serum. It’s supposed to soothen my skin. I still need to find out what exactly it actually is and what it does.

I normally use fresh aloe vera (when available) but my doc said that immediatelya fter the treatment, fresh aloe might be too strong?? She didn’t sell me anyhing cos I said I have a tube al aloe gel at home too, but I had actually assumed that fresh aloe would be more effective. Any thoughts?

If I start having laser treatment rather than IPL, can/should I use the same products?

Thanks :slight_smile:

#2

SPF 30+ should be fine. 30 is good because it is pretty effective protection, but the higher the protection, the more chemicals the sunscreen has and the more likely it is to irritate your skin. As long as you remember to reapply in the time frame given on the bottle, you’ll be fine. But sunscreen is definitely something you can buy yourself. So is face wash. I’m assuming you’ve been given skin lightening cream because your skin is on the dark side for IPL/Laser. This means that you might want to consider electrolysis rather than IPL or Laser because it is permanent removal but IPL or Laser may not be sufficient to give you permanent removal if they are using lower settings because your skin tone is too dark.

Aloe should also be fine. If you have laser instead you can use those same products.