Question about laser

I have read that laser does not work for everyone and sometimes it can even make the hair worse.
What I am wondering is if I will be able to tell if the laser is working well for me after only one treatment.
I need to take multiple treatments with intervals of specific time in between treatments for the best results right? So will there be time to see how well it is working in between the 1st and 2nd treatment or will I just have to risk multiple treatments before I see results?

what is your situation? you didn’t provide any details and there are too many variables to give you a yes/no answer.

m/f? what area? what skin/hair type?

Hello thanks for replying. I am male. The area is my back/shoulders. I am white and have brown hair. It’s fairly dark on my back. I’m not an expert but I’m guessing my skin type is Fitzpatrick III, but I guess it could be II. Maybe IV but not likely.

is the hair sparse or dense, fine or coarse?

I guess it’s pretty dense, I mean it’s not like a beard or anything, but it’s definitely not just a few hairs here and there. It’s coarse near the top and finer lower down.

you can treat the more coarse hair, but the finer hair might be better treated with electrolysis. how many hairs are we talking about? high fluences would need to be used with an alex laser for good results.

Well I guess it is pretty dense… I took a photograph since I figured that would be easier than me trying to explain.
http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h239/asdh988f/535463.jpg

yes, pictures are great. thanks for that. the back and shoulders are pretty coarse. i would use an alex laser at high settings for those areas. your upper arms have more fine and sparse hairs, so I would only let the tech go as far down as when the most dense and coarse hair ends on your shoulder/upper arm area and get the rest of those fine ones with electrolysis.

So do you think I would be able to decide if I will be able to get good results after 1 treatment or would I have to commit to more than 1 before I’m able to tell?

after one treatment, you can judge whether the laser is effective on you by seeing if the hair sheds within 2-3 weeks. If 90% at least sheds, it’s a good sign that the laser is good for you and the person treating you knows what they’re doing because they’re settings correct settings and not missing spots. you just shouldn’t expect for hair not to grow in after shedding happens and you have a hairfree period, because you need to realize how much DORMANT hair you currently have that is not visible, which will show up after each shedding/hairless period for at least 3-4 treatments. After that period, you will see considerably less hair spring up after the shedding period as you would have killed a large portion of the hair in various phases at this time. You should count on at least 8 treatments for your situation, possibly slightly a bit more. Treating at high settings from the start is very important too.

I have heard of laser stimulating hair growth instead of reducing it. Will this be avoided by using high settings?
Also do you think you would be able to estimate what percentage of hair would be gone after a certain amount of treatments? I’m guessing after a certain point there are diminishing returns.
One more thing, do you think laser would be cheaper than electrolysis for my situation?
Thanks again.

Please read the following thread of this specifically discussed on another forum by an MD who owns a chain of clinics in Texas and has been doing this since lasers came out almost 10 yrs ago (a male’s back is discussed). It should answer most of your questions.

http://cosmeticenhancementsforum.com/for…sc&start=15

Yes, you won’t be able to achieve 100% removal with laser alone. Once the remaining hairs become sparse and fine, you need to finish up with electrolysis as they won’t have enough pigment to attract laser heat to kill them.

Yes, a combination of laser and electrolysis is best in your case especially, and cheaper overall. electrolysis alone would take much much longer. You can kill a considerable amount of hair with laser at once before switching to electrolysis for the remaining sparse hairs. It’s impossible to predict how your particular hair will react, especially since there are so many variables. If everything is done perfectly and it reacts perfectly, in a perfect situation, you will see a difference even after 1-2 treatments. But you would see a significant, hopefully 70-80% reduction after 4-5 treatments.

If you haven’t read the FAQs, please do so as well:

www.hairremovalforum.com/faq.cfm

I have heard of laser stimulating hair growth instead of reducing it. Will this be avoided by using high settings?
Also do you think you would be able to estimate what percentage of hair would be gone after a certain amount of treatments? I’m guessing after a certain point there are diminishing returns.
One more thing, do you think laser would be cheaper than electrolysis for my situation?
Thanks again.

By looking at your picture, I think that your chances of stimulating more hair on your upper arms is very high. Even if you use an extremely high fluence, in my opinion, it would still stimulate more hair. I’ve had LHR done on my back, chest, abs, shoulders, upper arms and forearms. I always got treated with very high fluences, but still had stimulated growth in the upper arms and shoulders. All other areas I had really good results.

You do have a lot of hair on your shoulders, so I think you shouldn’t worry about stimulating more hair there. But if I were you I wouldn’t do LHR on your upper arms.