Second and third appointments

Hair Removal Methods Laser hair removal
#1

Hi,
I had my second treatment in December at 16J on my back. It went well with only slightly more redness and swelling compared to my first treatment at 14J. I also had my neck treated at 12J because I get more sun there, which turned out to be good. There was quite a bit of swelling and redness for 4 days. But the hair fell out and my neck was hairless for about 5 weeks.

My third treatment was today at 18J for back and 12J again for my neck. It has been 7 weeks since my last appointment. On the backs of my shoulders, there was more hair. In the middle and lower back, it was sparse.

Some things kind of bothered me about the appointment:

  1. They treated my whole back, but only in the spots with hair growth. They asked me to come back in two weeks to treat the remaining spots, presumably when hair will have appeared. Should I have waited until hair in the whole area of my middle and lower back had grown in?

  2. On my shoulders where the hair is thicker, longer and grows faster than the rest of my back some hairs were about 1/3 inch long. They did not shave/trim it because they said they needed to see it to treat it. Is this right? I was surprised they did not at least trim the longer ones.

  3. Also, even though the treatments were at 18J, there is less edema than after my first treatment at 14J. How is that? I’ve had a different person do the treatments for all 3 appointments. I wonder if something was done incorrectly this time.

Thanks

#2

Are you still going to Aura? How’s your experience? Any success/progress thus far?

#3

Hi, blues. Timely question as I was planning to post my story this week. I stayed with Aura and overall I am not happy with the results or the process. Note that this description is how I look back on the experience and not so much what I was thinking during. Since I was going on a regular basis and the hair was being treated before it could grow fully I thought there was significant reduction in courseness and number of hairs. For the most part I was happy with the progress. After the last treatment in March I decided to see how things looked by not going back when I would have normally set up an appointment. Basically it does not look good.

Basics and how I ended up trying LHR:
43yo
Black hair
Type II-III skin

I started doing electrolysis at home on my upper arms and front of my shoulders and had great results though it took a LONG time. I treated each hair 3-4 times and they never came back. Then I went to a professional electrologist and felt I had zero success, though some of the major contributors on Hairtell said that I quit too soon. I guess I was measuring those results to my own. Plus the time commitment was too much with my work schedule and given the size of the area, LHR seemed a better choice.

Treated areas:
-back
-top/back of shoulders
-upper arms (only at the higher settings of the last 3 treatments)
-part of underarms (my armpit hair and chest hair kind of blended together) That part of my armpit hair is almost completely gone. There are a couple of hairs remaining but I can shave or pluck these easily. I consider this area a complete success. The following only relates to back/shoulders/upper arms:

Process:
There was some turnover at Aura when I first started and so I was treated by 4 different nurses. The last 4 treatments were done by one nurse who I liked and who encouraged using higher settings. I feel like if I hadn’t pressed the other nurses, they would have just continued to use 14 or 16Js. Looking back on the 3 other nurses compared to the last one (I wish I could remember her name. Marty I think?) the others seemed either clueless or just seemed like they wanted to go through the motions.

I noticed some induced growth in a couple of areas after about the 4th treatment. I tried to talk to the nurse and the manager of the clinic about the changes in my hair (both positive and negative), but the nurse was generally different from the last nurse and would have nothing to add/offer. And the manager was zero help. She refused to accept that there was induced hair growth caused by the laser and would not address my questions in a way that made me trust her. Over the course of the last few treatments I left the manager out of the loop and only dealt with the nurse who I liked and trusted and was more careful with areas I didn’t want treated.

Before LHR: On my back I had some hair that was very long, dark and course. I also had a lot of hair that was lighter and shorter, but still quite dark and treatable according to all the clinics where I had consultations.

After LHR: The course hairs have been reduced slightly in length and courseness, but what were the lighter and shorter hairs are now darker and longer. So instead of having some dark and long hairs mixed with a lot of hairs that were less dark and shorter, now there is basically one length and thickness and it looks a lot worse than before I started the treatments. The number of visible course hairs has increased dramatically both in areas where there was hair and even in areas where there was almost no hair. Even after telling the nurse not to treat certain areas, invariably I would feel a few zaps where there was little or no hair before I could say anything. I now have long dark hairs on my shoulders and even on my biceps where there was none visible before. It’s especially frustrating considering all the time I spent treating and clearing those areas myself using a One Touch.

These are the dates and settings used on a Candela Alex laser:

DATE FLUENCE SPOT

10/1/2008 14 18
12/17/2008 16 18
2/4/2009 18 18
4/22/2009 20 18
7/1/2009 20 18
8/26/2009 22 15
10/12/2009 22 15
12/11/2009 26 15
3/25/2010 20 18

I never had a bad reaction to the treatments even at 26Js and the pain was not that bad either. I stopped using numbing cream after about the 5th treatment. Within 2-3 days, my skin would look normal. (and great and hairless!) There was some discussion about whether the settings (22 and 26Js) were too high. Not because of skin reaction, but that the high settings could be singeing the hair and not disabling the follicle. That’s why the last treatment was done at 20.

I don’t know why the treatments worked on the armpit area and not everywhere else. The same settings were used and the treatments started on the 2nd visit and ended on the 8th. Compared to my back the skin is slightly lighter, but the hair is less course and lighter in color.

So the question now is: what is my next step? Do I continue the treatments at 26 – 15 to see if it eventually works? Try a different laser? Go back to electrolysis? Wax periodically? I still don’t have the time for electrolysis and waxing is only good for a few weeks at best and is not a long term solution. I have actually considered using laser like waxing. Even if it’s not going to be a permanent and effective solution, at least I can be hair-free for 2-3 months at a time with only slight skin irritation for 3 days.

I apologize if this was a little more of a rant than informational :slight_smile:
Any thoughts and suggestions would be great.
Thanks!

#4

Your last treatment appears to have been 20J with an 18mm spot size. This is the HIGHEST setting on that machine (more powerful than 26J on a mere 15mm spot size).

I just want to clarify that because the way you wrote it it almost sounds like you thought they lowered the energy for your final treatment.

(By the way, I’m sorry this happened. This is so common around here, nobody in the industry wants to admit that induced growth is a possibility, and they all pretend that dark hair is all that matters, when really the coarseness plays just as big a role. Can you just invest in a pro electrolysis machine which will go way faster than a One Touch?)

#5

Kitty is correct. You’re not understanding the settings being used. The overall power decreases as you drop the spot size, so the joules have to be increased to compensate. That’s why on 18mm, 20J is max and on 15mm the max is 30J. So every time you used 15mm, the settings were much lower than the 18mm/20J.

Could you post some photos of your hair? It sounds like the typical thing happened that we see here often. You got great results on the coarse dense hair (underarms), which is what laser treats well. And you didn’t get good results and got some induced hair on finer more sparse hair on the hardest to treat area on men (upper arms, shoulders, and back).

My friend went to Aura and got great results on underarms and bikini. She made sure to request the same nurse as much as possible and ask for specific settings. So I recommended and still recommend this clinic for those who want a good machine and a nurse that will be willing to treat at high settings and work with you if you know what to ask for. This includes asking to only treat the patches of hair with actual dense coarse growth. You don’t mention the coarseness of your hair on the areas that got little result and induced growth. Coarseness and density are probably the most important factors. “Dark” is a given. If hair is not dark, laser shouldn’t even be considered. Photos would help more.

Professional electrolysis should go a lot faster than doing things yourself with a One Touch, but that requires sampling 3-4 electrologists and getting clearances each time for at least several months in order to be able to judge effectiveness. Hair cycles, so you can’t tell anythig from a couple treatments.

#6

Wow, you’re right. I didn’t understand at all. I thought the last treatment was at a lower setting because that is what I was lead to believe. Perhaps they realized it wasn’t working and didn’t know what to do. That’s a big assumption, but I really don’t have a good feeling about my experience there, with the exception of Marty.

At this point, there isn’t enough hair on my upper arms and front shoulders to justify a pro electrolysis machine. I think I’ll go back to the One Touch and perhaps mix in a few professional electrologist visits so I can feel comfortable in t-shirts. The main area is my back and back of shoulders where I can’t treat by myself.

As for the difference in underarm hair and the hair on my back, I would not say the underarm hair was courser or denser before the treatments. Now my underarm hair that was not treated is definitely nowhere near as course or dense as what is on the back of my shoulders.

I tried to stress that only areas where the hair was dense and course should be treated. There are areas on my back with little or no hair. But at the beginning they insisted that the areas to be treated should be shaved so that most of the energy of the laser be focused on the follicle. But they don’t have an electric shaver that trims the hair, only disposable razors. So with one person prepping (shaving) and the nurse treating, the nurse had no idea what areas should be treated. If I was going in for areas that I could see and trim myself this would be no problem. But for my back that I can’t see and given that some areas have dense, course hair and others that don’t made for a less than ideal situation. If I shaved myself a few days before, the nurse would still see hair stubble on most of my back and shoulders, but she would not have been able to discern which areas had the dense hair and which didn’t.

I tried taking some pictures before I started, but they didn’t turn out very well. I recently bought a new camera and I’ll try it out. I’m guessing portrait settings would work best? I did have a waxing appointment last week for a bbq/pool party this past weekend so it will be a couple of weeks before I can post any pictures.

Thanks for the help and comments!

#7

Yeah, shaving can make it hard to tell the areas that are coarse and dense enough, but in actuality it can kind of help too. Why? Because a good trick to telling if the hair is coarse enough is if it leaves a sort of gray 5 o’clock shadow after a close shave. Not mere stubble, but actually a grayish shadow from all the black roots under the skin. Like what men get on their faces and women get on their underarms and (sometimes) lower legs.

But it’s still hit or miss because you can’t see what the tech sees (having a friend outline the areas in advance may have helped, but this area is pretty tricky for everyone and risky in general.)

#8

We recommend shaving 1-2 days before you go for treatment so that there is stubble there and they can clearly see where to treat.

A good electrologists removes 5-10 hairs per minute. You can easily clear the area and then use One Touch on any new single hairs that pop up.

If there is induced growth, the hair wasn’t dense enough. If the hair is dense, there is no room for induced growth :slight_smile:

It would also help to us the clinic to outline the areas to treat with a white pencil. Then shave those areas only and treat only them. That’s if they insist on shaving you themselves or if you don’t have anyone to help you a few days before at home.

I would try the “up close” setting on the camera…usually a flower icon or something like that.

#9

Yep, got the flower icon. I’ll give that a shot. Thanks. I look forward to your thoughts about the pictures.

As for the 5-10 hairs per minute, when I use the One Touch I treat each hair for about a minute. There is some temporary damage to my skin: redness, swelling and sometimes even scabs form that last a few days (this usually happens when I scratch away the pepper spot), but no permanent damage. Could this explain why I can remove a hair with 4 treatments when the professional electrologist I went to treated the hairs more times, but with no success? It seems the only other difference was the size of the needle (their needle was much thicker).

#10

I think electrologists tend to change the time they spend in a follicle depending on the type of hair, probably even the current too - you’d have to ask an electrologist though, lol. My electrologist did most hairs really quickly because they were vellus, usually sitting right near the top of the skin, but one of the hairs she stayed inside the follicle a good ten times longer than the others because it as thick and black and deep rooted. I think they change settings based on different factors.

#11

If it took four different times to kill every hair at the appropriate settings then she’s got messed up insertions. Some tough hairs with curved follicles may take more than one treatment, but if all or most hairs take four separate treatments then it would take 4 years to finish instead of one! That’s no good! I’d just find a better electrologist if you are 100% sure that’s what is happening.

I have no idea the modality she used on you either (One Touch is a galvanic machine, slower and older technique; many electrologists use blend or thermolysis these days which are faster but should be equally effective if the insertions and settings are good). Galvanic seems to be a lot more forgiving for a crappy insertion since the lye fills the whole follicle anyway. But thermolysis is actually pretty easy too if you don’t insert too shallowly.

#12

If most hairs need more than one or two insertions, then the energy and timing should be adjusted AFTER one is sure that their insertions are being done correctly. In an area, especially when I an working toward a first, full clearance, I find that I need to adjust my settings frequently because I am dealing with very coarse, coarse, medium and accelerated fine hairs that are either in anagen, catagen or telogen phases of growth. It’s all mixed up, so energy and timing and sometimes modalities need to be changed in just that one session alone. That’s why I personally don’t like to talk during a treatment. There is much to think about and besides, movement, either on my part or the part of the client, can make me miss the target. Proper insertions, proper insertions, proper insertions are what we strive for, so if there is talking on your part or her part, maybe you should go into sleep mode while she goes into her “kill the hairs” mode.

#13

Once again, you can’t tell anything from 4 professional electrolysis treatments. How far apart were your treatments spaced? If you went for 4 treatments within say 2 months, you only treated hairs in ONE hair cycle. So what you saw in month 3 was NEW hair from the next hair cycle come in.

There are various types of electrolysis. Galvanic is slowest and takes about 1 min per hair. Blend is a bit faster at 2-3 hairs per minute. Thermolysis is even faster. Microflash and Picoflash are the fastest types of thermolysis which often treat 10 hairs per minute given a good electrologist.

Each hair should only be treated once if the insertion is good and the amount of delivered heat is correct. Is this is not happening, either or both need to be adjusted accordingly. Also, some deeper curlier hairs may require blend instead of thermolysis.