Should I be seeing growth as early as…well…4 days after treatment? I mean, hairs that were clearly shaved before my treatment look like they have about that much growth on them. It’s not uniform, mind you. On the contrary, it’s a bit patchy, and I understand that any regrowth should be patchy…
Regrowth should NOT need to be patchy. Sometimes I get tired of repeating this, but this mostly gets unnoticed, so I’ll repeat it once more.
If proper settings and application technique is used then clearly the hairs should not look like they are growing at the same rate. At least something should not feel right even if they look like growing, you’d be able to tell they will shed eventually.
Ok, I’ve gone to sessions at different centers. The first center I went was a part of big chain. If I compare the results I achieved at this center and the ones I went afterwards, the result is that while patchiness wasn’t an issue at the first center, I always hit the patchiness wall at my subsequent treatments at the other centers. So, what is the driving difference among the first and the other ones?
Well, several reasons:
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The practitioners at the first center seemed much trained.
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Before they treated any area they divided the area with a white pen into smaller areas, and they treated each area individually. They never proceeded into the next area before they finished the current one.
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Before the procedure they deposited a transparent gel onto the area. The laser head continually blow air forward, so during the laser pulse the gel right on the skin had marks making sure and telling the area under the mark is treated.
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They hoovered the laser head at a constant speed above the skin ensuring that overlapping is done and each skin part gets close amount of energy. They conducted laser head movements according to predetermined patterns like line by line and etc.
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They had some sort of device checking on skin and telling which skin type you actually have, so they were able to adjust settings more healthily.
At this center I had never had patchy results or patchy regrowth except once where one practitioner were utterly bad so I had nearly half of the area untreated.
Here is the thing, the latter centers didn’t apply any of the above, so they were not able to treat each spot equally and as a result patchiness occurs, and this is what I’d expect since these people are not machines. But there is always these techniques above or similar that will help them minimize the non-uniformity. So, why don’t they use these or similar techniques? I think, they just think they are skilled enough to cover all the area uniformly. And, when you tell them it is unlikely, they just ignore you. Because you should not be teaching them their job.
It is not hard to see why so many people with coarse hair having patchy results.
Large gel ice packs might work better, since they cover a larger area and can easily be pressed against one area while the preceding area is lasered. I’ve brought my own to clinics that didn’t provide them.