Guess I should share my experiences.
This will only cover new treaments. For my past treatment on beard area, please search the forum. But I will have to get my beard (front of neck) re-treated as I have about 50% regrowth now, and have to shave it daily again.
Started treatment with a GentleLase at City Laser in Sydney.
Last week had 3 test spots done - 2 at 16J and 1 at 18J. Test spots were on tricep area. Limited pain was felt (turns out this is a bad test area - not indicative of the true treatment)
Friday morning had treatment on full arms and part of underarm (wanted to keep a patch of hair in the underarms). Started at 16J had to go down to 14J. Extremely painful. Treatment should have lasted 15 to 20 minutes - lasted 30 (which sucks because payment is $70 per 5 minutes rather than set price per area - so $420 ouch!)
Friday afternoon I had chest and abs done. Used Emla beforehand, and had treatment at 16J. Any area the cream hadn’t reached full potency at was very painful, the rest was moderate pain. Time went to 16 minutes (because the tech started chatting with the clock going - I’ll have to keep an eye out for that and stop her next time). So I tried to use of the rest of the time until 20 minutes by having her zap my feet/toes and touch up the armpits. Cost $280.
Arms were red and raised but mostly subsided by evening. Chest and abs were a disaster - covered in red spots, raised skin (bumpy like chicken skin) and very tender. This lasted until Sunday (still lots of red dots everywhere - but the skin is no longer sore to the touch)
Interestingly, this tech made a comment which the techs from years ago also made - when geting zapped by the laser, the hair was being violently ejected from my skin - being shot out. When I had my beard treated the technician was actually worried about the hairs hitting the laser and damaging the lens (which I thought was a silly worry - hair can’t break glass). Apparently this tech witnessed the same thing and said it was very rare - she’d only ever seen it happen once or twice before (this was the chatting that cost me an extra $70). Dunno if other people have experienced this or not.
Scheduled for full legs on thursday and buttocks/brazillian on friday.
Am very tempted to switch to a different clinic that uses the Soprano XL to reduce the pain involved (though they don’t do male braz - so I might be stuck with GentleLase for that area)
I’ll update when shedding begins. But today I tweezed 2 hairs, and they definitely didn’t glide out the way a treated hair would (from my past experience), so I’m a little concerned.
I think for the areas of my upper body that weren’t lasered, I’m going to get it waxed (as I have fine hairs everywhere, except perfect smoothness where the laser went, and it looks weird)