you make a good point dfahey – i’d definitely feel more sorry forsome poor sap like me who has spent probably in excess of $1500 in temporary hair removal products of all descriptions, another $700 on a laser treatment, yet another $1000 on a home laser treatment that could only be described as experimental, and will almost certainly spend at least SOME more (at the very least to remove hair around my tattoos), and possibly quite a bit more, visiting an electrologist?
a hair removal specialist, even if he/she has to abruptly change careers thanks to some miracle technology, is at least making money.
nonetheless, as i’m sure you know quite well, the price of vanity is almost always a high one, and i am willing to pay!
in any event, the point i was really trying to make is the following:
it is understandable that those who know that a technique works, or are happy with what the results that they have accomplished, want to share that good news. it’s also understandable that those same individuals, having heard horror stories from clients, associates, or others in their same boat, want to warn others away from those same frustrating (and sometimes damaging) outcomes.
the problem lies in things like off-hand little jabs against a competing technology, border-line hysterical rants citing worst-case scenarios where there’s no context to warrant that sort of talk, or pre-results dismissal of techniques or technologies that are still new and unknown. this sort of behavior makes what could be a legitimate warning look turf-war-esque and damages the credibility of the sorts of people we SHOULD be listening to on this forum.
it’s too bad, because these same individuals are actually quite helpful when they are helpful. for me, as a consumer with relatively little experience, like many others, i want an expert to trust. an expert who is also more expert in hiding their biases is the kind of person we all are prone to listen to.
i certainly understand the difference between ‘clearing’ and ‘approving’ in common parlance, but i don’t know what sort of technical difference there is between the two with respect to the FDA’s practises. in making this announcement about the tria, i’ve seen news outlets use both terms (possibly in error?). i also hear of drugs being ‘approved’ by the FDA, and i assume that this ‘approval’ isn’t an endorsement, but simply that the drug manufacturer has jumped through some sorts of hoops with respect to testing human safety and demonstrating some kind of evidence that the drug does what it says it will do. i assumed the same was true of medical device manufacturers, but i really don’t understand the process for either one, so if you would explain the difference between an ‘FDA approval’ and an ‘FDA clearance’, i’m sure many could benefit from understanding what these mean. i know i could.
anyway, i don’t really want to generate an intellectual argument about any of this – i was really simply reporting my observations and frustrations as a consumer and a lurker on the board.
let’s talk instead about my first experiences with the tria v2:
can’t say i can really get behind the use of batteries as opposed to AC power. i’m not into this ‘feature’ at all. i can think of about a dozen possible explanations for this engineering decision but i am curious to know the actual explanation.
thanks to the instructions, i realized i’d get about 12 square inches out of a battery charge, when operating the device as recommended by the manufacturer – precious little! so i had my girlfriend shave me a patch at a time on my back, and that’s how we proceeded. i believe we got 3 ‘patches’ done yesterday. the pain varied from non-existent, on areas of sparse hair, to a mild little zap that left a pleasant tingling (quite relaxing!), to some of the teeth-gritting burning pain that was in the ballpark of, but didn’t really rival, my professional laser hair treatment.
i know it sounds masochistic, but knowing that i won’t really have a good idea about the actual outcome before 1-2 years have elapsed, i was sort of hoping for more pain to ‘show me it was working’. irrational, to be sure, but that was my gut reaction. 24 hours later there is little of the itching and redness/swelling that was a hallmark of my lightsheer treatment. again, a bit of a disappointment, but if it works, who cares?
will it work? as always, i’m hopeful, but i can’t say i’m particularly confident. in the instruction book, they talk about a medically-supervised clinical trial where 79 people took 3 treatments 2 weeks apart (6 weeks total) and had hair digitally counted (how the hell is that done?) 3, 6, and 12 months later. next they said there was 33% diminishment 12 months after the completion of the 6 week treatment. that sounds promising, but what does 33% mean? was that the most favorable outcome? the average outcome? that assertion leaves far too much to the imagination. i would really like to see the comprehensive results of that study. i’d be inclined to think they’d say more if the product was really effective…
i am going to go to work on my chest, as well. for this i will take some ‘before’ photographs to help others interested in the tria see what’s going on.
in short:
-little pain (probably to be expected given i was getting half the fluence of what i got with lighsheer)
-too early to see full after-effects (redness/burning/crusty ingrowns)
-don’t expect to see a meaningful ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ from me until march 2010.
