If you're tired of trying to deal with unwanted hair and want a more permanent solution, it's time to look into laser hair removal. The Soprano laser is the most effective and comfortable option out there. It gives superior results, and we'd like to explain to you just how successful it is and what you need to know before you come for your first session.
How Successful Is Laser Hair Removal? 16 Things to Know
1. The Way It Works Is Key to Its Success
When you shave, wax, pluck, epilate, or remove hair by any other method, it eventually comes back. That's because these methods only attack the hair itself, leaving the root of the issue--the hair follicle--untouched.
Laser hair treatments are completely different. They use the hairs themselves as means to an end. The light from the laser generates heat that travels down the hair and ends at the follicle. That heat disables the follicle so it can't keep growing hair.
2. Lasers Are More Effective Than IPL
Intense pulsed light, or IPL, is another option for hair removal, but lasers are more successful. Both of them work on the same general principle. They both use light to generate heat, and that heat is designed to destroy the hair follicle. The difference is in the type of light they use. Lasers use a far more intense wavelength, which more efficiently targets the hairs and generates more follicle-destroying heat.
The light used by lasers is also safer and can be used on people with a wider variety of skin tones and hair colors. That's because the light from the IPL is broader and more likely to be "lost" along the way. It can more easily hit the skin instead of the target hairs, and that means there's a greater risk of burns. It also takes more treatments to get the same effect with IPL, even when it can be safely used.
3. Hair Grows in Stages
Our hair grows in cycles, and it's important to know that laser hair removal can only de-activate follicles that are in the active growth cycle. In the active phase, known as the anagen phase, the hair grows around an inch a month, though this varies from person to person. This stage can last anywhere from a few weeks to a few years depending on which part of the body you're talking about.
After this phase, hair goes into a transitional catagen phase that lasts about 10 days, then into the telogen phase where it rests for a few weeks to up to three months. Hairs are constantly cycling in and out of these stages, with the hair on our heads staying in the active growth cycle the longest, which is why the hair on our heads grows so much longer than in other areas of the body.
4. You'll Need Multiple Treatments
Because hairs go in and out of the growth cycles, everyone needs multiple treatments to get rid of all the unwanted hair in a given place. Your first treatment will only disable the follicles in the anagen phase. Those in the catagen and telogen phases will be unharmed. Over the course of the next few weeks to a month, the hairs in dormant stages will return to anagen, and then a new treatment session will disable those hairs.
At any one treatment, you can expect to destroy, at most, 80% of the hair follicles in the treatment area, and the initial treatment may only get around 25%. When you return for your next treatment, you'll get more of the remaining hairs, and the rate of reduction improves with each treatment. After each treatment, you'll see fewer and fewer hairs return until you reach your goal. For most people, six to eight treatments is the ideal number. If your goal is simply to thin the area, just one or two treatments may be all you need.
5. Maintenance Is Generally Easy
Once you've gotten the results you're looking for, you may only need a maintenance treatment once or twice a year to maintain them. If the follicles do start growing hair again, the new hair will grow in more slowly and be lighter and thinner.
6. Your Hormones Are at Play in Hair Growth
Why should you need any maintenance treatments at all? The answer is down to hormones more than anything else. Our hormones have a lot to do with hair growth, and they may eventually re-activate hair follicles or cause new hair growth in areas where it hadn't appeared before.
That said, laser hair removal is still very effective. It disables hair follicles far more efficiently than any other method of hair removal, and those follicles stay disabled for extended periods. Some will be permanently disabled!
7. With the Right Laser, Skin Color No Longer Matters
In the past, laser treatments and IPL hair removal couldn't be used on those with darker skin or on lighter skin that had been tanned by the sun, in a tanning bed, or even by cream. This isn't an issue with the Soprano laser we use at Persona Medical Spa. This state-of-the-art laser is the most advanced solution available. It combines multiple wavelengths and laser technologies, so it can work on darker skin tones and on tanned skin.
8. With the Right Laser, Hair Color Is Less Important
The early laser and IPL technologies could only deal with the darkest hair colors. That's because their light wavelengths could only "find" the very dark melanin in black and dark brown hair, and they did this best when the hair was thick. The Soprano laser is much more efficient and can provide a solution for even light-colored, thinner hair.
9. With the Right Laser, Treatment Can Be Painless
Older laser technologies had a reputation for providing a painful treatment. Many people used laser hair removal anyway simply because of the benefits, but it was always something to be endured. Each "zap" felt like someone was hitting your face from a distance with a taut rubber band! The modern Soprano laser isn't anything like this.
We use this laser in part because it does provide such a comfortable treatment. It's equipped with a simultaneous cooling technology that keeps the skin cool the whole time the device is working. The cool sapphire tip increases your comfort, and we can also give you a numbing cream.
10. Treatments Are Faster Than Ever
The laser we use is designed to speed up your treatments so you can be back to life as quickly as possible. The large spot applicator lets us treat larger areas more quickly. In fact, this laser works in half the time of previous generations of laser treatments.
At the same time, the laser also comes with a special "facial tip" that allows us to spot-target much smaller areas very effectively. There are other applicators, too, so there's something for every part of the body.
11. There's Almost Nowhere You Can't Treat
As a general rule of thumb, if there's hair, we can treat it. We're able to remove hair from obvious areas, like the legs, back, and arms, but also from the face, nose, bikini area, stomach, and more. Just about the only place where you can't have hair removed with laser hair treatments is right around the eyes.
12. Laser Treatments Are for Men and Women
Historically, women have tended to seek hair removal more often than men, but that dynamic has been changing in recent years. For women, the most common areas to have treated are the underarms, face, and legs.
For men, it's common to seek hair removal from the back and chest, but hair reduction on the face is also a great option. If you struggle with a thick beard that is a pain to shave and constantly causes razor burn, just one or two laser treatments can thin out your beard.
13. You Don't Need to Plan for a Lot of Aftercare
There's no need to take days off from work or worry about looking red and irritated after a laser treatment. There are few if any side-effects with the sophisticated Soprano laser.
All you really need to do is to avoid direct exposure to the sun and extreme heat (such as from a sauna) for the first 24 hours after your treatment. After that, just be sure to use sunblock when you go outside. We'll tell you more when you come to speak with us!
14. You Can't Do This at Home
There are IPL at-home devices on the market, but there are no laser treatment devices that are anything like the Soprano. Nothing you can get for at-home use will be at all similar in terms of effectiveness. It will take far more treatments to get results, and those results won't last as long.
In fact, while it may seem you're saving money by getting an at-home device, you probably won't in the end. Just the extra time spent treating yourself, plus the cost of replacement heads, can cost far more than you might think.
15. It's far Better Than Waxing or Epilating
Waxing and epilating are much more efficient than shaving because they remove the entire hair rather than just the part that appears above the skin. This means it takes a lot longer to see new hair again: depending on the person and the type of hair, it can be weeks before hair is long enough to treat again.
But these methods don't actually damage the hair follicle, so hair will continue to grow back. Even worse, you have to allow the hair to grow to a certain length for these treatments to work. This means you'll have obvious unwanted hair for a while before you can get it removed. With laser treatments, the effects last much, much longer (for months and years rather than days and weeks) and you can shave right before your treatment.
16. The Laser Needs a Target
You can shave right before your laser hair removal treatment, but you can't wax, pluck, or epilate. That's because the laser needs a target to actually reach the follicle! The laser light uses the pigment found in the hair itself to find the follicle, so removing the hair entirely will make it impossible for the laser to do its job.
While you don't have to allow your hair to grow an inch beyond the surface in order to "grab" it as you do with waxing, you should avoid any hair removal method other than shaving for a few weeks before your treatment.
Be Hair-Free Today!
You don't have to live with unwanted hair or spend all your time getting rid of it over and over again. With laser treatments, you can be hair-free faster and for longer than with any other method.