Laser Hair Removal : Why We Love Laser Hair Removal

Lasers emit a wavelength of sunshine with a selected single colour. When targeted to the skin, the energy from the sunshine is transferred to the skin and hair pigment melanin. This heats up and damages the encompassing tissue.

But to get rid of hair permanently and to minimise damage to the encompassing tissue, the laser must be targeted to specific cells. These are the follicle stem cells, which sit partially of the hair referred to as the hair bulge.

As the skin surface also contains melanin, which we would like to avoid damaging, people are carefully shaved before treatment.

Will it remove hair permanently?

Laser treatment can either permanently reduce the density of the hair or permanently remove unwanted hair.

Permanent reduction in hair density means some hairs will regrow after one course of therapy and patients will need ongoing laser treatment.

Permanent hair removal means none of the hairs within the treated area will regrow after one course of therapy and no ongoing laser therapy is required .

Whether hair is removed permanently or simply reduced in density is influenced by:

• the colour and thickness of the hairs being treated
• the colour of the patient’s skin
• the type and quality of the laser used, and
• the competence and training of the person operating the laser.

However, if you’ve got grey hairs, which haven’t any melanin pigmentation, currently available lasers don’t work.

How many treatments will I need?

The number of treatments you’ll need depends on your Fitzpatrick skin type. This classifies your skin by colour, its sun sensitivity and its likelihood to tan.

Pale or white skin, burns easily, rarely tans (Fitzpatrick types 1 and 2) People with dark hair can usually achieve permanent hair removal with 4-6 treatments every 4-6 weeks. People with fair hair will generally only achieve permanent hair reduction and after an initial course of treatment may have 6-12 treatments a month apart.

Laser treatment work best within the hands of knowledgeable . Author provided

Light brown skin, sometimes burns, slowly tans to brown (type 3) People with dark hair can usually achieve permanent hair removal with 6-10 treatments every 4-6 weeks. People with fair hair will generally only achieve permanent hair reduction and after an initial course of treatment may require 3-6 repeat treatments a month apart.

Moderate brown to dark brown skin, rarely burns, tans well or to moderate brown (type 4 and 5) People with dark hair can usually achieve permanent hair reduction with 6-10 treatments every 4-6 weeks. Maintenance will usually be required with 3-6 monthly repeat treatments. People with fair hair are unlikely to reply .

Re-treatments must be long enough apart to permit new hair growth to succeed in the extent of the bulge.

What side effects or complications should I remember of?

You will be advised to wear goggles during the treatment to stop eye injury.

You will also experience some pain during treatment, especially the primary few. this is often mainly thanks to not removing all hair within the area to be treated before the procedure. Hairs missed while shaving absorb laser energy and warmth the skin surface. there’s less pain with repeat treatments at regular intervals.

Your skin will feel hot for 15-30 minutes after laser treatment. There could also be redness and swelling for up to 24 hours.

More serious side effects include blisters, an excessive amount of or insufficient skin pigmentation, or permanent scarring.

These generally occur in people with a recent suntan and therefore the laser settings haven’t been adjusted. Alternatively, these side-effects can occur when patients are taking medications that affect their skin’s response to sunlight.

Does the sort of laser matter?

The type of laser not only influences how well it works, it influences your chance of side-effects.

Lasers suitable for hair removal include: long-pulse ruby lasers, long-pulse alexandrite lasers, long pulse diode lasers and long-pulse Nd:YAG lasers.

Intense pulsed light (IPL) devices aren’t laser devices but flash lamps that emits multiple wavebands of sunshine simultaneously. They add an identical thanks to lasers, albeit less effectively and that they are much less likely to permanently remove hair.

To minimize the danger of injury to melanin producing cells on the skin surface, the selection of laser and the way it’s used are often matched to your skin type.

Fair skinned people with dark hair can use an IPL device, an alexandrite laser or a diode laser; people with dark skin and dark hair can use a Nd:YAG or diode laser; and other people with blond or red hair can use a diode laser.

To control the spread of warmth and unwanted tissue damage, short laser pulses are used. The energy of the laser is additionally adjusted: it must be high enough to wreck the bulge cells but not so high to cause discomfort or burns.

 

When to ascertain your GP

Not all excess hair is cause for concern. But severe hirsuitism (excess growth of dark and coarse hair over areas of the body where it ordinarily wouldn’t grow) or hypertrichosis (excess hair growth for someone’s age, sex or race) are often clues to underlying illness.

Hirsutism, especially when related to symptoms including irregular periods or acne, are often caused by extra androgen hormones. Hypertrichosis later in life are often a symbol of malignancy.

Your GP can investigate these.

What to Expect During Laser Hair Removal

Just before the procedure, your hair which will be undergoing treatment are going to be trimmed to a couple of millimeters above the skin surface. Usually topical numbing medicine is applied 20- half-hour before the laser procedure, to assist with the sting of the laser pulses. The laser equipment are going to be adjusted consistent with the colour , thickness, and site of your hair being treated also as your complexion .

Methods

Identification of studies

Original publications were identified through searches in Medline (1990–March 2004) and therefore the refore the Cochrane Library of controlled clinical trials using text words and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) database: ‘laser’, ‘light’, ‘hair’, ‘clinical trial’, ‘lasers/therapeutic use (MeSH)’, ‘light (MeSH)’, ‘hair removal (MeSH)’ and ‘controlled clinical trials (MeSH)’. Moreover, we evaluated cited references from reference lists and lists of contents in Acta Dermato‐Venereologica, Archives of Dermatology, British Journal of Dermatology, Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Journal of the ecu Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, and Lasers in Surgery and Medicine. Included studies were restricted to English‐language articles.

Criteria for including studies

Study design Controlled studies were included whether randomized or not.

Measures of efficacy Objective and subjective measures of hair reduction, i.e. reduction in hair counts, hairiness and patient satisfaction. Objective reduction in hair counts decided by serial, controlled, reproducible hair counts of the treated areas. Subjective reduction in hairiness decided by a subjective overall impression of the hair reduction. Patient satisfaction reflects an overall satisfaction with the treatment outcome. Moreover, side‐effects were evaluated, when reported during a controlled manner. Hair reduction estimated up to six months after treatment was considered as ‘short‐term efficacy’ and beyond 6 months postoperatively as ‘long‐term efficacy’.

Population Both patients and healthy human volunteers were included when the sample size was a minimum of 10 individuals.

Types of intervention Any laser or light was used for epilation: alexandrite laser, diode laser, intense pulsed light , Nd:YAG laser and ruby laser.

Types of comparative intervention No treatment, (ii) traditional treatments like electrolysis, shaving, or waxing, (iii) lasers or light sources different from the experimental intervention.

Evaluation of knowledge quality

Each study was evaluated consistent with study design, randomization and blinded response evaluation. Studies were classified as either randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) or nonrandomized controlled clinical trials (CTs). If no information was given about the randomization method, studies were classified as having unclear randomization.

What is laser ?

The word “laser” is an acronym. Its letters represent light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Lasers therefore produce an intense or “amplified” pulse of sunshine . This pulse results when atoms are stimulated, or excited, by light on the other hand subside into a lower energy state and emit energy. Atoms can remain excited for less than about one-millionth of a second. When atoms return to their normal, non-excited states, they produce photons. Photons are the essential units of sunshine .

Visible light, like sunlight, consists of the many different colors. In contrast, laser light consists of only one pure color.

Light travels in waves. These have peaks and valleys, a bit like the waves of the ocean. Light waves from sunlight or a flashlight scatter in several directions. The wavelengths emitted by a laser don’t. They flow in perfect formation, just like the rows in an amazingly precise marching band. Because waves of laser light move together so precisely, beams of this light are often focused into a remarkably tiny area — one much smaller than a pinhead.

Digital video discs, or DVDs, contain digital messages written by lasers. Those messages are decoded by lasers inside DVD players. A laser at the grocery queue reads the Universal Product Code on your box of cereal. Lasers can weld and shape metal. Lasers play a task in manufacturing most goods, including every major automobile part — from air bags to cloth seats, brakes, clutch and engine. Doctors use lasers in delicate eye surgeries to enhance vision. Bouncing laser light off of the moon can give physicists a particular gauge of the moon’s distance from Earth, to within a couple of centimeters (couple of inches). Today, half the entire income of the us (which is understood because the gross domestic product, or GDP) depends on the lasers utilized in manufacturing and in delivering digital information.

In 2010, scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Lab began a number of the primary experiments using the world’s first X-ray laser (a device that had been unveiled in September 2009). Since the wavelength of X-rays is analogous to the space between atoms, this laser can take snapshots of very rope , like the bonds between atoms in proteins. (Proteins are strings of molecules that fold into complex structures and perform many services, like breaking down the food we eat and using it to create muscles.) an enormous initial goal: using X-ray lasers to review how proteins change form together bond breaks and another forms.

Further out, scientists envision using lasers to assist harness the facility of the sun for carbon-free energy. Scientists expect that subsequent generation of lasers are going to be 10 to 100 times more powerful than those in use today.

 Fitzpatrick skin phototype

The Fitzpatrick skin phototype is a commonly used system to describe a person’s skin type in terms of response to ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure.

Genetic (physical traits)

* The information published here is not intended to take the place of medical advice. Please seek advice from a qualified health care professional.