Once you start growing body hair, you’re pretty much either stuck in an endless cycle of fighting it and trying to stop it growing back or you’re sat there being hairy. If you’re the former, it’s likely that you’ve tried at least one or two of the at home hair removal methods that are out there. Things like tweezers, threading, waxing or shaving are good and they all do the job they’re intended to do, but they all have the same fatal flaw. The results just aren’t permanent, and no matter how many times you sit and shave, the hair is always going to grow back again.
Don’t be disheartened though, just because the at home methods will leave your hair growing back again, there are clinic based treatments that you can have to get rid of your unwanted body hair. One of these is laser hair removal, but just how effective is it?
How effective are traditional hair removal methods?
Starting with the most time consuming, tweezing. Tweezing is a really simple and age old tactic when it comes to hair removal, but it comes with one major downside. You pretty much need to pluck every hair individually and, given the amount of hair that you’re trying to remove (depending on where on your body you’re plucking), you’re going to find that by the time you’ve finished it’s already started to grow back again.
Threading is the next step up on tweezing, but it’s still time consuming in comparison to the other methods. The threading process is really quite simple, a thin piece of thread is doubled over and twisted before being rolled over the areas of unwanted hair, snagging them and plucking the hair out at a follicle level. This speeds up the tweezing process as it allows you pull out short rows of hair in a single go, but you still need to keep going back again and again to achieve your desired results.
Shaving speeds up the hair removal process to no end, but still has it’s downsides. The most obvious issue, aside from the fact that it isn’t permanent, is that you’re using a sharp blade to remove the hair which comes with risks in itself such as little cuts and nicks to your skin. The positive though is that it’s quick and easy to do so, even though it needs to be done every few days, so you can speed through getting rid of your unwanted hair.
Waxing is even more effective than shaving at removing hair, but it’s more painful. Instead of cutting the hairs at a surface level, waxing snatches the hair directly at the root and rips it from the skin (which is where the pain comes into effect). It’s also really itchy during the regrowth phase as the hair needs to push back through the skin, but it does take longer to get back to this stage after having the hair removed.
While all of the more traditional hair removal methods are good at what they do and will remove the hair, they all have the same end flaw. They’re also more situational and while threading is good at removing hair from the face and defining the shape of the eyebrows, it wouldn’t work for the legs as there is a lot more hair so waxing or shaving would be more appropriate.
How effective is laser hair removal?
Laser hair removal on the other hand is much more advanced than these treatments, but even still it’s not perfect at what it does. The good aspect of it is that it is capable of removing up to 90% of your unwanted body hair from almost anywhere on your body, but the big downside is that it’s going to take 6 treatments to do so and these need to be spread about 6 weeks apart to give the hair chance to get through its growth cycles.
Before a laser hair removal session, the first step is to shave the area to be treated so that the hair is still showing but is much shorter. This gives the laser hair removal machine something to work with as it needs to be able to see the hair to trigger a reaction within the follicle itself.
Once the treatment starts, the handheld laser device is used to emit light at a wavelength that won’t cause any damage to the skin, but is proven to be able to be absorbed by the pigment within the hair follicles themselves. Once the light reaches the follicle, it triggers a reaction which converts it into heat energy, effectively destroying the hair follicle from the inside out and stopping it from being able to grow or produce new hairs. This sounds simple, easy and like it would get rid of all unwanted hair in one fast move, but the reason why multiple treatments are required is that the laser hair removal device only works effectively on hair that is in it’s growth phase. By spacing the treatments out and repeating them over a course, it allows you to increase the chances of catching as much hair as possible in its growth phase, allowing you to effectively remove up to 90% of the unwanted hair in the treated area.
What happens after a laser hair removal treatment?
After treatment there’s no downtime and you shouldn’t feel any pain, so you’ll be able to go back to your regular day to day life, the only thing you really need to do is try to avoid any intense sunlight where possible as your skin will be a little bit sensitive to UV light for a week or two after a laser hair removal treatment. It’s also possible that you may experience some form of shedding as the hair in the now dead follicles will begin to fall out, this is completely normal and doesn’t need to be a cause for concern.
To find out more about laser hair removal or how it can stop you needing to book costly waxing appointments at the salon, contact us today on 0800 772 0039 or simply just click here.