I've done laser and IPL sessions pretty much every winter for the last 5-6 years and I still get near total regrowth. Maybe the hair is finer, but I can't say for sure. I had my hormones tested a couple of years back and everything was normal. Any ideas what it going on?

Some more info: I am male with fair skin and dark hair. I usually do appx 5 treatments over my whole body during winter. Each treatment is appx 4-6 wks apart. I get complete shedding with each treatment.

Five to six years of treatment, huh? Maybe you already have the answer?

You only received treatments during winter period (which is 3 months out of a year) for 5 winter seasons? Then, technically you were not receiving 6 years of treatments but a total of 18 months of treatments. It normally takes 8-12 ongoing treatments over 18-20 months to see results. It's hard to tell if you were missing complete hair cycles or if you would still cover all hair cycles by now?

IPL is known to be a bad modality and who knows what type of laser and whether proper energy settings were used. At this point you can accept it as fact tat what you have been doing will not give you results you want. Can you post photos of your full regrowth? The safest answer would be for you to transition to electrolysis.

Each winter would get appx 5 sessions, so it's probably a little more than you suggest, but your point is well taken. I was wondering if taking a break during summer was allowing weakened hair follicles to regrow.

I guess I'm confused because I get great clearing each treatment, so I thought that I was doing permanent damage to the follicle. Is it likely that because of genetics my body just continues to grow new hair follicles?

I will post pictures later.

I did 12 sessions over 13 months with a Lightsheer diode laser. The results long term, were zero reduction and that is with a machine that supposedly has a good reputation, and ideal skin/hair color.IPL, ( any form of IPL) has no permanent effect. case after case have demonstrated this. The IPL lack sufficient energy to penetrate to the hair root. Alexandrite or YAG laters can yield some permanent reduction, but IPL will always be no reduction over long term.

I would seriously heed Fenix's suggestion to move to electrolysis, and also point out that fenix is probably the closest we have here at hairtell to a laser/IPL expertise, and he would not recommend such lightly .

Unlike electrolysis, Laser-IPL only works on Anagen-growth stage because it's the only stage where hair is dark enough for light energy to be absorbed by the hair pigment. If you only did sessions in winter seasons, you could have been missing a lot of the anagen cycled hairs that grew in say in fall, spring, summer, but no one will be able to tell you 100%. The laser technicians should have explained this to you about hair cycles.
If you start electrolysis and only get treatments 3 months out of calendar year, don't expect to get fast results either. You have to keep on a consistent schedule to finish faster.