Hi,

First, I apologize this will be a longer post than average. Second, it is kept long in case some may find it informative. Third, I am looking for help to obtain a natural look on my ARMS & FACE and want to hear your opinions on how these areas will look in near and distant future.

I am a 28 y/old male with skin Type II-III. I've always bothered about my widespread hairiness, and it was the primary reason why I had very low self-confidence during the majority of my life. Except for some part of the lower back, my body was covered with terminal hairs. Around 3 years ago, after experimenting with hair trimming on my arms, I decided to start laser hair removal treatments. I've had so many treatments at different centers and at erratic times that I can't exactly remember most of the treatment dates and specs, however here with the help of "a treatment record" pertaining to my earliest ones, I will try my best to list them below:



RETROSPECTIVE CURRENT MOOD FOR EACH TREATMENT SESSION:

(A) Excellent Satisfaction: (1) (2) (6) (7) (11) (14) (20)
(B) Moderate Satisfaction: (3) (4) (5) (8) (10) (27) (28)
(C) Dissatisfaction: (9) (12) (16) (19) (21) (22) (24) (25) (29)
(D) Extreme dissatisfaction: (17) (18) (23) (26) (30)
(E) Ultra Extreme dissatisfaction: (13) (15)
No judgment yet: (31) (32) (33) (34)

JUDGMENT CRITERIA: First, It is inevitable that my judgments are subjective according to my expectations and same physical results may lead to completely different satisfaction levels for other people. The criteria is, as the correlation between my expectations and the results from my perspective goes on course from strong to weak, my satisfaction levels changes from (A) to (E) including the intermediate steps (B) (C) and (D). The clarification of my expectations and the results from my perspective are as follows:

MY EXPECTATIONS:
Chest -> %50 even reduction
Abs -> %80 even reduction
Upper back and shoulders -> %90 reduction
Upper legs -> %70 reduction
Lower legs -> %50 even reduction
Nape -> %80 reduction
Eyebrows outline -> %80 reduction
Cheeks -> %70 even reduction
Beard -> %50 even reduction
Upper arms -> %80 even reduction
Lower arms -> %50 and %80 even reduction on outer side and inner sides, respectively.

CURRENT RESULTS FROM MY PERSPECTIVE:
Chest -> %80 even reduction
Abs -> %60 even reduction
Upper back and shoulders -> %50 reduction
Upper legs -> %50 reduction
Lower legs -> %60 uneven reduction
Nape -> %80 reduction
Eyebrows outline -> %70 reduction
Cheeks -> %90 uneven reduction
Beard (sides, neck) -> %50 slight uneven reduction
Beard (mustache, goatee, chin) -> %?? very uneven reduction
Upper arms -> %50 even increase
Lower arms -> %60 very uneven and %60 slight uneven reduction on outer side and inner sides, respectively.

Additionally, my one general observation on results is: because (I suspect) I had far far more terminal hairs than the vellus ones, cleared zones only have terminal hairs placed sparsely and not accompanied with vellus hairs (except a very few ones), and this brings an unnatural look without question.

Looking at my results and considering what went through the treatments, I can say there are many factors having impact on permanent results. If I were to make priority list of major factors considering a hair reduction for males rather than a complete removal, it would be:
1. LHR performer's performance
2. Settings used (including laser type)
3. Body's response
4. Treatment schedule, treated person's actions
This is a personal list and I would exclude the beard area from this list's domain, since chance seems to have a very dominant role where the subject is an area filled of very densely and closely spaced coarse hairs.

Getting back to my results and concerns; of all the areas treated, there still remains some regions devoid of hair. I want to restore hair in these regions to match the neighbor regions and know if it is at all possible and again if it is possible at what cost. Now, I have to stop as this post is getting tedious to read at once. I'd be thankful if you can give me some advice and comment on, and be happy to give further details if anyone needs so.

Thanks.

Okay, thanks. I didn't quite follow the retrospective mood part? Could you help me out on that one?

You have listed 34 treatments that you received on several areas and your results certainly exceeded your expectations for most areas. For the patchiness, I don't know how you can "put hair back" on these areas, but you can even them out with electrolysis.

I am not advisng this, but I seem to remember that a poster from a long while back was talking about using Rogaine, but I don't kow what came of it.

Thank you for your detailed post.

Dee

How long has it been since your last treatment on each area? You should give it a good 4-6 months to see what will come in on any one area.

Without settings on the diode and GentleLASE, it's impossible to tell if the settings were high enough to kill the hair.

Overall, it seems like you got a pretty good reduction on all areas given that laser works best on coarse hair and that you didn't have that many treatments on each area. But of course it's hard to tell without exact settings.

It seems that alexandrite and diode was used on you at various points of your treatments.

I couldn't find how to edit previous posts, so I am making here an update for my earlier post on top. It seems, the sessions list, which I uploaded as an image, was cut-off from right side (well, not actually cut-off, but it is bothersome to go the end of the post, scroll right, read, come back, scroll left, come back again, etc.), so I am posting here a link so you can open it in a separate window.



or

http://i37.tinypic.com/2mnktq9.jpg

dfahey:

>Okay, thanks. I didn't quite follow the retrospective mood part? Could you help me out on that one?

Sorry, I accept it is confusing. I wanted to say, I had some positive or negative feelings and judgments right after I came out from a session, 2 weeks later, 2 months later, more later, etc. As I went in for other sessions and my LHR experience progressed, I acquired a comprehensive review and assessments of events combined all together. And so, I came to a conclusion at the end, if a session was helpful or not. That's what I meant by "retrospective current".

>You have listed 34 treatments that you received on several areas and your results certainly exceeded your expectations for most areas. For the patchiness, I don't know how you can "put hair back" on these areas, but you can even them out with electrolysis.

Yes, some results exceeded and some others not. But, I opt not to say for most areas. Area-size wise, yes it is for the most part. But, I am not happy with my arm and beard results at all, and these areas are the ones I gave the most importance. They are like the showcase.

I will think about electrolysis and have some questions about it which I want to ask you at the end of this post. And yes, it can't do anything for patchiness.

>I am not advisng this, but I seem to remember that a poster from a long while back was talking about using Rogaine, but I don't kow what came of it.

I am not sure about this Rogaine. Has it been proven to increase hair growth on body. If it's been, how effective it is? Also, it is not very viable for me to use Rogaine for only the hair free parts and not smudge it to hairy areas. Not to mention I have to dedicate myself into using it for a long time.

About electrolysis:
For LHR, we know that there is a regrowth, which is less coarse and lower in numbers. LHR claims that the hair is destroyed for good, the regrowing one is another hair from the same follicle. Is that the same for Electrolysis? To be more specific, if I see a hair coming out of a pore, and electrolysis kills it, will I see another hair emerging from the same spot. Is electrolysis more effective than LHR? I mean if there is regrowth, is it weaker than the case in LHR?

If I decide to take a plunge into electrolysis, I will have to find an expert to make sure the hairs are will be even. It's not a trivial job. And this expert thing is another story which makes me nervous.

Thanks for your answer and the electrolysis tip.

lagirl:

> How long has it been since your last treatment on each area? You should give it a good 4-6 months to see what will come in on any one area.

I included the treatment date for each session in my list on the first post. There are two "@@@@Long Break@@@@" statements; they mean I didn't have any sessions for an long period of time which is considered much longer than an interval between two LHR sessions. I don't know if this is a wise thing to do at a middle point of ongoing treatments, but I did. However, it has at least one advantage that it gave me a chance to assess the results for me. 1 year is a reasonable time to see permanence or the permanence signs if you ask me. And I gave two 1 year long breaks.

At the end of the second break, you can also see it in the list, I went to a couple of sessions for Upper Back, Upper Arms, Moustache, and some parts of Chin. For the chin, I didn't cover the area completely because I wanted to even out the hairs.

> Without settings on the diode and GentleLASE, it's impossible to tell if the settings were high enough to kill the hair.

At the 1st Center, except the very last few treatments, I had a very good experience and I also obtained treatment records belonging my good experience. Before going to other centers, since I knew which earlier settings were used on me, I told every doctor and technician to use at least 25 J/cm2. Some disputed, some said OK. But I put a lower limit for myself as 20 J/cm2, and I ensured every center at least used this setting. So, I am pretty sure that on my list where the setting is not written down, the setting is at least 20 J/cm2. And it ranges from 20 to 25 J. For the beard area I even convinced them to apply 30 J.

Yes, I have problems with killing hairs on my beard. But, for the other areas the problem is not that they use a low setting, instead sometimes they don't properly overlap. Adding the touch-up effect, this disrupts hair growth cycles differently for each hair, not to mention they accidentally overuse the laser for some areas which turn out to be relatively hairless stand-out regions easily detected by foreign eyes.

>Overall, it seems like you got a pretty good reduction on all areas given that laser works best on coarse hair and that you didn't have that many treatments on each area. But of course it's hard to tell without exact settings.

LHR works pretty well on coarse hair in my experience.

>It seems that alexandrite and diode was used on you at various points of your treatments.

Yes, Alex and Diode were used. To be more specific:

Cnosure Apogee9300 (Alex)
?????? (Diode)
Cynosure Elite (This has two lasers: Alex, Nd/YAG. I wanted them to use Alex, but they might have used Nd/YAG on my beard, I am not sure)
Candela GentleLase (Alex)

Finally, I have to say this: for each session at least 20 J/cm2 were used, and if they properly overlapped I had excellent body response (hair shedding). But, for some regions, which are shoulders, upper back, upper arms and upper legs, I didn't have complete shedding. I suspect these are very androgen sensitive areas for me and whatever setting I use I can never accomplish complete shedding. To sum up; I didn't have any problems with settings except the beard area.

Thanks for your questions which helped me to clarify some issues.

I am planning to post some result photos; unfortunately I couldn't take photos when my treatments were ongoing. But, at least you can see the final results. I am not sure when I can have some time for a shooting job. Maybe in a weeks time.

- Without knowing pulse and spot size settings used, it's impossible to tell whether those were high or low. Those other two factors determine this. 20J on LightSheer with 100ms and 9mm spot size is low. 20J with 12mm spot size and 20ms is not bad, though not very high either.

- Settings cannot be compared across types of lasers. So 20J on alex and 20J on the Yag and 20J on GentleLASE can be completely different, especially since you didn't provide the pulse and spot size setting (spot size is very important on GentleLASE since pulse is stable at 3ms. 20J on 18mm is max and high setting on this machine, but 20J on 10mm is very low).

- Beard is a very hard to treat area. Overlapping and settings make a huge difference in terms of getting an even reduction. Seems like that was a big problem here.

- Yes, laser works best on coarse hair as you experienced.

- Yes, taking a long break in the middle of the treatments makes you have more treatments in the long run overall because the hair becomes unsynchronized again.

- It's hard to answer your question about electrolysis because it's not really the right question to ask. Hair grows in several phases. That's why multiple treatments are needed and that's why you see hair "return". It's not "returning" (unless the settings were too low) - what you see after a good treatment is NEW hair in the NEXT PHASE show up. So with electrolysis you need multiple treatments for the same reason, but each hair can be killed on the first try. Some coarse and deep hairs may take a few zaps. But just realize that you have several phases of hair on the same area. So whatever you see at any one point is only at most 30% of the hair you actually have on that area.

lagirl:

Ok, I don't know exactly what settings were used, but in my previous post I made a point that, except the beard, I had good shedding which leads me to think the settings were enough, I mean not low. And we agree on, once a hair sheds, it is said to have given response to laser. I am not sure here, if we can always say if hair sheds then it is always true that LHR was successful. From my perspective, if the hair sheds then laser was enough, meaning settings were not low. But, it does not mean that laser settings were high. If it was high then it was not a proper treatment. Here, we have to name what a proper treatment is. One can say, the settings should not be high, so the skin does not get burned; it doesn't cause pigmentation, etc. What else?

One conclusion from the paragraph above, my settings were not low. I am not sure about if they were high. I didn't suffer from any side effects, so I conclude they were not high either. Here I am overlooking any unseen effect of high settings: f.e. improper high settings may be destroying the hair, but in the next cycle making the another hair from the same follicle grow stronger. So, if we had lower setting, we would end up with finer hair. Can this be true?

>Yes, taking a long break in the middle of the treatments makes you have more treatments in the long run overall because the hair becomes unsynchronized again.

Can you back up your theory with a published research or a real life case? May long breaks adds up to patchiness since it breaks synchronization?

- If the hair sheds, it was affected. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the settings were high enough to destroy the follicle, not just damage it.

- Search for SSLHR's posts on this forum where he explains synchronization. Basically, when hair is syncronized that means all the visible hair is in the same first growth phase - the phase when it can be killed. You can also get to it by waxing prior to first treatment or prior to first treatment after a long break.