Hello all. I have anonomously lurked in these forums for a good while but now I need your help and advice…
I am a 34 year old male, type III, light skin and brown hair, and have had numerous laser treatments (mostly from a long-pulsed alex laser). I am (or was) moderately hairy, with a thick beard. These are the areas I have had treated:
Face-10 treatments so far (alex)
arms-2 (alex), 1 (IPL)
bikini/but-6 (alex), 1 (IPL)
underarms-4 (alex)
legs-1 (IPL)
The clinic I have been going to has been great especially because my technician was so knowledgeable and friendly. If it wasn’t for her throwing in extra areas and being very aggressive with settings, I don’t think I would have stuck with it. Now, however, she doesn’t work there, the company is under new management and they have switched to all IPL procedures. This is often the trend with big chains, unfortunately. The manager is younger than me, not very knowledgeable and is evasive when it comes to pricing and technical questions (and I am sure this is because she really doesn’t know the answers). I gave their new IPL system a try with my legs and arms but was TOTALLY unimpressed. I had less than 10% fallout and everything grew back. I went back for a spot test at more aggressive settings but have yet to see any results. There was absolutely NO reaction at all after treatments. Yes they were very tolerable, but I think the “no pain, no gain” saying is true in this case. When I asked what the settings for my patch test was she said: 30/100, 35/100, and 42/100. ??? when I asked what the numbers were, she said joules over wavelength which made no sense at all.
so now I am looking for new clinics, but I have a couple questions. One of the clinics said they start off all areas on the Candela GentleLase at 16j/18mm. I understand this is basically laser “waxing” which I guess is ok for them to see my reaction. But they also said their upper cutoff was at 20j/18mm. From what I understand about the GentleLase, it is only at the 20j mark that you start to see good/permanent results. Up until this point I have put myself in the hands of my technician and let her do what she thought would be effective, so I never really paid much attention to my settings. I am pretty sure that the last settings on my face however were in the 30’s (I’m thinking 34 or so). It was extremely painful, but now I only have one small hump to get over until I switch to electrolysis. If I now go to a new clinic and they start me all over again at 16j and inch slowly up, will it even be effective??? does hair build up a tolerance. In other words, don’t you have to keep going up in the settings or you won’t see results? Please give me your opinions and advice.
Snailboy
P.S. my chest and abs, most of my bikini except for a few spots, and virtually all of my underarms are GREAT!! just a stray hair here and there
GentleLASe settings you are being quoted are very good and effective. on 18mm, 20 joules is max. They are correct. And 16j on 18mm is very effective. On 15mm, highest is 30 joules, but larger spot size is more important, especially to start. They sound like they know what they’re doing. Too bad for the chain clinic. We do see a lot of posts like that here. Very unfortunate.
p.s. to everyone else who is lurking here regularly and getting results using the provided information: can you please please post your stories when you’re actually getting results, not only when things go wrong and you have questions? I constantly see 10-45 anonymous users indicated on the counter, so there must be a lot of you and we’d love to hear your success stories!!
thank you for your input lagirl. I really appreciate it and feel a little better about this clinic in that case. There are very few clinics where I live so my options are limited. I still have a question though. If my highest settings on my face were 30-35j or so, and I go back down to 16j, will I still see results? At the settings I was at, I figured I only had one or two more treatments max to leave me with just a few sparse hairs. Is it true that hair builds up resistance to treatments? It has been almost a year since I had my face treated. If you leave an area untreated for that long, does resistance if any has accumulated go back to baseline? Also, not sure if you will know this or not because you seem to be a laser expert, but this particular clinic refuses to do male bikini and buttocks areas. There is one girl who is not very experienced who said she might try it (but that worries me a little). So in that case, do many electrologists treat male groin areas including scrotum, perineal areas?
Were you treated with 35j on GentleLASE specifically? If so, they would have had to reduce the spot size to 12mm or lower. And reducing the spot size, makes the joules less powerful basically. It’s a tradeoff. There is a reason why for a decrease in spot size, the max on joules is higher. And no, hair doesn’t get “accumulated” to laser treatments in terms of effectiveness. If the hair has enough pigment and good settings are used to reach it and kill it, then it will work. Keep in mind though that you won’t achieve 100% reduction, especially on your face. Your body will continue to produce at least SOME new hairs as you age.
Some clinics and electrologists choose to not treat this area. It’s just a personal choice of what they are comfortable treating.
honestly, I was very bad about asking what my settings were and what the equipment was. You think after all my treatments I would have paid more attention, but I was basically relying on my technician to bump up settings etc. They switched lasers on me once. But my last treatments to my face were an alex. That’s all I know. Is it different for one alex laser and another. I know that the GentleLase pulsewidth is fixed at 3ms and is variable in other models. Is that right? Is there any way I could tell what they were using? They used a cooling gel and there seemed to be a cool blast of air (not a chilling tip). Also, another clinic I am looking at uses a Lightsheer Diode. How does this compare to what I might have been using? or at least to the GentleLase? More or less effective? other differences?
You can call them and ask what lasers and settings they used on you. Every clinic keeps records of these things for each customer.
Alex lasers are comparable, but settings in joules can only be compared if you’re comparing them at the same pulse and spot size. And most other alex machines don’t go as low as 3ms, Apogee goes down to 5ms for example.
LightSheer is a diode. If all things are even, GentleLASE should be better, i.e given the same expertise of the tech etc. It’s a bit harder to use so I would want someone who has been using the machine for a while if I go that route.
In this case, your GentleLASE clinic sounds good. I would give it a shot first.
I constantly see 10-45 anonymous users indicated on the counter, so there must be a lot of you and we’d love to hear your success stories!!