lagirl encouraged me to post my experience with hair removal, including some pictures. So I’ll do that in this thread.
I’m 43 years old, male, caucasian, skin type II I think. Scandinavian, but not blond - I live in Denmark (Copenhagen). I don’t have a lot of body hair, I think it’s fairly average density. But as everyone on this forum probably knows, you can have a desire to get rid of the hair, even though you do not look like a gorilla.
I’ve been shaving most of the body since I was in my early twenties - pubic area, armpits and chest almost all of the time, legs on and off. In mid-2006 I decided that I’d spent enough time with a razor and started looking for a permanent solution.
The overwhelming majority of hair removal clinics here use IPL. Electrolysis is almost non-existing. The clinic I’ve chosen - “Helios Laserclinic” in Hellerup just north of Copenhagen - has both laser (GentleYag) and IPL equipment (Ellipse), but according to them IPL gives the best result. I’m rather indifferent as to what method is used, as long as it gives the result I want.
The IPL device they use is this one: http://www.ellipse.org/Ellipse+I²PL.60.aspx . Ellipse appears to be the preferred machine for hair removal around here; almost all of the clinics I’ve read about use it.
Pictures are available at http://www.hswn.dk/gallery/ - they are in a private area, so you need to login first: Click the (rather tiny!) login icon at the far right, in the grey stripe between the “Søg” (Search) field and the language selection drop-down. Username and password is “hairtell”.
Before starting treatments, I had a consultation with the owner of the clinic, Niels Bukh. He’s an MD - I know this doesn’t automatically qualify him as an expert in hair removal, but his clinic has been around for almost 10 years, and from comments from past clients that I found on the 'Net it seemed like a professional and well-run clinic. I was told that I should expect having 6-8 treatments for a good, permanent result. When I asked for a full brazilian, he told me that I should not expect too great results on the scrotum - it would hurt, and the hairs there are difficult to get rid of. His description of what I could expect from the treatments matched quite well with my expectations from reading this forum and other Internet sites, so all in all this was a good start.
October 10 2006 I had my first treatment: Chest, stomach, pubic (full brazilian), perianal, buttocks. Results were not all that good - very little hair shedding, especially in the pubic area, so I came in for a free extra treatment some 3 weeks later. After that, all of the treated hairs shed after 3-4 weeks.
They were right about the pain involved in having the scrotum zapped - it hurts! I tried using some over-the-counter painkillers, but they didn’t really help a lot, so for the next session I dropped those and just accepted that “yes, this hurts - but it only takes a few minutes”.
Second treatment 10 weeks later, Jan 11. Nice shedding after 3 weeks, completely hair-free - wow! Thrilled by this, I decided to have my legs done as well; I was planning to do them later, but happened to get some extra income and decided I’d rather have them done now. So started with the legs on Feb 26.
Since then I’ve been doing treatments with an interval of 10-14 weeks (March 22nd and June 30th on upper body, May 7th and July 23rd on legs), so I’ve had 4 treatments of the upper body and 3 of the legs. I’m going to the next session on the upper body on Thursday, and will get some new pictures up in 3-4 weeks when the shedding is done.
I am very pleased with the results: At this point I’d say 85% of the hair is gone, and what’s left is much finer and less coarse than what I had initially. I’ve stopped shaving, and thoroughly enjoy not having to do that anymore. There’s also a lot less skin irritation, I didn’t have a lot of ingrown hairs when I shaved, but now there are practically none. And NO STUBBLE, which is just great…
My plan right now is to evaluate the results after 6 treatments, to see if there is any point in having more. Right now, I don’t think I’ll need any more than 6 - but I’ll probably come back for a touch-up after 6-12 months.
Henrik