Hi sslhr!
You wrote about laser hair removal on backs and said “Some are harder than others. Some are completely cleared. Some just get really fine and some are quite challenging.”
My results have been that the hairs on my back have gotten considerably thinner. But I have no actual clearence.
I’m now over six months post last treatment and I wonder: From your experience with clients, do the hairs revert to their original thickness again or do they remain thinn?
Thanx
My results have been that the hairs on my back have gotten considerably thinner. But I have no actual clearence.
I’m now over six months post last treatment and I wonder: From your experience with clients, do the hairs revert to their original thickness again or do they remain thinn?
It is hard to say. A lot depends on what machine and settings used.
First, I meet many people who usually think they have gotten no reduction or clearance yet who, when we have objective proof have actually had quite a bit of clearance. It is tough on the back, since no one has eyes in the back of their head, to tell exactly what they have compared to what they started with. Even photos, unless carefully taken, can be difficult to tell. What I tell people is to imagine you start with a forest and cut down every other tree. What do you have at that point? A forest. A 50% reduction can still look like a lot of hair.
So you may have some reduction and just not notice it.
Second, whether it will grow back thicker than it currently is is an open ended question that can’t be known. My experience is that when we see this, generally if the hair is stable for 6 to 8 months, then that seems to be what you end up with (not counting the occasional hair that was in a longer dormancy cycle). But no one really knows what will happen with these hairs in a couple of years. I’ve seen people with stable hair reduction and removal after 8 or more years, so I am confident that in many cases it will not return. But your mileage may vary.
sslhr, iranianboy used an IPL machine. can’t recall the name. his skin type is around V I believe…please correct me if i’m wrong.
I’m skin type 4 I think, I don’t know exactly…I’m brown from middleast. And the machines used were IPL:s called Medilux and Starlux.
Thankyou for the reply sslhr.
You say that you’ve seen people with stable hair reduction for more than 8 years.
But what about the rest of your clients? How long does the hair removal or hair thinning usually last?
Do you mean that 6-8 months after the last treatment one has passed a “line” and after that the hair reduction will be stable for a couple of years?
I think it would be a good idea if a serious clinic did a follow up study with all of their clients. Then one could see how many had actual hair removal, how many had hairs becomming thinner/finer, or both for that matter, and how long these results lasted. And also if there is a difference between the stability of hair removal and the stability of hairs becomming finer, and also other factors such as sex, age, race etc…
I hope my hairs wont become thick again anytime soon. All that money! And all the mental stress…
Electrolysis and laser are complementary. To state that electrolysis is “your best bet” I think is opinion not well supported by the facts. They both have advantages and disadvantages. And neither is the “better bet.” Let’s look at just the economics of treating a man’s back.
My thoughts exactly! Start with laser, finish with electrolysis is my recommendation if a person has the right skin/hair type.
Electrolysis. Can take between 50 to 100 hours to treat a man’s back (if I am wrong please correct me as I am not an expert on electrolysis). At $50 to $75 per hour (reasonable amounts) you are looking at between $2,500 and $5,500.
And there are places where electrologists charge more. The lowest rate in my area is $80 per hour! I pay $90 per hour for someone I know has the required skills.
Finally, with lasers you generally have a hair free period that on a man’s back can last up to 3 months. That has a value that needs to also be considered.
Getting immediate results is a motivator to continue treatment. For me, I could tell in the first treatment or so if it is going to work well or not on a given area. But that may not apply to everyone. My very first laser treatment on my chest removed 50% of the hair, and it did not grow back, ever! When I got to 90% reduction I switched to electrolysis as the remaining hairs were lighter and finer, and laser does not work so well on those kind of hairs.
I wonder how many people are willing to make the committment of time and money to have their entire back cleared with electrolysis. There are some to be sure, but how many? And BTW, 50-100 hours is an accurate estimate. My electrologist tells me the same thing.
I will say that there are a lot of people out there using lasers that aren’t very effective and don’t really know what they are doing. So it is no wonder that there are a lot of people who report poor results. At the same time, this forum is a place that people with great results don’t frequent. So this is a skewed population.
I tried to make these points earlier and would often get flamed for saying so by those bitter with their poor results. That is understandable I suppose, but I got tired of arguing and typing the same thing over and over! I’ve got better things to do with my time, and that is why I am posting less than before. I’m enjoying the results of my hair removal, despite the claims that “it’s all going to grow back.” On my abs, I have gone 3 years with no laser or electro, and all that is left is the fuzz that was there 2 months post treatment. I check in only periodically just to see what’s going on and giving the naysayers complete dominance. Although LAgirl does a great job providing info to people considering LHR.
I think sslhr is spot on with his comments!
Just because it hasn’t worked for hairybastard, doesn’t mean it won’t work for anyone. And just because it worked for me doesn’t mean it will work for everyone. That’s just the way it is. Life isn’t fair sometimes. I think practitioner skill is very important, and it is not always easy to find a good practitioner. Just like it’s not always easy to find a good doctor. Some laser tech can tell you they have X years experience and that they’re really good, but that doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing.
Also add balius to the list of happy LHR patients! He never posts on here anymore, probably due to all the negativity. Or maybe he has gone on to other things.
RJC2001
When dealing with people, one can never give absolutes. Which is the reason that research is couched in terms that can always be taken more than one way.
When you treat someone and see good results (practically no hair remaining) it doesn’t mean that they will never see more hair grow. Because there are hairs that were dormant during the treatments and will start growing at a later date. And by the way, this is true for electrolysis as well. But the number of hairs that will start growing is small compared to what was there.
My experience is that anyone that has good stable results that last 6-8 months will have those same results years later and there is no reason to believe that that will change. I really can’t think of anyone who had no hair growing in an area and now has all the hair back. They may have some new hairs growing, but those would be few and easily treated with a touchup.
The question you were asking is what happens when someone has poor results where all you see is a reduction in the size of the hair (coarse to fine)? This appears to be due to only partial destruction of the hair follicle. The unanswered question is whether that partial destruction will ever recover. My sense is that if after 6 -8 months, if it is still finer, then it seems to be stable. But no one really knows. And no one knows what will happen 10-20 years out. Though the experience of electrolysis is that it will be stable.
Regarding your thoughts about a study, what you are asking turns out to be more difficult to determine that you can imagine. Trying to determine what makes a failure is difficult since there are so many confounders. Furthermore, to accurately determine what you want requires good photography or accurate hair counts. Things that are difficult to do in a large group of clients over a number of years. These things have been done for small groups, but again, that small number makes the results less than generalizable. Finally, the technology makes a big difference (maybe the most important) and technology is inconsistent over multiple centers and has changed dramatically over the years.
So could it be done. Yes. But given the cost to do it, the lack of controls, the likelihood that it won’t be scientifically rigorous, unless you spend a lot of money, and the fact that those doing laser hair removal aren’t seeing much longterm concerns, I doubt that anyone will make the effort to do your study. As an example of what I mean, the MRFIT (Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial) study was done between 1971 and 1985. Lot’s of results for a study that cost upwards of $250 million. But the bottom line is that the study could not prove what it set out to prove because the study design was not robust enough to overcome confounding issues.
thanks for your posts sslhr and RC2001. I always point this out every time someone starts a bitter argument and just mention names of those who got results so they can search the archives for details. It’s no wonder noone who got results besides me takes the time to post anymore. And considering you’ve done it for years RC2001 and these arguments start every few days now, I completely understand. I’m sure I’ll get tired of it soon too. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I’m adding this thread to my favorites and will be pasting the link in those threads from now on so we don’t have to repeat ourselves over and over again. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Electrolysis. Can take between 50 to 100 hours to treat a man’s back (if I am wrong please correct me as I am not an expert on electrolysis). At $50 to $75 per hour (reasonable amounts) you are looking at between $2,500 and $5,500.
And there are places where electrologists charge more. The lowest rate in my area is $80 per hour! I pay $90 per hour for someone I know has the required skills.
I am very lucky, I guess. The most I have ever paid for electrolysis was 60 dollars an hour. I now pay even less. Since I go in every week religiously, and have a lot of work done, I get a discount and now pay 45 dollars an hour.
Some areas are more expensive than others. Even in the same city, the prices I was quoted for laser hair removal varied by several thousand dollars from place to place. It can pay to shop around.
iranianboy, I would suspect you’re more a type V since you refer to your skin as ‘brown’ and you’re middle eastern. Type IV is still pretty light, just more olive tone. Plus, the fact that you were burned at only 17 joules with a diode leads me to believe that as well. of course, pictures speak louder than words.
Thankyou again for your reply sslhr.
The reason why I ask about the permanence regarding hair that have become finer is that I fear that maybe my hairs will become coarse again and I will have to undergo hair removal treatment again. I got so many negative side effects from my last treatment in february this year.
The settings were to hight and I got blisters, scabbing and ingrowns…I got only a few ingrowns before the last treatment, but after the last treatment when my skin got burned and swelled I got so many! Some of the ingrowns I got right away, on my upper back, just a few days after the treatment when my skin was newly damaged and these became hard aching bumps which now 6,5 moths later are smaller and painless but still there - hard bumps under the skin. The other ingrowns I got at the time of the next regrowth 2 months after the treatment. These are more like inflamed marks with hair in them, they are mostly on my arms but also on my back and legs. Also some weeks ago I got one more of those hard bumps on my upper back. And not only that, I have many hyperpigmented marks on my back and legs from the burns and blisters. They were much darker in the beginning so they have faded, but now it’s like they have stopped becoming better. I got one such mark may of 2005 (1 year and 3-4 months ago) and that one can still be detected although it has improved a lot, so I don’t know how long it will take for the marks to totally resolve - if they ever will.
I also got hypopigmentation from three deep blisters.
The last treatment really messed me up and I couldn’t do my studies because I was so depressed and I didn’t pass the term - I’m now reading the same term again.
Have you seen the kind of ingrowns forming hard bumps under the skin? And if you have, is your experience that they will resolve or will they remain as they are?
So after all that money and mental stress I hope that atleast the hairs wont grow coarse again. If I didn’t get side effects like some people I wouldn’t worry because then I could just buy and undergo another treatment if I thought that the hairs had become to coarse.
Of course I know I will not get hyperpigmentation and hypopigmentation if settings are used that don’t burn my skin.
But even without the burns I hate the ingrowns. I hate the thought of having something insoluble in my skin and the marks and dots they create. And the big inflamed ingrowns that become hard bumps left some hyperpigmentation too.
It’s like a ask and ask just to get a word of hope so that I can feal better. Crazy.
So, now it’s 6,5 months for me. I hope this means my hairs will remain thinner as long as possible. Although when I remember how thick they were before I imagine that my body is good at repairing hair follicles, like it is meant to have extremely coarse hair. But that’s just my thoughts.
Now on my chest I can clearly see that old hairs are shedding (I see them in the washbowl) and new hairs are growing in in their place, short small hairs. So the hairs are completing one hair cycle. Maybe this is the time when I will see if the partially damaged hair follicles have been repaired by the body and the hairs will grow out to be coarse again. Although right now they seem thin and are growing slowly. But maybe it will happen gradually, in two or three hair cycles.
If anyone has experienced their hair becoming finer, please write about your long term outcome. Did it revert? Has it remained fine?
Sorry for nagging about this!
they might become thicker and propably will
you are not the professional he asked and you have absolutely no basis for saying that. have you read this entire thread? it might be a good idea for you to put the bitterness aside and read the professional’s opinion in an unbiased manner once.
hairybastard, I read some of your posts and you write that “the magic lasts a year” or something like that and that the areas you had treated with laser filled with hair again.
But did the hairs grow in just as coarse as before treatments? Didn’t they become finer? It seems unusual.
How long ago did you have your last laser treatment?
Lagirl, I think maybe you’re right about me having type V skin. But in that case maybe a light shade type V.
So do u think this applies to laser induced hair growth cos on the sides of my back i have abnormally long hairs that was caused by the laser and the incompetent tech, which look quite funny. do u think these will eventually grow back to the original, fine vellus hair they once were?
Thankyou again for your reply sslhr.
The reason why I ask about the permanence regarding hair that have become finer is that I fear that maybe my hairs will become coarse again and I will have to undergo hair removal treatment again. I got so many negative side effects from my last treatment in february this year.
The settings were to hight and I got blisters, scabbing and ingrowns…I got only a few ingrowns before the last treatment, but after the last treatment when my skin got burned and swelled I got so many! Some of the ingrowns I got right away, on my upper back, just a few days after the treatment when my skin was newly damaged and these became hard aching bumps which now 6,5 moths later are smaller and painless but still there - hard bumps under the skin. The other ingrowns I got at the time of the next regrowth 2 months after the treatment. These are more like inflamed marks with hair in them, they are mostly on my arms but also on my back and legs. Also some weeks ago I got one more of those hard bumps on my upper back. And not only that, I have many hyperpigmented marks on my back and legs from the burns and blisters. They were much darker in the beginning so they have faded, but now it’s like they have stopped becoming better. I got one such mark may of 2005 (1 year and 3-4 months ago) and that one can still be detected although it has improved a lot, so I don’t know how long it will take for the marks to totally resolve - if they ever will.
I also got hypopigmentation from three deep blisters.
The last treatment really messed me up and I couldn’t do my studies because I was so depressed and I didn’t pass the term - I’m now reading the same term again.
Have you seen the kind of ingrowns forming hard bumps under the skin? And if you have, is your experience that they will resolve or will they remain as they are?
So after all that money and mental stress I hope that atleast the hairs wont grow coarse again. If I didn’t get side effects like some people I wouldn’t worry because then I could just buy and undergo another treatment if I thought that the hairs had become to coarse.
Of course I know I will not get hyperpigmentation and hypopigmentation if settings are used that don’t burn my skin.
But even without the burns I hate the ingrowns. I hate the thought of having something insoluble in my skin and the marks and dots they create. And the big inflamed ingrowns that become hard bumps left some hyperpigmentation too.
It’s like a ask and ask just to get a word of hope so that I can feal better. Crazy.
So, now it’s 6,5 months for me. I hope this means my hairs will remain thinner as long as possible. Although when I remember how thick they were before I imagine that my body is good at repairing hair follicles, like it is meant to have extremely coarse hair. But that’s just my thoughts.
Now on my chest I can clearly see that old hairs are shedding (I see them in the washbowl) and new hairs are growing in in their place, short small hairs. So the hairs are completing one hair cycle. Maybe this is the time when I will see if the partially damaged hair follicles have been repaired by the body and the hairs will grow out to be coarse again. Although right now they seem thin and are growing slowly. But maybe it will happen gradually, in two or three hair cycles.
If anyone has experienced their hair becoming finer, please write about your long term outcome. Did it revert? Has it remained fine?
Sorry for nagging about this!
wow man after hearing all that im turned off by the laser process completely i mean even hair looks better then blisters and skin damage all over…
im still so confused about the subject makes me feel sad since i thought laser was my gateway out but the more i read the more i get sadder…
was your tech inexperienced??? what was the reasons they used such high settings thats scary to me and what color is your hair??skintype
they might become thicker and propably will
hairybastard’s story is very confusing. he used to post questions about what happens to the hair after laser treatments AFTER he apparently got some because somehow he didn’t know himself. here’s a link to a recent thread:
http://www.hairtell.com/ubbthreads/showf…=true#Post33213
then somewhere within a span of a few months, he changed his tune and started laser-bashing and saying that he had $3000 worth of treatments that didn’t work even though he never goes into detail about what happened after he was happy with his treatments.
http://www.hairtell.com/ubbthreads/showf…=true#Post34192
Then there are all these posts defending laser and saying that it’s permanent and worked great for him just in Feb-March of this year:
"02/02/06 10:25 PM
I am living proof laser is permanent. I have not been treated on my back yet but other areas responded very well.
after 2-3 treatment on legs 50% reduction then after more treatments : feet 90% knuckles 85% unibrown 80% My butt is little stuborn Just had 13th treatment and I would say have about 60%-70% reduction but working to get into 80 because I see less hair every time. And it has been more than 4 months and after initial regrowth it stays like that. after 20 treatments on your back you should have “at least” 50% reduction. back is the most stubborn area but still you should see reduction. "
“I am treated by Gentlease plus and can tell you it gives permanent results. My doctor said that it’s easy to get rid of first 50% of the hair on any area it’s the other 50% that is a challange. I dont lie. Ive seen results I am a guy 21 years old so no it’s not an age thing. you can’t say that Lasers in general are bad and electrolisys is great. In my opinion both work great. Laser to reduce the hair and get rid of as much as possible and then electrolysis to finish completely.”
this is from march on electrolysis forum:
"hi
I am close to finish reducing hair with laser in the places I wanted to only reduce hair( legs, arms upper arms)
When I am done I want to get on with electrolysis and do my back and shoulders. the hair is very thin and light but enough to make me not wanting to take off my top. If I commit to 2 hours a week. how long would it take to finish the job? shoudl I try 4 hours a week?
thx "
I would say hairybastard (who said he is 21 years old, so he is still GROWING hair) should have taken before and after pictures. Maybe he could post his entire story in one post to clear things up. It sounds like he had a few treatments with laser, saw results, and decided to finish with electrolysis. also sounds that like many he got used to having less hair and stopped noticing the difference because as sslhr said, it’s hard to tell how much you started with if you don’t take pictures as people get used to less hair very fast and conveniently forget. Also, he’s not accounting for the fact that he’s in the prime hair growth phase where a lot of follicles are getting activated due to his age. Did you ever start elecrolysis? How many treatments did you have with laser and/or electrolysis? What makes you believe that laser doesn’t work? do you have pictures?
Reno, iranionboy’s experience is not typical. he lives in Sweden and doesn’t have access to the best laser for his skin type (V) which is a YAG. So he had to use IPL and diode machines and not by the very knowledgeable people. It’s up to you what you decide to do. Noone here gains anything from convincing you to go one way or the other. You should try to be objective though and educate yourself on laser so you can see experiences and posts for what they are.
Hi Reno.
Most of my side effects were due to very bad practitioners that actually didn’t know anything about ethnic skin and skin overall it seems. At one of the places they shaved me so bad I have small pale scars on my chest and upper back, these are not obvius at all but it shows how bad the practitoners were…even their shave gave me side effects. When I shave myself I never got such mechanic damage.
Also I got burned because of bad practitioners, or should I say fucked up practitioners. I told them that it felt like they burned my skin and they just said “It’s supposed to feel like this. You can handle this. You’ll be okay.” etc…and some other side effects could have been prevented or maybe minimized with good skin care, but I never got any kind of edvice about anything from the practitioners. And I was just an ordinary boy who never cared about skin care and stuff.
If I would have started treatments with the things I’ve learned through this site and my own research I would have used a exfoliant body lotion with BHA (2%) or AHA (10-15%) and moisterizing body lotion on a regular basis between treatments to minimize ingrowns. There is a lot of things I would have done different. I would have gone the a dermatologists when I saw the first signs of side effects to know how I can prevent and treat it best.
My skin type is V (I believe) and my hair was black and coarse.
Just see to it that you don’t get burned and take good care of the skin beeing treated.
I disagree; I’ve had pretty good results on my shoulder and abs. I still have a few treatments left, but I CERTAINLY have seen major reduction. Look, no one says you’ll have 100% success at removal l100% of your hair, but this laser hair removal process clearly works at significantly reducing hair. If I had time to post pics, I would…
interesting post
Since my “name” came up here I wish to clear couple of things before LAgirl starts to be delusional about laser again. First I had a laser done by very reputable MD who uses Gentlease plus so I will take that bullet out of your gun that there was some inexperience or tech was using low jules, same story you keep telling these poor souls on this and other forums. I was treated staring from 18 joules up to 30. I had 10-12 treatments. On my legs I wanted reduction so I decided to do 2-3 treatments. My butt was lasered 10+ times. Then were my uper arms I think 6 my shoulders 3 or something like that. The more treatments I was geting the more discuraged Ive become. IT IS WAY OVERPRICED FOR WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU PERIOD. and they take adventage of this answering the questions about permanency in the way that after all is said and done you still won’t know the answer.
I think laser is good for reduction if you have a dark hair in places like legs butt lower arms (maybe chest but I havent tried that). but you have to get at least 7+ treatments. My legs are somehow reduced but not like I would want them to be. But I had only two treatments and then one more. I was kinda worry about patchiness but from my experience no metter how many treatments you’ll get you will still get regrowth pretty much all over but hair will come back much lighter and thiner. My upper arms and shoulders are a diffren story. It did stimulate the hair there to become longer and thicker. So after 3-4 treatment I stopped.
So to sum all this up. Laser is somewhat permanent where it comes to reducing hair be it by number or thickness but it does it well in some places. Do I think it was a waste of money? YES.
but I think I will come back and get more treatments on my legs and lower arms to reduce it greatly. But only on these places.I know hair will come back but it will be lighter and thinner and will stay that way probably.
Now after being dissapointed with laser I turned to less comercialized and bashed by so many infamous electrolisys. I did some work on myself and results tell me that Electrolysis works way better than laser when it comes to giving you that nice natural hair free skin. It is able to leave you with peach fuzz hair and eliminate darker and longer hair regardles of age skin collor and body part. Electrolysis is a holy grail when it comes to this yet it’s pushed aside.
Bottom line is Laser in 90% of times won’t give you what you would like to receive. What it will do is leave you little poorer and wondering what else is there that will eliminate that problem.
Now Lagirl Ive been reading you replies all over the internet. I know you got good results but you treated places that almost always yield good results yet you had to finish with electrolysis anyway. You aslo seem to be delusional about patchiness of males beard when treated by laser blaming operator rather than laser. Than you dig up some posts that people went to better places and their patchiness was solved.(was it one person or two?) Ive seen guys getting 10+ treatments and patchiness stays there nomether what.
So stop acting like you know everything about lasers because you had some treatments and had some good results. Look at the post check those boards listen to these unsatisfied people and stop seeing only what you want to see and get your facts straight.
I am not saying laser doesn’t work I am saying Laser is a money sponge that is well comercialized and won’t give you what it shows on these pretty pictures they advertise this with.
My english is not perfect so sorry for any mistakes.