Yes, if you looked at the studies you will find that lasers can induce growth in certain areas (upper arms in particular). Hence why I won’t ever let anyone touch me with a laser on those areas. I’m surprised your laser center even treated that area on you when you didn’t even have much hair there to begin with.
What kind of success did you have? Approximately how much reduction?
Nowadays, almost everyone owns a camera. And for taking general snapshots those cameras are fine. And occasionally they can take a great picture. But on average, they will not take great pictures. If you want consistently great pictures you need to use a great camera with great lenses and accessories. Technology is important.
Now anyone can buy a great camera and shoot photos with it. And occasionally they may have a great photo. But it takes more than technology to be consistently good. To be a great photographer requires technique, knowledge, and experience in addition to technology. This is why a great camera in someone’s hands doesn’t make them an Annie Liebowitz or an Ansel Adams.
The same is true for laser hair removal (and I would guess for electrolysis). Anyone can buy a laser and start doing laser hair removal. And they will have people with good results. But they will also have people with poor results. Most of the poor results we hear about are due to this lack of experience and knowledge in combination with poor equipment. And by the way, this is also true for the people doing the research. Most of them don’t really know what they are doing and just doing a study to get published.
I consider a 75% reduction to be poor and not acceptable.
And by the way, this is also true for the people doing the research. Most of them don’t really know what they are doing -sslhr
I would have to say that this is one of the most silly things i have ever seen posted on this board. Most of the people published in journals are people that have worked long and hard for what they have. They first have to get the position, usually competing with other PhD’s or MD’s, then they have to get the lab space from the institution, then they have to the work approved to proceed to begin with, then they have to get graduate students who are going to use the study for their degree earning as well, then they have to design the experiments, then they have to present it at conferences where they are judged by experts in their fields, then they need to submit it to a journal for print. After all this, they will find that their hard work is just one of many studies trying to get even a small few pages. The publications have the choice of the very best studies, conducted by the biggest grant -givers, by the biggest academic and corporate institutions, and to the best go the spoils. The publication’s reputation hinges on what they include each month in their pages, and the institutions build their reputations by conducting research that counts and matters. It’s serious business. These people know exactly what they are doing. It’s people like these that developed the very tool you use to earn your bread and butter.
I can honestly say, anyone that could even breathe the quote which you have made stated above, has no real knowledge of hardcore science. Again and again, you have made scientific mistatements. Do your laser business if that’s the one thing you can do, but don’t pass judgement on a community that makes the world better.
Mantaray
Mantaray, you sound naive. Almost 100% of the studies available on LHR are sponsored by laser manufacturers, i.e. they pay these PhDs etc to produce (positive) results (I would bet they’re a certain type who are looking to make some easy money quickly and to get published in exchange for support of a particular product). Someone has to pay for all of what you are talking about and hair removal is not top priority for grant distribution with things like AIDS and cancer to cure.
Obviously written by someone who knows nothing about the academic publishing world. Especially the one populated in cosmetic fields.
I purposely chose not to go that route. I could have easily. And occasionally I have been invited to speak at a conference though I haven’t for many years. It is not because I couldn’t, it is because I haven’t wanted to get into that rigamarole.
In a previous life, I was Treasurer and on the board of directors of ISPOR (The international Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research) back in 1995-98 timeframe. Not only did I publish articles but I also dealt with publishers and researchers. It is a very different world than your utopia.
Finally, in 2001 I purchased a microwave device to test it to see if it could actually remove white and blond hair. I spent $50K buying the device. It was the only way to really test it. You can’t trust what you hear, you have to own it and use. It turned out that it didn’t work. But what is relevant is that the owner of the company selling the microwave told me that a well known “researcher” demanded $2,000 to promote the system. In other words, for an upfront payment of $2,000 this individual was ready to speak about how well the unit worked.
Obviously written by someone who knows nothing about the academic publishing world.
And, obviously completely incorrect on your part. Completely incorrect. I’m published as co-author on many papers. Including a paper published in Nature. I was first published, twice, as an undergraduate on Differential Detection Systems of Cysticircosis, and on Free Radical Generation Induced by Commercial Food Pigments. And that was just as an undergraduate, post-graduate I have been published as co-author, co-researcher, supporting laboratory staff, in more than a few publications in the field of opiates, synthetic opiate analogues, effective approaches to analgesia pre-treatment, etc. Things much, much more advanced that what you do for a living my friend.
I especially love the way you insubstantially attempt to rebuff my statements. What I said is absolute truth: someone who understood the publishing process would never say or utter that statement. This is correct, and you do not understand it.
It does not surprise me one iota that someone like you would spend $50,000 on a quack machine like a microwave hair remover. I’m just curious, for $50, 000 dollars did it at least have a kitchen timer built into it? How could you possibly, POSSIBLY, think that anything like that could ever be successful? I mean, what ever lead you to that conclusion? What proof? What hard science? My words get more substantiated with every response.
Being a Treasurer for three years means nothing in the hard science world. I’ve designed successful experiments that involve equipment that you will probably never even see in your lifetime. You have trouble understanding why microwaves can’t successfully remove hair? -I’ve dismantled and customized Mass Spectrometers, Liquid Chromatography systems, Technicon Systems, etc. and designed experiments around using these systems for what needed to be studied to find out what my co-researchers and I needed to know. As well as using basic instruments, like ultra-speed centrifuges and basic techniques like polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (yawn) flouro-luminescence binding patterns to study protein breakdown.
I seriously think that your bitter attitude towards progressive medical research doesn’t stem so much from clarity, but just from the simple fact that you really just don’t know what you are talking about.
Mantaray
Again your post here is full of insults. And it is interesting that you seem unable to respond to any criticism without a personal insult. Oh come on. I’ll put my degrees and schools up against yours any day. I’m not anonymous, you are. Why don’t you publish your CV? I will also.
As far as research and publication, LA girl said it best. You are naive if you believe what you are saying. This would be like saying that people who run for legislative office do it out of an unselfish desire to better the community and the nation. The days of “Mr Smith goes to Washington,” if they ever existed, are over.
And the same is true for scientific research. And if you read my quote I was specifically speaking about the cosmetic world. But it is still true everywhere. 1) People have egos. 2) People want recognition. 3) People want to be right 4) There’s money involved. 5) And in an academic setting it is often Publish or Perish. You put all that together and you don’t get the utopia you are suggesting. There is good research out there. But there is also bad research. And there are vendettas among researchers (read any biography about a scientist). And often it is who you are or who you know that gets you published. And things are often “fudged” to get published. And then there is politics.
By the way, my original comment was that people who publish articles about laser hair removal don’t always know what they are talking about. And as an example, look at the article published by the Wellman group about how a very long pulsewidth (100+ms) would be better. Something they publicly admitted was wrong several years later.
And as far as the microwave device. There were publish articles about it. Go look it up. And there were people who publish articles in journals talking about it. And it does remove hair, in fact there is histology showing it works. And there is a viable mechanism to explain how it works. And there was no way, short of buying a machine to find out just how true all these reports really were.
It takes more than one or two treatments to tell if something works or doesn’t and it takes a substantial number of clients. You can’t do it borrowing the machine for one weekend. I didn’t like spending $50K on the machine. But it was what I had to do if I really wanted to offer clients the best possible hair removal. I couldn’t ignore a potential technology that could have radically changed the industry. It was the cost of doing business.
And as far as the results. It did remove hair to some limited effect. Though the risks of burning was far greater than the ability to remove hair. So it ended up not being a viable approach.
I agree here. Insults in response to a rational logical discussion make you sound like you’re not convinced of your own argument.