If you have an extra $300 to $500 sitting around the house and hate to shave your legs, consider buying a laser hair removal kit for use at home. While the price might seem steep, it’s far more inexpensive in both time and cash to having the treatment done in a doctor’s or trained esthetician’s office. Just one visit to either of those suppliers of laser hair removal services can cost you a cool $100 to $150 dollars. When you consider it takes as many as six treatments to remove hair from one location, the price starts to make budgetary sense.
Hair growth stages
Many people not initiated to the process of removing hair, believe that one treatment should take care of their small patch of unwanted hair but soon find out this isn’t true. Hairy areas become hairy again even after a laser treatment. That’s because not all the hair grows at the same time. Whether the hair is on your head, your legs or that annoying shelf above your lip, it has three growth phases. Not all hairs are in the same growth stage at the same time. The phases are anagen – the growing phase, catagen – the phase where hair ceases growth and gets ready to shed and telogen – the final phase, where the papilla or hair root is under the skin but there is no shaft attached.
Laser hair removal occurs primarily in the anagen stage. The laser targets the pigmentation or melanin of the hair and then destroys the papilla, the root, so it won’t grow again. Once the hair reaches either the catagen phase or telogen phase, laser treatment is not effective at zapping the root. Since all hairs aren’t at the same stage at all times, it’s virtually impossible to kill the root for every hair in just one visit to the doctor or through one use of a laser hair removal product at home. It takes many treatments, so the at home version becomes quite a cost saver.
Darker skin can burn
Home laser hair removal isn’t for everyone or every patch of hair. Since the laser attacks melanin, the substance that gives color to the hair, people with more melanin in their skin put themselves at risk if they use it. Those with light tones such as white, ivory, beige or light brown have limited worry about the potential of scarring, blistering and burning that can occur on darker toned skin.
If you have white, gray, red or blond hair, you might not see good results compared to those with dark hair. Since laser treatments, whether they’re for at home use or in the office of a professional, target the pigmentation of a hair for successfully destroying the hair, there’s simply not enough pigmentation with these colors of hair, for the treatment to work well.
At home, laser hair removal treatment equipment also has a shelf life. Many of the models only recharge so many times before they no longer work. Others have a cartridge you replace when you’ve maxed it out. Of course, that replacement comes with a price too. If you’re looking for a model that lasts the longest, compare the numbers of the working life of the treatment before you purchase one.
Most products for laser hair removal at home recommend you don’t use it above the neck for fear of scarring.
FDA approval
The FDA has cleared some models for home use.
The Tria is a diode cordless rechargeable laser for use on hair from the neck down. It has a skin sensor included that tests your skin for pigmentation and potential burning. If you get a green light on the test, it allows the laser to unlock so you can use it.
Another model cleared by the FDA is the Silk’n. It uses pulsing light but is not a laser; however, it works in a similar manner. Again, the hair remover is just for use from the neck down and has a sensor light built in to let you know if your skin tone is in the safety zone so it won’t burn.
A more inexpensive version of the Tria, a diode cordless rechargeable laser hair remover, is the Epila. The Epila doesn’t have the FDA seal of approval and does say you can use it on the face. However, it is necessary to use the lower settings of the Epila for these treatments. The length of time per treatment is longer since the area the Epila treats is smaller. Again, there are warnings for those with darker skin.
Some of the treatments work well, particularly at the discounted price, but require painstaking hours of your time making certain you laser every area. Because of a narrower sweep, doing a small area takes considerable time. However, when you consider the length of time getting to an appointment for professional treatments, waiting for the appointment, having the treatment and getting home or back to work, it puts the amount of time into perspective and doesn’t seem so tedious.
Don’t expect to see miracles on the first treatment when you do laser hair removal at home. Even professional treatment doesn’t eradicate the majority of the hairs on the first treatment. As noted earlier, hair grows in phases. Everyone has different timing to those phases and the treatment only works well on hair in the growth phase.
Multiple treatments
In order to see the best results, you’ll have to do multiple treatments. Some areas may require only three to four but other areas might need as many as six or even more. You body and hair growth patterns make the difference on the number of necessary treatments.
Before you do any laser hair removal at home, take a few precautions to make it more successful. First, avoid removing hair by the roots for at least six weeks before you start your home treatment. Tweezing and waxing are two examples of removing hair by the roots. Use methods such as shaving or depilatory creams for hair removal the weeks before you begin your home treatments.