The Different Hair Removal Lasers and the Results You Can Expect by Catherine Trebble

Hair Removal has been part of our society for thousands of years. This article explores the different options available to you, from shaving, waxing, depilating and electrolysis to name a few.

Here are some of the most common forms of hair removal:

Epilating: A non-electric version would be your tweezers, but the process of removing hair in this manner can not only painful, but it can be time consuming. Electric epilators work by plucking several hairs at once. The result, a little more pain, but it’s over relatively quickly.

Threading: A piece of cotton thread is held and looped between the fingers; the loops are used to trap the unwanted hair and then pulled out of the skin. Its popularity is gaining, though it can be difficult to find a qualified practitioner of threading. The pain level is similar to that of epilating.

Depilating: A cream, lotion or spray, usually chemical based, is applied to the skin liberally and wiped off after you’ve waited a specified amount of time. The results can be patchy at best, and often leave your skin with a strange feel (not to mention a funny smell). Patch testing is essential as depilatories can and do cause allergic reactions.

Waxing: A thin layer of melted wax is applied to the skin, covered by a strip of muslin cloth, and then yanked away in the opposite direction of the growth, pulling the hair out by its roots. This procedure can be done at home or in a salon, and it is relatively painful. If you don’t know what you’re doing you can end up with a lot of bruising.

Sugaring: Sugaring temporarily removes hair, and uses organic or all natural products (sugar) which are liberally applied to the skin, then pulled off in a single quick movement. Naturally, it is painful, you are, after all, yanking the hair out by its roots. However it is slightly less painful than waxing, as the wax adheres to the skin as well as to the hair.

‘Permanent’ Hair Removal: Permanence is relative. There’s permanent, as in forever and ever till the day you die. And then there’s the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s definition of permanent. How it applies to hair removal is this: Laser hair removal clinics are only permitted to state that they Permanent Hair Reduction.

Electrolysis: Electrolysis is a process whereby a practitioner inserts a very slender probe (okay, it’s a needle), usually made of stainless steel, into individual hair follicles. Then a tiny burst of heat energy is delivered down the shaft of the probe. One hair follicle dead – only a million more to go. No, that’s not just hyperbole, there are, on average, 5 million hairs on the human body (and only about 100,000 of them are on your head!). Every square inch of skin has between 700 and 1,000 hair follicles. What is also not hyperbole is that the electrolysis process is tedious.

And, depending on your tolerance level, the sessions can be quite painful. Some people liken electrolysis to being stung by a nettle, but after the hundredth “STING!” it would certainly get sore, not to mention annoying. Electrolysis often takes many weekly treatments, over a course of several months to several years. Electrolysis has been around for over 100 years, and has been pretty much replaced by laser hair removal as the 21st Century’s way to banish the fuzz.

Laser Hair Removal: According to consultingroom.com, laser hair removal is now the top non-surgical procedure in the UK and Ireland today. Laser hair removal is a technique that provides, as the FDA likes to say, permanent hair reduction. That’s not to imply that it couldn’t remove all of your hair, but that you should be aware that for some individuals it won’t be as effective as for other individuals.