At Musick Dermatology, laser hair removal is one of our more popular treatments because we all want to have hair-free legs, bikini lines, and armpits when it’s pool and lake season. Guys want to lose the back hair and the arm sweaters.
You could keep plucking and waxing…
Of course, if you’d rather keep shaving, plucking, waxing, and applying harsh depilatory creams to get rid of your unwanted hair you can. It’s just so fun and so darn repetitive: you get rid of the hair, and then two weeks later there it comes again. Ugh. Plus, people don’t realize just how much money they spend for waxing and on shaving products over the course of your life.
That’s why laser hair removal is one of the most popular cosmetic treatments across the globe.
How does laser hair removal get rid of the hair?
Some people assume laser hair removal simply zaps the hair as in some sci-fi flick. Uh, no. That would be impossible to regulate and not damage the skin. Plus, it would only remove the hair shaft, like shaving; it wouldn’t damage the follicle where the hair grows.
When you come see us in our beautiful offices on Benchmark Centre Drive in Swansea, we set our laser wavelength to match the color of your unwanted hair. Then we deliver short bursts of laser energy down onto the unwanted hair. The melanin in the hair shafts (which give the hair its color) absorbs the light energy and it instantly converts to heat. This heat then travels down the hair shaft into the follicle, damaging or fully destroying the follicle and stopping it from growing hair.
Why does it take multiple sessions?
The problem with our unwanted hair is that there are something like five million hairs on the human body, and each one of them operates independently of the others. That means every hair is moving through different phases of the hair growth cycle: growth, transition, or rest. Laser energy only damages hair in the growth cycle; in the other cycles the hair is already being shed so the laser energy cannot get into the hair follicle. The key to successful permanent hair reduction is to catch more and more of the unwanted hairs in the growth phase. That’s why you need multiple sessions. Our patients find they achieve the degree of permanent hair reduction, usually somewhere around 85 to 90 percent removal, with from 7-10 treatments. Each session needs to be separated by 4-8 weeks. That’s why the fall is the best time to get started on removing your unwanted hair.
Call us at Musick Dermatology, (618) 628-2588, and let’s get started getting rid of that unwanted hair for good!