QUOTE: Is the laser a permanent fix after several treatments??
I'm no expert and only speak from my own experience and reading...but it's my understanding that, the last I knew, they are NOT allowed to advertise laser treatment as "permanent" because studies haven't proven it enough yet. I think they can call it "effective long-term" or something? (I suspect soon they WILL be able to call it permanent.)
BUT -- I can testify that for me, after a lifetime of thick dark facial hair, 80 or 90% just hasn't come back after maybe 8 or 9 treatments over about four years. And, just as important, all the horrible dark "clumps" of stubble and shadow and bumps I used to have are completely gone (I think because the surface level of skin was removed by the laser treatment and because I no longer have to keep aggravating the skin by repeated tweezing or waxing the area).
Individual straggler hairs DO re-appear and DO need periodic touch-up treatments, although for $ reasons I haven't gone for over a year and just trim with scissors and it's livable. Because the hairs are so much lighter and thinner trimming makes them pretty much inconspicuous.
In short, I believe it (laser treatment) is the most effective treatment of any BY FAR.
I wanted to add, about electrolysis -- I personally did NOT find electrolyis very effective, after a lot of time and money spent. Supposedly electrolyis is permanent and their operators ARE allowed to claim that. But my experience was that it was almost useless, though I had it almost weekly for several years and spent a fortune on it. With electrolysis they can only find, aim and "fire" at ONE little hair follicle at a time -- but there are thousands of hair follicles on your face! Even then, sometimes they can miss the follicle; sometimes the follicle is damaged and twisted by tweezing or waxing or depilatories so the heat doesn't even get down to the root to kill it; sometimes they figure wrong and use too little current so the current gets there but still doesn't do any good -- not an efficient process at all, in my experience!
Whereas with laser -- the laser beam is a large circle (size of the beam depending on the size of the particular laser) and they "fire" the laser beam in overlapping circles as the operator moves it around the hairy areas -- I don't know the actual density of hair growth, but I assume each "blast" zaps hundreds of hair follicles at once?
By the way, I don't mean to argue but I don't see how clipping the hair with scissors at the surface can cause hair to grow back thicker or darker. Clipping isn't doing anything to the hair root. It doesn't even pull the hair out from the root like tweezing does, just trims it at skin level. I don't see how this could affect hair growth. Perhaps if someone experiences that that seems to happen, maybe the hair is actually growing back thicker and darker for another reason, such as changing hormone levels?
In fact, think about it -- if ANYTHING we did (clipping, tweezing) to remove the hair made it grow back thicker, wouldn't people desperate to find a cure for baldness be glomming onto it?
(But don't forget tweezing, while it lasts longer than clipping, has its downside too -- namely, eventually you start getting bumps, ingrown hairs, areas of "stubble" you can't remove because the follicles get twisted and damaged so the hair doesn't grow straight to the surface.
So...I stand by what I suggested in my previous post:
1) easiest is to clip with nail scissors or bleach if that makes it look okay;
2) if not, use a wax like Better-Off (messy and temporary, but as long as you are careful not to burn yourself, leaves your skin in better shape);
3) most expensive but long-term effective (since they're not allowed to say permanent), laser treatment.
And I would suggest for the long-term benefit of your skin, try to stay away from depilatories (like Nair or Neet) and tweezing.
