What's the best hair removal treatment?

Oh, there’s just no comparison. Laser hair removal is the only thing that you can use to permanently reduce within any kind of reasonable limit. With electrolysis, you just can’t stand the discomfort, the length of time that it would take. You can make this comfortable. It’s snappy. It’s slightly uncomfortable but there are all kinds of things you can do to make it comfortable. It’s so quick, you’re using a circle that’s an 18 mm diameter. It is so quick. Across an underarm takes me two minutes, one minute. It’s so quick. It’s quick, it’s slightly snappy, it may feel a little warm afterwards. The effectiveness is very, very good.

Electrolysis, again, multiple treatments. Very uncomfortable, very, very, slow, very tedious. I’ve had both so I certainly know.

If you have one individual hair growing out of a mole on the chin then electrolysis is an option for something like that. But for a larger area on your body such as an upper lip, an underarm area, bikini area, the lower legs - no one could go through the lower legs with electrolysis.

Over years of time doing waxing, some people notice that their hair is thinned but it’s not gone. So you’re damaging some follicles over time. It’s painful, it’s multiple, multiple treatments. You have to wait until the hair grows all the way out and it looks bad. With laser hair removal you have periods of time where there is no hair at all. Usually in the neighborhood of four weeks, where there is no hair at all in between treatments. Then when it starts to grow back you may continue to shave, so that you don’t have to look at ugly hair. Then you get your treatment again.

Across the board laser hair removal is it, as long as you are going to someone reputable with good effective lasers, that are professional quality and medical grade, and you are having a medical practitioner do the treatments.

For eyebrows:

• Threading is great for people who are doing Accutane, Retin A, or any other topical that thins the skin.
• Waxing is the most common method, but only for healthy skin.

There is no difference in hair removal methods if the bulb is removed (as opposed to breaking off the hair) and as long as the operator is not a dumb***. The shaping and pulling the hair out by the bulb is the most important. Method is second to that.

Let’s face the fact that no hair removal process is painless. That’s why speed and effectiveness are so important.

• Modern lasers like the Cutera Pro770 have large treatment windows and make hair removal fast and easy. Expect about 6-8 treatments for complete removal, with a one time yearly touchup. Topical anesthetic creams with Lidocaine effectively stop the discomfort and patients are usually very happy with the results.

• For Latino and African-American patients, the Cutera XEO can successfully remove hair on dark skin. The tip of the laser cools to an amazing 4º C (refrigerator cold!) and, in conjunction with Lidocaine, is a truly wonderful technique.

• Electrolysis is extremely tedious. Each hair must be individually zapped… a really annoying and uncomfortable process. I only recommend electrolysis for white and blond hair. No matter what you hear about making the hair darker before laser treatment with dyes and coloring compounds, they don’t work. LASERS CANNOT REMOVE BLOND AND WHITE HAIR.