I have thick dark hair and my skin is white. Why my diode laser hair removal is not so effective?

Question

After my first session, i saw a large difference.. Hair fell off. After the second, less hair fell off. After the third nothing fell off although i still have half of my legs hairy, and most of my bikini area. What is the reason? I shave 2 days before my session. And i experience pain during tweezing.

Harold J. Kaplan, MD · Answer

Hi Danielle.  Generally speaking as a laser hair removal program progresses, the energy needs to increase.  This is primarily due to the fact that the coarsest hair responds first and then the medium hair and then the fine hair.  So as you move through the program, whomever is performing the treatment generally has to increase energy to continue to provide an effective treatment.  If this is not happening, it may explain why your results are waning.  What most consumers would not know is that it's not a trivial process to perform good treatments and the person doing the treatment has as much to do with your final outcome as the laser itself.  The laser is simply a technology, but cannot think on it's own or perform a good treatment.With that said, diode lasers are excellent for lighter skin types with dark hair and we would expect 75% - 95% permanent hair removal after 6-8 visits.  If this is not what your practitioner can deliver, then perhaps it's time to try someone new.  Good luck.  The post below includes much information about laser hair removal for our Los Angeles patients.

Larry S. Nichter, MD, MS, FACS · Answer

The answer is less clear without knowing more information - Skin type, laser type and settings, etc. Great questions for your treating doctor.

Martie Gidon, MD, FRCPC, FAAD · Answer

The combination of fair skin and dark hair is the perfect combination for laser hair removal.  Five to 10 treatments may be necessary, about 8 weeks apart.  There is about a 20% reduction of remaining hair with each treatment. Sun avoidance is important in between your treatments.  Only shaving is permitted during the treatments, not tweezing or waxing.  An experienced technician will know how to adjust settings for future treatments.

John Peter Cole, MD · Answer

As you know, laser hair removal works only on pigmented hair.  It will not work on white hair or hair that has lost the capacity to create pigment. Hairs produce pigment only in the anagen phase or the active growing phase.  On a beard, most of the hair is always in the anagen phase.  On the legs, the percentage will range between 40% and 60% in the anagen phase, but it can be even less in the anagen phase.  This means you have to wait until the hair cycles into the anagen phase before laser hair removal will work on body hair.  This can take months to happen.  You probably need to separate laser hair removal visits into longer intervals.  The first thing that happens when hairs move into the resting phase, or telogen, is the lost of pigment production.  Without pigment, the laser will not be affective.  We also find that laser hair removal does not work on transplanted hair from the back of the scalp to the top of the scalp even though there is pigment in the hair follicles of transplanted hairs.  It may be that the scar tissue formed around the graft limits the affects of the laser in transplanted hair.  I have never seen a good reason why lasers don't work in transplanted hair, but it shows that there are reasons why lasers do not work in all instances.  I do know that lasers will cause hair to fall out from grafted hair, but the hair invariably grows back.  One other theory might be that a low energy caused a temporary shedding of hair but did not kill the hair.  Rather, the tissue surrounding the outer root sheath was produced a protective scar that might limit the benefit of laser hair removal in the future.

I have thick dark hair and my skin is white. Why my diode laser hair removal is not so effective?

Answers (4)

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