I am a black female with both grey and dark hair and ingrown hair. Electrolysis versus laser hair removal?

 Electrolysis is not a good option for hair removal especially for people of color.  areas of hyperpigmentation. The best laser for hair removal for people of color is a YAG 1064 laser. 

Dear essencie,

Thank you for your clinical post and this is a common
clinical question. Individuals of any
colour with predominantly gray, blonde or red hair are not good candidates for
hair removal as it requires a chromophore, called a colour target which is
melanin and a colour has to be brown or black.
If you have black skin, white skin and dark hair, black skin or white
skin and dark hair then laser’s an excellent option. At SpaMedica we have been doing laser hair
removal on dark skin and light skin patients for almost 20 years. We have 7 or 8 laser systems designed to
customize the best laser hair removal program for the patient skin type and
hair colour. The predominantly dark
hairs can be removed very efficiently, fast and effectively with a great degree
of permanence about 1,000 times faster than electrolysis using laser hair
removal. The best wavelengths for a dark
skin individual would be a neodymium YAG 1064 nm laser and a combination of
this with a long pulse extremely cooled 810 diode such as the Diolase. Cryogen is used with the 1064 nm neodymium
YAG, it’s called the GentleMax Pro. For
these two combinations we can remove up to 90% of your dark hair shafts and
their production factors the bulbs permanently.

For the gray hair electrolysis will still be an option. This is permanent treatment with a radio
frequency energy that takes a long time to perform.

A great understanding of the skin type of the patient is
important which we have developed over many years at SpaMedica so we can
minimize the risk of hyper or hypopigmentation in dark skin.

I hope this information has been of some assistance and best
of luck.

For more information, please review the link below.

R. Stephen Mulholland, M.D.

Certified Plastic Surgeon

Yorkville, Toronto