There is no treatment that removes all hair forever. Laser hair removal does have a high success rate (60-80%) but success depends on many factors. Here is a basic overview of the process and the factors involved.
Know thy Enemy
A strand of hair is made up of three parts: hair bulb, the shaft, and the hair follicle. Both the bulb and the shaft are located within the skin. To have successful long term hair removal you need to target the hair follicle and the regrowing center in the hair bulb. Also the hair is only vulnerable when it is in its active stage of the growing cycle. So you will need several treatments spaced out over time so you can ensure that all hair is treated during its active growing cycle.
How can light make hair go away?
Lasers are very strong and targeted light beams. This light energy is attracted more to darker colors (think about the sun making black cars hotter than white cars in the summer). Now imagine dark hair on pale skin. The dark hair will attract the laser energy much more than the skin. As the light energy passes through your skin it transfroms from light into heat. This heat aka thermal energy is more focused on the darker hair so it damages the hair before it damages the skin. So a trained professional can apply enough light energy to your hair and damage it thus resulting in hair loss without any damage to your skin. We are talking about targeted damage, so it is possible for mistakes to be made. Be careful and make sure you use expereienced people to minimize the chance of mistakes.
What are the different types of laser treatment
Q-Switched Nd:YAG - This is a very common laser type which is able to deliver two types of light energy. The two different lights can target the shallow hair and deep hair in the skin. Some examples of these machines are Focus Medical's Lorad equipment and Laserscope's
Lyra machine.
Diode - A diode laser is one of the more productive devices. The diode laser has a longer wavelength than most other lasers used for hair removal, which is needed when darker skin types seek treatment. Darker skin is harder to treat since there is normally less color contrast with the hair color so it is harder to create the necessary heat buildup that is required to damage the hair and result in hair loss. An example of the diode system is Nidek's
EpiStar machine and IRIDEX's Apex 800 machine. Bothe machines use the diode system.
Alexandrite - This is a long-pulse laser treatment. This long pulse allows for a deeper penetration into the skin where the hair is situated. As this light energy goes deeper into your skin it build-ups heat which damages the hair. Cynosure makes several machines including Photogenica LPIR (alexandrite/ruby), the Apogee 6200 and Apogee 9300 both are alexandrite style machines.
Light-Based Sources - These are not lasers but instead intense pulsed devices. They provide a broad spectrum of light to treat a different varieties of hair and skin colors as well as hair depths within the skin.
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