Why Bother Waxing and Shaving? Learn How Laser Hair Reduction Can Change Your Life

If you like the look and feel of smooth, hairless skin, you’re probably familiar with the most common forms of hair reduction — and their drawbacks. You could shave, but you need to do it quite often, and it can irritate delicate skin. Waxing is painful; creams are smelly.

Laser hair reduction is a procedure that delays hair growth for a long period — years. During the procedure, the laser damages your hair follicle, which prevents the hair from growing. This means no more waxing and shaving — it really can change your life.

How laser hair reduction works

Our technician uses a specialized laser designed so the pigment in your hair absorbs its energy. The hair heats up so much that the follicle is damaged, which prevents or inhibits hair growth, but the laser doesn’t damage your skin.

Because the contrast between your skin and your hair is what allows laser hair reduction to work, people who have light skin and dark hair get the best results. However, modern lasers are more sensitive than earlier ones. People with less contrast between their hair and skin color can still effectively have laser hair reduction, but it may take a few more sessions.

The hair growth cycle and laser hair reduction

One thing that’s important to know if you’re thinking about laser hair reduction is you need multiple sessions over the course of a few months to get the optimal effect. That’s because your hair grows in cycles. There are three main stages, and hair can only be removed during one of them.

Anagen phase

In this stage, your hair is actively growing. This is the phase when hair can be removed with this revolutionary laser treatment.

Catagen phase

After the anagen phase, your hair enters a transitional phase called the catagen phase. It usually lasts about 10 days.

Telogen phase

The final stage of hair growth is the telogen phase, or the resting phase. If you’ve ever heard a statistic about how many hairs the average human sheds in a day, you were hearing about hairs entering the telogen phase. The hair follicle is inactive for about three months after a hair falls out.

At any given moment, some of your hair is in each of the three stages, and because laser hair reduction only works on hair that’s in the anagen stage, you need multiple treatments as hair enters that stage and can be removed.

Minimal pain and lasting results

You may feel some warmth during the procedure. Some clients have said that it feels similar to a hot stone massage. The specialized laser we use has a cooling system to keep your skin comfortable.

You most likely won’t need any time to recover, either. You may experience some redness in the treated area immediately afterward, but that generally resolves within a few hours.

Laser hair reduction is safe to use almost anywhere on your body. The only area it’s unsafe is around your eyes.

Both before and after laser hair reduction treatments, you need to avoid the sun. Before your treatment, you won’t want to darken your skin at all with a tan; after your treatment, your skin is more sensitive to the sun’s rays and can burn more easily than usual.

Once you’re finished with your initial treatments and have achieved the results you want, you can simply have maintenance treatments every year or two in order to keep your smooth, hair-free look.

If you’d like to learn more about laser hair reduction, request an appointment online or by phone at Gago Wellness. We’re happy to answer your questions and give you an idea of what the process is likely to be for you, based on your skin tone and hair color.