Page 106 - Blog Posts v1

A33 - Laser/IPL hair removal. How long should we leave between treatments? It's definitely NOT six weeks...
Laser/IPL Hair Removal – what are the best intervals between sessions?
Laser/IPL hair removal has been around since the 1990s. We first noticed that a Q-switched ruby laser could remove surface hair in the mid 1980s when we were treating tattoos. But we didn’t consider it a ‘treatment’ since the hair always grew back (the pulses were too short to effectively damage the follicles!)
In the early 90s we started to work on removing hair using an IPL system and red/infra-red light. It proved moderately successful but that was because we still hadn’t figured out the process or the correct parameters at that time.
Later we realised that we needed to use longer pulses to effectively denature the germ cells around follicles – these are the cells which determines the growth pattern of hair follicles.
However, nobody really knew what the ‘best’ time interval between treatments should be. A consensus of six to eight weeks was adopted across the industry, with no real scientific or clinical backing.
This interval stuck. But it is entirely wrong!!
When you think about it, we really should be matching our treatment times to the growth phases of the follicles. These growth phases vary enormously across the body!! Our scalp
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