There’s no right or wrong amount of hair for anyone to have on any part of their body. But whether it’s for fashion, cultural reasons, hygiene or just personal preference, millions of us choose to remove hair from our bodies or faces every day. In fact, it’s a practice as old as civilisation itself – it’s well known that the ancient Egyptians were doing it thousands of years ago.
Of course, lasers were not available to Nefertiti, but now that the technology has been perfected by modern science, it has become a prime candidate for anyone who is fed up with shaving, waxing, epilating or applying creams. In the hands of the professionals, modern laser hair removal is safe, painless and quick, and any side effects usually clear up in a few hours.
However, some people think that the process can all be over in one session, and you’ll go away with no hair growth in the treated area for the rest of your life. It’s important that you understand that neither of those ideas are true. A complete treatment of a given part of your skin will require more than one visit to the clinic, which can mean anything from two visits to six.
Why are several sessions required?
The main reason for having several sessions is because your hair follicles are all at different stages of growth.
Hair follicles have four stages of growth: anagen (growth), catagen (transition), telogen (resting) and exogen (shedding). (You can find out more about the stages in our article “Is laser hair removal permanent?”) On any given day, all of your hair strands will be at different positions on this cycle. The majority will be somewhere along the anagen (growth) stage, as that’s the stage that lasts the longest. But not all.
It’s a bit like growing tomatoes. If you’ve got a greenhouse full of cherry tomatoes, you wouldn’t go and pick them all on the same day. Some will be green, and others will still be at the flowering stage, or just budding. You will pick the ripe ones today, and when you come back a few days or weeks later, others will be ready.
When it comes to laser hair removal, the technology only really works when the follicle is at the anagen stage. That’s because it’s when a substance called melanin is present, and it’s the melanin that gets heated up by the laser to neutralise the follicle.
So on the first day that you turn up for treatment, perhaps 80–90% of the follicles in the area of skin will be able to be treated with lasers. The remaining 10–20% would not react to the laser, because at those stages, there is little or no melanin present.
A few weeks later, however, it will be a different story. Some of the follicles that were at the resting or shedding stage on your first visit will now be at the growth stage. So those hairs can now be lasered away.
That might still leave 5–10% of the follicles from the first visit, though. Some of them will still not be at the growth stage, so they can’t be treated just yet. But give it a few more weeks or months, and they will be ready.
Even then, though, there can still remain a few stubborn follicles, which dodged the laser three times because they were at resting, shedding or transition stages. Thanks to them, another session will be required. Also, there will be a few follicles that completely avoided the laser throughout all the sessions, or those that survived the treatment even though they took a direct hit. This is unavoidable, but their luck will only last so long, and eventually they will be destroyed.
Although this might give the impression that the treatment is ineffective, remember that the first sweep will have cleared up to 90% of the hairs in the area. Any new strands that break through in the coming weeks or months will be far less noticeable, especially if the colour of your hair is a close match to the colour of your skin. On some parts of the body, where hair is light and downy (typically, the face), a small amount of hair is barely noticeable, and even that will be removed during your next visit.
Your consultation
Before we get to work on your follicles, we’ll ask you to come in for a consultation. It’s probably the most important part of the process.
First, it helps you to familiarise yourself with our locations, which is handy for parking or public transport. You’ll get to see the clinic and meet the team – we think it’s really helpful for our customers to see how we operate and get to know us a little. It puts your mind at ease and hopefully makes you look forward to the first session!
We’ll give you a questionnaire to answer about your health conditions and such like, which will obviously be very focused on your skin. But it’ll be good to know about any allergies, sensitivities or other conditions (such as anxiety) that you have, so we can plan the very best treatment for you.
At this stage, we’ll also find out what you expect from the treatment. The last thing we want is to give unreasonable expectations of what laser hair removal can achieve, so it’s really important that we know what your end goals are.
Then, we’ll move on to the patch test. Just like testing a cleaning product on a hidden part of your favourite top, we’ll perform laser treatment on a small, inconspicuous area of your skin, around the part you want treating. After that, you’ll be free to go home, and keep an eye on how your skin has reacted to laser treatment over the coming days.
In the vast majority of cases there are no problems, but in a tiny proportion there are minor complications like prolonged itching or discomfort. We can use this information to decide whether to proceed with the planned treatment, to adjust the equipment, or to advise you to seek other means of hair removal.
Thorough hair removal needs several visits
Hopefully, this article explains why more than one session is usually required, and why a minimum of two visits to our clinic will be needed. We do offer special deals if you pay for your sessions up front, and again, we’ll be able to help you to decide how many sessions you need in an honest and transparent way. We look forward to meeting you at your consultation!