Wednesday, 11 September 2013

Factors affecting successful Hair Removal.

1. POWER: First sufficient power must be applied, enough in fact to heat the core temperature of the hair sufficient enough to carbonise the hair producing cast. This can only be achieved by medical lasers for hair removal. Intense Pulsed Lights commonly used at beauty salons and non specialist centres cannot generate the necessary power levels.

2.WAVELENGHT OF LIGHT: At 800nm the light penetrates the skin well to reach deep follicles, better than Alexandrite or Ruby Lasers and far more effective than IPL systems. This is because shorter wavelengths are more easily reflected around by the superficial skin structures than the longer wavelengths of the medical lasers used at Hairaway Canada.

3. COLOR OF HAIR AND SKIN: The hair MUST be pigmented ( ie have colour, like be black, dark brown, brown and in some instances light brown as well.) The less pigment, the more power will be required but high powers can only be applied to very fair skin.  Very fair hairs are untreatable for permanent hair removal.  From the Fitzpatrick Classification of Skin types chart, we are able to provide effective treatment to Types 1 through Type 5. Type 6, i.e. those with black skin are not treatable.

4. DIAMETER OF HAIR: Hair has a low specific heat, this means that a relatively small power input will result in high hair shaft temperatures but it also means that its ability to store heat is small. The thicker the hair the greater storage capacity from which to spread the heat to neighbouring structures. This means that very fine hair needs to be heated to higher temperature than coarse hair.

5. GROWTH CYCLES: Please refer to our previous blog on growth cycles. Hair which spends a high percentage of its time in Anagen always treats better because hair in Telogen does not treat.

6. DEPTH OF THE BULB: The bulb area of the follicle can be several mm deep. The medical laser used at Hairaway Canada, because of its long wavelength is not reflected to the same extent by the various dermal and epidermal structures, thus allowing more photons to impact with deeper hairs which are also usually coarser hairs.

7. PULSE WIDTH: Each spot delivered with the medical laser used at Hairaway Canada consists of a pulse which can be varied so that all its energy can be delivered in a shorter time or alternatively spreads it out so that the energy is never so high but lasts longer. Both have the same heating ability but the hair does not become so hot in the second and the heat spreads to the surrounding structures for longer.

8. THERMAL RELAXATION TIME: The advanced medical lasers we use at Hairaway have two settings. Where the time the energy is applied is automatically set and the other where the time is fixed.

9. BONE EFFECTS: The epithelium is subjected to both the primary light generated and a secondary pulse which is reflected on the bone. Our experience, having successfully performed over 60,000  procedures enables to ensure that when treating boney prominences, our treatment parameters are adjusted accordingly to ensure absolute best possible outcomes.

10. SUNTANS: We do not offer treatment to clients whom have sun tans. First they cause the skin to be darker, so putting it into a higher skin category than necessary but more importantly colour from tanning poses a larger problem which means we would be obliged to reduce the power levels resulting in a poor treatment with no out come.

11. GENETIC FACTORS: If it were a simple matter on analysing the skin colour and then applying the appropriate energy level, we could have colorimeter do the job and do the job as the machine advises. This is what commonly happens at Beauty Salons and non specialists centres. They rely on the machine to advise them!  Unfortunately things are not easy and requires service providers with a deep understanding of all the factors that can affect the outcome of a treatment. Thankfully, Hairaway Canada has the necessary experience and skill sets to assess each client carefully and proceed accordingly.

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