The laser works by directing concentrated light into the hair follicle inhibiting the hair’s ability to grow without disrupting or damaging the skin’s surface.
Our lasers use a wide beam which allows the removal of multiple hair follicles at the same time.
Our experienced Therapists will take your skin and hair type into account before creating a personalised treatment plan.
So what is a laser?
Did you know that LASER is an acronym which stands for “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation”?
The definition of a laser is an “electronic device that generates an intense beam of single color light by amplifying photons with more energy through collisions with other photons. Laser beams can travel vast distances without dispersion and can carry enormous amounts of energy.”
Complicated right?
Well, basically a laser is a very strong and very focused beam of light. Lasers are used in a huge range of applications, from industry, to communications, to mapping. Laser hair removal relies on specially designed medical grade lasers that are safe to use on human skin.
The three stages of hair growth
To understand how laser hair removal works you need to understand the different stages of hair growth. Hair has 3 different stages of growth and not all hairs grow at the same time. That’s why you may have found sometimes when you wax about a week later there is hair starting to grow again. Usually these are not the same hairs you waxed a week ago, they would be hairs from another follicle that were at a different stage of growth.
The three different stages of hair growth are:
Anagen – the active growth phase. At this stage, the bottom of the hair follicle (the bulb) is attached to the dermis and its blood supply through the dermal papilla.
Catagen – the transition phase. The hair follicle begins to die and enters the catagen phase
Telogen – the resting phase. In this phase, the remains of the hair bulb are inactive and the attached hair easily falls out.
How do lasers remove hair?
Laser hair removal works because the light of the laser beam can be converted to heat. The light is attracted to the pigment (melanin) in the hair. Dark pigment absorbs the light and the converts it to heat. The heat then affects the hair follicles to prevent hair growth.
In order to destroy a hair follicle, the bulb of the hair follicle where the blood supplies the hair with oxygen to grow needs to be destroyed as well as the stem cells which are responsible for hair regeneration. To be able to do this, a temperature of about 70 degrees needs to be reached.
The darker and the thicker a hair is the more pigment it will hold, and the more light it will absorb. This is why it is important that you don’t wax or pluck your hair before a treatment, because if there is no hair there, there is no way for the laser light to treat that hair follicle.
So to recap, what happens is that the light is emitted, is then absorbed by the pigment in the hair, travels through the hair and is converted to heat and destroys the root. That hair is destroyed and does not grow back! It’s just so simple and effective.