Permanent Hair Removal: One of the big questions about permanent laser hair removal that we get asked constantly is: “Just how permanent is laser hair removal? Is it really long-lasting?”

This is an important question! To get an idea for how permanent laser hair removal is you need to understand how hair grows and how laser hair removal works. Let’s examine both of these subjects.

How Hair Grows

Hair grows from structures known as follicles underneath your skin. The root grows in the follicle, and the section of the hair that you can see above your skin is known as the “shaft” of the hair. Your body hair grows in a cyclic way. At any one point, the hair in some of your follicles will be actively growing; other hair follicles will be dormant, and yet others will be going through the shedding process.

The Mechanism of Laser Hair Removal

Reduction of excessive body hair or even permanent removal is now practical for most skin and hair types. Laser hair reduction therapy works by targeting hair roots under your skin. It is possible for the laser beams to hone in on your hair roots because of the coloring these cells contain, which makes them darker than the surrounding tissues.

However, the result is that the success rate of laser hair removal treatment is affected by the disparity in color between your hair roots and your skin. That is to say, it works best on people with very pale skin and very dark hair – where there is a strong disparity between the darkness of your hair roots and the paleness of your surrounding skin tissues.

Even in ideal circumstances, however, the lasers do not do away with all of your hair. Why not? Because the lasers can only target actively growing hairs. As we saw earlier, only a certain proportion of your body hair in any one area will be actively growing. This is the reason why laser hair removal treatments are normally spaced 4 – 6 weeks apart – so that different follicles will be active at subsequent treatments, and can be effectively dealt with.

Conclusion

Because of the mechanism by which laser hair removal works, while it may disable a significant proportion of the follicles it will not cause a 100% stoppage in all body hair growth in the treated area. However, an 80% reduction in hair is entirely possible – permanent laser hair removal is a truly viable solution for undesirable body hair.

Ingrid Preube