Laser for pubic hair removal 8 year old. When you think of laser hair removal, you probably picture something that only works on adults and older people. But did you know that it’s actually possible to use lasers to remove hair from your entire body, including your pubic area? It’s true! There’s a lot of misinformation out there about laser hair removal and what it can do. And while it’s not right for everyone, if you’re interested in learning more about whether or not it could be right for you, keep reading!
We’ll cover the basics of laser hair removal and why it’s so effective at getting rid of unwanted body hair. Then we’ll talk about what kind of laser treatments are available for use on the pubic area—and how they differ from other kinds of laser treatments. At the end of this article, we’ll give some tips on how to choose a provider who does these types of treatments safely and effectively.
Laser For Pubic Hair Removal 8 Year Old
No one wants to be afflicted with unwanted hair, and the good news is that there’s really never a wrong time to have laser hair removal. At Jon Ric International Health and Wellness in Edmond, OK, we can help you get the smooth skin you’re looking for. Is there an ideal age to seek out treatment? What is the best age for laser hair removal? We answer this question and more below.
What Is the Best Age for Laser Hair Removal?
Thankfully, there is no one age where it’s right to get this treatment. Whether you’re 19 or 90, you can benefit from getting rid of the hair you don’t want. Since this treatment is perfectly safe, there are really no concerns about age.
In the end, the best age for you to seek treatment is the age you’re at when you first notice the unwanted hair and look for ways to deal with it. But concerns about unwanted hair can vary by time of life. Here are some age-based considerations:
Unwanted Hair and Teens
Many teens either believe or may have been told that they will simply “grow out” of unwanted hair. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Typically, unwanted hair that shows up in your teen years only tends to get worse with time.
Laser treatment is an option for you if you have hair growing more thickly than you can manage or in places where you don’t want it. Still, it is important to understand first what is the best age for laser hair removal. Depending on your age, you might need the consent of your parents for treatment, but there aren’t any restrictions otherwise.
Know What’s Behind Your Excessive Hair Growth
If you’re female and are experiencing heavy, dark hair growth, you could have a disorder known as PCOS, or polycystic ovarian syndrome. This often manifests with hair growth on the face and chest. If you suspect PCOS, it’s important to talk to a doctor. Laser hair treatment isn’t as effective for these cases, though it can certainly help. Most importantly, though, you may need other medical interventions to improve your overall health.
Unwanted Hair and Young Adults
If you’re living through the busy years of your 20s and 30s, a laser hair treatment could save you a lot of time as well as get rid of your unwanted hair. When we’re younger, there is usually plenty of time to pluck and shave, but this becomes increasingly burdensome as we grow older and face greater responsibilities, hence this could be the best age for laser hair removal to give it a try.
Many of what seemed “small” aspects of self-care can fall by the wayside as a career or growing family get in the way. Even worse, self-esteem can lag if you’re struggling to get rid of the hair you don’t want. Once that hair is gone, though, you’ll get a self-esteem and confidence boost in every area of life.
Unwanted Hair and Older Adults
Aging brings some inevitable difficulties and changes to your skin. Unwanted hair can appear, and even hair that wasn’t hard to deal with before–or maybe didn’t even bother you–can become a greater burden or the last straw of frustration with your appearance.
Even worse, some things that may have worked in the past could cause difficulty as you age. Shaving, for example, may start to irritate the skin. It’s not unheard of for someone to develop an allergy to a depilatory cream that never bothered them before. Thinner skin could make waxing and plucking more painful. If any of these things are ringing true for you, now might be the right time for a laser hair removal treatment.
About Laser Hair Treatments
Lasers offer long-lasting hair reduction because they don’t just deal with the hairs themselves. Lasers get at the root of the problem by disabling the follicle beneath the skin that’s growing hair in the first place.
How Lasers Work to Remove Hair
The light of the laser is attracted to the melanin in a hair shaft. The light travels down the hair, generating heat as it goes until it reaches the follicle. The heat from the laser damages the follicle and disables it. In the past, lasers and light energy only really worked for people with very light skin tones and dark hair. The light couldn’t differentiate between the melanin in hair and the melanin in skin, so the contrast between skin and hair had to be fairly extreme.
Today, however, next-generation lasers can work on a variety of skin tones and most hair colors. We use the state-of-the-art Soprano XL laser precisely because it can effectively remove even white, grey, red, and blonde hair and works on skin of all colors–even tanned skin–with amazing results.
Areas It Can Treat
Lasers can treat unwanted hair nearly anywhere. They’re great for removing hair from the legs, underarms, back, chest, face, and bikini area. Men sometimes seek just a few treatments to thin out a thick beard to make shaving easier and razor burn less likely.
Preparing for Treatment
Thankfully, there aren’t many special steps necessary before a laser hair treatment. The only thing you need to do is avoid plucking, waxing, or anything that completely removes the hair shaft a few weeks before treatment. Shaving is fine: in fact, you should shave the day before your treatment.
What Treatment Is Like
At your treatment session, we’ll give you special eye protection just to be safe. Then, we’ll simply run the handheld device over your skin. It will send out pulses of laser light that target the melanin and destroy the hair follicles.
One of the best benefits of the Soprano laser is that the process is very comfortable. The laser itself comes with advanced cooling technology that ensures your comfort. For some patients, the chance to just lie down for a while can be very relaxing!
After Treatment
When you’re done, there are no elaborate after-care instructions. Just treat your skin with a little tender, loving care for a few days. Moisturize it carefully and keep it out of the sun. Wear sunscreen when you do go out.
FAQ About Treatment
How Many Treatments Will I Need?
It takes several treatments to get all your hair, and this is because of the way hair grows. Our hair goes through cycles, and the laser is only able to target follicles that are in the active growth stage. The follicles in their dormant stages will need to be targeted by subsequent treatments.
At the very most, you can expect only 80% of the hair to be targeted in any one treatment, and the initial treatment may be more like 25% to 50%. Hair removal rates speed up with subsequent treatments, though. Most people need about six to eight treatments to get their desired results. Ultimately, the number of treatments you need will depend on your unique physiology and goals. If you just want to thin your hair to make razor burn less likely, two or three treatments may be plenty.
When Will I See Results?
At first, it might seem that treatments haven’t worked. That’s because, while the follicles have been disabled, it can take a few days to shed the hairs that were in them. The shedding might look like normal growth for a day or two, but there’s nothing to worry about. Within two weeks you’ll definitely notice you have a lot less hair! In about three to four weeks, you’ll be ready for your next treatment, if you want or need it.
How Does Laser Treatment Compare to Other Hair Removal Options?
Before you start treatment, it’s important to know how this compares to your other options. Many people think of laser hair treatments as expensive, yet that’s often not so true once you consider the true cost of your other options.
Plucking
Plucking is cheap, of course: all you need is a pair of tweezers! But the cost here isn’t measured by the cost of the tweezers. It’s measured by the lost time. This simply isn’t a viable option if you need to get rid of a lot of hair, and while you could go to a salon for threading to get rid of some unwanted hair more quickly, you’re just spending a lot of money on something that hurts and has to be constantly redone.
Shaving
Shaving only removes hair that appears above the skin. That means that while shaving is fast, it’s an endless cycle, and the hair will be back in a few hours, days, or weeks. The average woman spends more than $10,000 on shaving. For men, the numbers are only slightly lower. And that’s not counting the time involved. The average woman will spend 85 whole days of her life shaving, and even at minimum wage that’s worth almost another $15,000 in lost time.
Depilatory Creams
These creams smell better now than they did a few years ago, but that’s not because they’re any less damaging to your skin. The manufacturers have simply added some neutralizing scents. These creams still contain harsh chemicals designed to reduce hair to jelly, and chemicals that can do that to your hair aren’t doing wonderful things to your skin. They’re also not cheap. A bottle may last a while, but over time you’ll see the costs add up.
IPL Treatments
Intense pulsed light, or IPL, works on the same principle as lasers, but it’s not as effective. Even if you get an IPL treatment from a spa-strength device, the wide wavelength of the light means that much of the energy is scattered before it can do its job of destroying the follicle. This means more treatments are needed for the same effect. Worse, the scattering effect means IPL devices have a harder time differentiating between skin and hair, so there are more limits on hair color and skin color with IPL.
Worst of all are those at-home IPL devices that offer far more than they can deliver. They aren’t nearly as strong as med-spa devices, so they take many more treatments and the hair comes back more quickly. There’s also the constant need to replace bulbs, the pain, and the possibility of eye damage if you make a mistake.
Laser Hair Treatments
Getting hair removed with lasers costs more initially than any other type of hair removal, but you’re not spending more over time. Once the follicles are disabled, the results last far longer and take very little to maintain. There’s also no worrying about whether you missed hair or some stubble is showing.
How long does laser hair removal last
Several years ago I decided to stop shaving my legs and switched to waxing. I was sick of ingrown hairs and the little red bumps that formed on my lower legs from an old school razor. (Note to readers: If this is already too much information, this article is probably not for you.) Waxing your legs, I soon learned, is wonderful—for three days. Then the hair begins to creep back in and you are stuck with it for at least two weeks, three if you want it to be even more efficient. At the end of last summer, I put my furry foot down. No more of this back-and-forth business, I decided. It was time to look into a more permanent option.
I remembered first hearing about laser hair removal years ago when people were first talking about it and thinking, “Eek, that sounds risky, I’m going to wait and see if this goes the way of the LaserDisc or the DVD.” Basically I wanted to make sure it was legit and worth the time, pain, and cost.
The way laser hair removal works, I soon discovered from a quick bit of precautionary research, is that pulses of highly concentrated light are emitted from the laser into the hair follicles. The pigment in the follicles absorbs the light and that destroys the hair. When I read that 90 percent of laser hair removal patients who are good candidates for the procedure report permanent hair loss after an average of three to six sessions, I was sold. “Chewbacca be gone,” I vowed to myself. “Next year, I am getting my legs lasered.”
My interest was particularly piqued by the spate of at-home laser treatments recently on the market. Could it be that easy? An investigation into the leading brands revealed some intriguing contenders, from the Tria 4X (an FDA-cleared device that claims to deliver more than triple the hair-eliminating energy of its DIY peers) to the IluminageTOUCH (which is approved to safetly treat a wider of skin tones than traditional lasers). But while the convenience of zapping away on my couch while watching Law & Order: SVU was seductive, none seemed quite right. I can barely operate my electric kettle—should I really be handling a laser?
Board-certified dermatologist Jessica Weiser, M.D., who I eventually approached, is also dubious about the at-home models. “I advise caution because they’re supposed to be much less intense than in office lasers but in the wrong hands you can probably do some serious damage if you’re double- or- triple pulsing areas that you shouldn’t be,” she tells me. “Typically people at home tend to be aggressive with themselves because they think that they can get a faster, better result without realizing potential consequences.”
I opt instead for the New York Dermatology Group, where Weiser specializes in medical, surgical, and cosmetic dermatology. When I call for an appointment, I learned that in order to have bikini-worthy legs by Memorial Day I would need to start the laser process in peak tights-and-boots weather. Soon, I’m headed down to their Flatiron offices for my first of six appointments—six, explains Dr. Weiser, to accommodate the hair’s growth cycles. “Hairs have a growth phase and also a resting and a falling-out phase,” she says. “Some of the hairs are not there right now because they are in the rest phase and not every hair will respond to the pulses.” Hence the need for multiple sessions, spaced about one month apart, the typical length of a hair-growth cycle.
I arrive at their office, a wide-open space with pale pine floors, and am shown to Dr. Weiser’s patient room, where she promptly asks if my legs are shaven.
“No!” I reply proudly, excited to show her that I wax instead.
“Hmm,” Dr. Weiser frowns. “I need the legs to be clean-shaven for the laser so we’ll have to shave them now,” she continues, explaining that for next six months of my laser treatment, I’ll need to exclusively shave my legs.
I am next instructed to put on a pair of bottle-green goggles while Dr. Weiser rubs ultrasound gel on my calves. Before we begin, she shares with me the one description of laser hair removal I have heard before: “It feels like a rubber band being flicked against your skin multiple times.”
Either I am wrong, or my pain threshold is incredibly low, because I find laser hair removal excruciatingly uncomfortable. In fact, I start to think, I would take a flick of a rubber band any day over the repeated burning zap of the laser. After the first few zaps, I squirm so much Dr. Weiser has to stop. It feels like someone is taking a lit match to my leg and holding it up close. The darker the hair, she explains, the coarser it is; therefore more energy is emitted onto that follicle, causing greater discomfort. When those hairs are zapped, it feels like a bee sting—and you just have to hope there aren’t too many.
The whole process is a bit like whack-a-mole; it seems there’s always another hair to quash. But Dr. Weiser is calm and methodical, her laser moving up and down the leg in straight lines. The noise of the pulses is like the beat of a metronome or a very fast elevator that beeps at every floor. (On my second visit, I remove my silk blouse in order to avoid unnecessary dry cleaning.) But with each subsequent visit, it gets progressively easier, partly because I am becoming more used to the process and partly because there is less hair to zap.
Clearly I’m not alone in this. Nearly half a million laser treatments were performed by dermatological surgeons in 2011 (the last year that collected data is available) according to the American Society for Dermatological Surgery, so it must be worth the minor suffering. Most people who get laser treatments are focusing on smaller areas of hair—underarm, upper lip, bikini line. These areas also happen to be much more sensitive: The very idea of getting my bikini line. These areas also happen to be much more sensitive. The lower leg, on the other hand, is one of the largest areas that they laser and it takes about 25 minutes altogether for both legs upon each visit.
By my third appointment I begin to see a real difference. The laser picks up a lot more “energy” as Dr. Weiser says, and I find the whole experience far less painful. For several days following each treatment, I have a series of small red bumps on my legs and this actually elates me because I know it means that the laser has picked up that follicle and when the redness dies down that spot will be hair-free for life—a delightful thought as summer, and a season of confidently wearing my favorite Isabel Marant silk-chiffon miniskirt, begins.
Is laser hair removal permanent
Shaving, plucking, or waxing hair can often be time-consuming. Many people turn to laser hair removal as a solution to take care of unwanted facial and body hair.
IS LASER HAIR REMOVAL PERMANENT FOREVER?
After you have your first laser hair removal treatment, you will see a reduced number of hairs immediately. Hair growth may increase in the treated area from 2 to 8 weeks after since not all hair follicles respond equally to the treatment. It usually takes 3 to 8 sessions to achieve permanent hair loss. You may also need touch-up sessions about once a year.
HOW LONG DOES PERMANENT LASER HAIR REMOVAL LAST?
After your initial treatments, laser hair removal should be permanent if you have a yearly touch-up session. You may even go years without seeing any regrowth. If you do, it tends to be finer and lighter in color and density than before.
IS LASER HAIR REMOVAL BAD?
You should receive your laser hair removal treatments from an experienced dermatologist. As with any procedure, side effects are possible, but the most common are discomfort, swelling, and redness, which may last for just a few days. More serious side effects such as scarring, or blistering are possible.
DOES LASER HAIR REMOVAL PERMANENTLY REDUCE HAIR?
Laser hair removal permanently reduces hair. Even if some hair grows back, it should be less noticeable as well as finer and lighter than it was before your treatments.
DOES LASER HAIR REMOVAL LIGHTEN SKIN?
Laser hair removal can sometimes lighten treated skin, but the effect is usually temporary. It’s more likely to happen if you have darker skin. Additionally, if you don’t avoid sun exposure as directed for six weeks before and after your treatment and use broad-spectrum sunscreen after your treatment, your skin may lighten.
HOW PAINFUL IS LASER HAIR REMOVAL?
If you’re receiving treatment in a sensitive area, your doctor may apply numbing gel on it before the laser is used. As the laser is used, some patients report a mild stinging sensation like a rubber band snapping.
SHOULD I SHAVE BEFORE LASER HAIR REMOVAL?
Shaving is recommended the day before your laser treatment. This removes the hair above the skin but leaves the hair shaft intact.
IS LASER HAIR REMOVAL SAFE LONG TERM?
As with any procedure, you may experience some side effects, but they’re less likely to occur if your treatment is performed by or under the supervision of a dermatologist who has experience in providing laser hair removal treatments.
CAN I SHOWER AFTER LASER HAIR REMOVAL?
You shouldn’t shower or bathe immediately after laser hair removal, but your doctor will tell you how long you should wait. The time may range from 8 hours up to 48 hours since your skin may still be sensitive.
If you’d like more information about laser hair removal, make an appointment today with Hollywood Dermatology & Cosmetic Specialists in South Florida. Our medical staff offers the latest, most effective treatments to help you look and feel your best.