CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE could last from a few minutes to a few hours depending on the skin's sensitivity. Welting, which lasts only for a few minutes, also occurs immediately, along with swelling. Mears says contrary to claims from people who perform different techniques to remove hair, electrolysis seldom leaves scarring. She says people need to inform her about their sensitivity so she can adjust the settings accordingly. She says electrolysis doesn't scar the body if the electrologist performs the procedure correctly.
Mears charges by time rather than number of hairs destroyed. She says she requires every patient to attend a consultation visit to discuss price, procedure and skin sensitivity.
Although she charges $60 per hour, not every area does not take that long to dehair. For example, she only allows 20 minutes to remove hair on the upper lip or eyebrows. Even if the area requires moretime to complete, she says too much heat in that small of an area can damage the skin. She charges $26 for a 20-minute treatment to make up for effort and equipment used for such a short amount of time.
But, electrolysis
fair skin, Bittenbender says. The settings on the LightSheer Diode Laser System used in his Dermatology Center of Lawrence, 930 Iowa St., don't go low enough to treat individuals with very dark skin.
is not a one-time procedure. Not every hair grows during the same growth cycle, so each patient should expect several sessions of electrolysis before all of the hair follicles are destroyed. Mears recommends waiting four to six weeks between sessions.
Laser hair removal works by destroying the hair follicles under the laser's two-centimeter tip. When destroying the follicle, the hair growing from it is also destroyed.
People with unnaturally tanned skin can't undergo laser hair removal, either. The hairs' melanin attracts the laser, but unnaturally tan skin will overpower the laser's attraction. This attraction could lead to hyper-hypo pigmentation, which causes the skin's natural pigmentation to disappear.
And with this laser...
Laser hair removal works by melanin pigment absorbing a wavelength of light. This procedure works only on pigmented hair, or people with brown or black hair. The ideal candidate for this procedure would be someone who has dark hair and
The LightSheer Diode Laser System uses a nine by nine millimeter jewel lens attached to the tip of its gun. This jewel lens, or ChillTip, which is the most important part of the laser, protects the skin from overheating. The dermatologist pushes the ChillTip along the area while the laser emits a second-long wavelength of light
that destroys each follicle.
Laser hair removal produces almost the same side effects as electrolysis, such as temporary redness and swelling. However, Amanda Challacombe, skin care specialist, advises her patients not to have contact with the sun for long periods of time. So for the next four to eight weeks after treat-
ment, patients should not lie around the pool hoping to catch some rays. Just like artificially tanned skin, Challacombe says too much sun could also lead to hyperhyp pigmentation in the skin. But if patients want to go out in the sun, she advises them to stay out for only short periods of time with the use of sun block S.P.F. 30 or 45.
Unlike laser hair removal, Mears requires her patients to stay out of the sun for three days after electrolysis treatment. But better yet, she recommends to her patients who want to enjoy the summer sun, but who also want to remove unattractive body hair, to undergo the sessions during the fall and winter months.
Laser hair removal for an entire leg starts around $600. The cost may be higher than electrolysis, but the procedure also takes less time.
The biggest difference between electrolysis and laser hair removal is the cost. Unlike electrolysis, laser hair removal patients have to pay for time and also help pay for a $70,000 laser machine, Bittenbender says. Twenty minutes of laser removal on the upper lip costs$ 60 compared to Mears' $26 electrolysis procedure. The cost of a full leg would start at$ 600 and a full back for men starts at $275. The trade-off for price is it takes less time for laser hair removal. The back and legs can take two to three hours, Challacombe says, but that is a short amount of time compared to electrolysis.
Similar to electrolysis, laser hair removal also requires several sessions in between growth cycles in order to remove every hair follicle. Challacombe recommends waiting four to eight weeks between sessions.
Students who attend several sessions of hair removal most likely will notice hair growth in that same area several years or even several weeks later, depending on the activeness of their hormones. And although students are about 25 to 30 percent of Mears' patients, both she and Bittenbender warn them, as well as other young adults, that permanent hair removal may never truly be permanent - a misleading name, indeed. Hormones force new hair to grow in the place where electrolysis or laser removal destroyed
the old hair follicles.
"It's important that people understand that this won't prevent you from growing new hair," Bittenbender says. "You just grew the hair you normally would've grown." He says, for example, a 20-year-old man wanted to remove his newly grown back hair, which some form of permanent hair removal had taken care of. But, five years later, his back hair was back. Once again, he had to redo the several sessions required to "permanently" remove that new, unwanted hair.
Mitchell's dermatologists in Topeka, where she underwent the laser procedure, warned her about the possibility of hair regrowth; she wanted to do the several sessions anyway. Since her five treatments, she has seen some hair growth. But, shaving twice per week, rather than every day, brings a sense of triumph to her former 5 o'clock shadow humiliation.