When you get a laser hair removal treatment, you can expect to get results pretty quickly. Almost instantly. And, they're permanent! Unlike shaving, waxing, threading or tweezing... when you get rid of your hair with the laser, it's pretty much gone for good. It's possible that some of your hairs will still regrow, but it's only a small effort to shave those off once every week.

The laser can also treat age spots and facial hair. When the laser's energy is absorbed by the hair follicles as heat, the hair follicle is eventually destroyed. It might need multiple laser pulses, but its demise is pretty much guaranteed once the performing doctor aims his laser device at a hair follicle. Once a hair follicle is destroyed, it does not heal or regrow. A hair follicle is always gone for good.

Around twenty years ago, laser hair removal was first discovered. And since the mid nineties, the treatment is commercially available to the public. It's gone mainstream and ever since the genie has been out of the bottle. Like with any cosmetic surgery, it has become cheaper and better. Clinics are popping out of the ground like mushrooms and more and more people are having their hair surgically removed by the laser.

Laser Hair Removal Surgery - How Does It Work?

The laser points at a hair follicle underneath the skin's surface. The idea is to only heat up the hair follicle until it is destroyed. The surrounding tissue must stay intact. This is possible because the laser's energy is absorbed as heat only by colored tissue. It can penetrate the skin's surface and once it hits the colored tissue of a hair follicle, only then is the heat released. Only the hair follicle burns to a crisp, leaving the rest of the skin alone.

A hair follicle has to be in its growing phase in order for the doctor to be able to see it, point a laser at it, and destroy it. At any given time, some of your hair follicles will be in their resting phase. For this reason, you will have to come back a second or even a third time a few weeks later to have the follicles, which will by that time be growing again, zapped by the laser.

There are various laser types available and the surgeon will choose the one that's best for you after he has had a consult with you. The various lasers all have their own wavelength spectrums. The laser's wavelength is determined by the medium used to make it.

Examples of the various types of lasers are Yag, pulsed diode array, alexandrite, ruby and argon lasers.

The wavelengt of the laser used definitely has an impact on the laser hair removal surgery's outcome. Also the laser's pulse length is important to keep in mind. For darker skins, longer pulse lengths work better.

The laser's width also plays a role. The lasers used in hair removal surgery are not exactly the thin like cutting lasers. They are much wider than that. About a quarter of an inch to be exact. The width of the laser has to be around 4 times as large as the depth of the hair follicles that are to be destroyed.

With all these things to keep in mind, I'm sure you want nobody else than a professional to carry out this procedure for you. An unskilled person would be able to do a lot of damage to you if he chose the wrong laser, the wrong number of pulses, the wrong pulse length and the wrong laser width!