What is Alexandrite Laser?
The Alexandrite laser removes hair on white to pale brown skin types. The laser works best on dark hair. White, blonde and grey hairs will not respond. Ginger and pale brown hairs respond poorly. Men and women can be treated, as can all body parts, and all skin colours. Skin with even a faint sun tan cannot be treated.
Alexandrite laser hair removal is not permanent as hair follicles have great regenerative powers. Most people however, will have long lasting benefits. The stronger the laser the greater the effect on the hair, but the greater the risk of unwanted effects. Regular treatment also improves results. It is difficult to predict individual responses as many factors are involved: the thickness of the hairs, different body sites, hormonal differences, how black the hairs are and how strong a laser light can be tolerated. However in general the hair free intervals gradually lengthen and regrowth gets sparser and finer.
Laser treatment will give you longer hair- free intervals than waxing, shaving, plucking, or depilatory creams. It can treat more hairs than electrolysis due to the size of the laser beam.
The laser makes an extremely powerful beam of red light. This can blind you or burn you if used wrongly. Care must be taken to protect eyes by limiting the number of people in the treatment room and wearing protective goggles during treatments. The strength of the laser must be carefully adjusted to avoid burns. The skin surface must be kept chilled with cold air and ice packs.
The bright laser light will heat up anything that is dark. The hair follicles can be damaged by heating up the black hairs in them. Most of the follicles on your body are resting and hairless at any one time. These resting follicles will not be affected by the laser light. However by repeating the treatment with each new crop of hairs eventually most follicles will be lasered. A lasered follicle takes a long time to recover, depending on how hot it has got. The technique depends on there being more dark pigment in your hair than there is in your skin, so that the hair follicles can be heated whilst your skin is kept cool. This is why most unwanted effects occur in darker skin types. Recently suntanned skin is particularly vulnerable to dark marks.
During a Treatment
There is some discomfort, which is brief and can be relieved with the cold air. The treated area will be red and may have goose bumps for an hour or so. The skin may feel sensitive for a day or two. Some peeling or scabbing may occur with temporary changes in skin colour, usually in the form of dark marks. Under-powered treatment may stimulate hair growth. Rare unwanted effects include scarring, patchy loss of skin pigment, loosening of dental veneers and thrombosis of small veins.
After and Between Treatments
You should stop plucking and waxing some weeks before starting treatment. You can trim or shave. You must also resist plucking hairs between treatments. A plain moisturiser such as Aqueous Cream should be applied gently after treatment to prevent peeling. You should also wear a strong sun block on exposed areas. This should be factor 25 or stronger. This applies to all skin colours and is very important. If your skin darkens a little in the summer or while on holiday, then you will be more likely to get burnt at your next treatment.
The Technical Details
Alexandrite Lasers work very similarly to Ruby Lasers as they are both long pulsed. They are known for frequently producing side effects such as pigmentary changes. Alexandrite Lasers are typically 755nm. This enables the laser ability to penetrate deeply into the dermis.
There are a number of different brands of Alexandrite Lasers: Apogee, Epitouch, GentleLase, Ultrawave and Epicare. Each of these brands of lasers use a different spot size laser, and each contain different features. When looking into treatments using an Alexandrite laser it may be worth looking into which features are available.
For more information also see Laser Hair Removal
Sources include: The Private Skin Laser Clinic, www.skinlaserclinic.co.uk