Hi everyone . I am a transwoman and I have currently had 5 sessions of Laser hair removal. The thing that seems strange though is that I still have most of my facial hair. I would say that only about a quarter at the most has been removed, if that. Why is it taking so long> I have heard that people normally need between 8 - 10 sessions. How is it that my face is still covered in hair, even after 5 sessions? It hurts when they do it, but very few hairs actually fall out. xxx

Well I dont really know because I've never done it, but I have a friend that did the whole process with her legs and for her were around 12 sessions.
I mean i know its different but I hope it can ease your worry some


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Different follicles are in their growth cycle at different times. Secondly some can be next to others and be dormant because another follicle was receiving the blood flow. So it can sometimes take a good 12 sessions to remove. Hugs
Mariah

It´s an endless task, I guess    I never suffered from major facial hair, means I was never able to grew a full beard out but due to the long growth cycle of facial hair it takes months and x sessions, imo. Recently I had my 10th session and still there is a slight beard shadow at the upper lip. Bothering me so much. It´s getting better though, with patience (which I don´t have)  .

xoxo

It about the color.

If you have all black hair, and white skin tone -> which means alexandrite laser can be used on you, ALL hair would go away in 5 sessions and you would have 6th session couple months after to clean the regrowth from previous two sessions.

If you have darker brown shade of hair, that might take few sessions more.

If you have some lighter shade of brown hairs or some bronze hair... That will take another few sessions more. You're looking at 15 sessions at least.

If you have reddish hair... forget about laser, go straight to electrolysis. If you have some black/brown hairs inbetween it might make some sense to have 3 laser sessions to remove that.


The thing is laser needs to be started at low setting, and slowly raise power up when there are less hairs, because otherwise it would destroy your face, and leave you with permanent scars, which is not something you want on your face.
Lower settings do nothing for medium brown hairs, or lighter or bronze hair. So the only hairs that will be removed are the darker ones. Which means the rest of hair will happily regrow every month with undamaged roots, until you are 8-10 sessions in, and enough hair is reduced so the doctor can safely turn the power up at a level which will start to have effect with medium brown and bronze hair.


I'm over a year and half into laser, and I think I am at 14 sessions. I'm unlucky because of having some bronze hair around the chin... even though my face was quickly cleared of all darker hairs, it did nothing to bronze hair until I was 10+ sessions in.

Thanks very much for your support and advice . I am very fair skinned with dark brown hair, not completely black. A lot of my upper lip and neck hair has become patchy. I guess it is working, I am just being pessimistic as always. It's my trouble *hugs* xxx

  I did 13 sessions of laser over the course of a year.  It dramatically reduced the coarseness of the hair which also improved other related skin issues with shaving/regrowth/ingrowns.  Of course it did nothing for the light hairs but at least my face was passable at this point with light concealer makeup and much less shaving.  While the coarseness may have permanently changed and some follicles may have been killed forever, I'll never know for sure, this was only scratching the surface of the whole process for me.  It quickly made me feel better and look marginally better in my early days of transition but it absolutely was not the whole answer.  I've since completed 208 hours of electrolysis as of the end of last week and I'm not through yet.  I was doing one three-hour session per week, but now that I've started full-time I've had to expand to 2x three-hour sessions per week to stay presentable between treatments.  Laser made my face right for only about one week out of every four and I had to always be careful about sun exposure.  Electrolysis keeps my face looking good most days of every week and I don't have to hide from the sun like a vampire.  I also virtually never shave anymore.  The commitment in time and money is dramatically higher but the results are better and permanent.

  Mmmmm is right about the progressive power level increases vs rate of improvement.  This is exactly the experience I had in my treatment.  The spa owner was keeping tabs on the process and was quite well-versed in the machine operations and assessing skin response for effective but safe use of power levels.  Lots of laser techs are too afraid to use high-enough settings or are working with ineffective equipment.  The hand-piece on this machine had to be replaced at one point about halfway through my sessions because it wasn't outputting the laser energy properly.  Many techs probably wouldn't figure out this sort of equipment failure and just keep treating ineffectively.  The corrected output was notably higher the next time (as in, "Ya, THAT HURTS MORE!!!").  I've been treated in other areas of the body by two other businesses and the difference in quality of equipment and skill-levels was quite noticeable (as in LOWER).

So does that means the laser hair removal won't actually remove my hair? If that's the case I have been wasting time and money. xxx

Will I never have to shave my face again after long enough? How many of you never have to shave your face since laser hair removal? xxx

I was very fortunate that I have super light skin, dark hair, and whatever laser was being used worked extremely well on me. However, the laser tech did stress at the beginning that some people need more sessions than others. I ended up finished in 5 sessions with a couple of additional touch-ups, and now have maybe a dozen surviving facial hairs - no shaving needed, though I do pluck from time to time.

Laser *is* permanent for the follicles it kills, but they can't guarantee getting all the follicles - which is why it's billed as hair "reduction," as they can't promise there won't be a few leftovers (as I've had). Still, those cost and speed are so much better than electro that if it works on your skin and hair combination it's likely to be far faster and cheaper to at least start with laser. (I was 95% cleared in about 8 months, versus years with electro.)

Quote from: tesseract49 on June 20, 2015, 10:37:05 PM
Will I never have to shave my face again after long enough? How many of you never have to shave your face since laser hair removal? xxx

Oh I wish and hope that was true but....as you heard, it has a lot to do with that color we started out with.  I have now had seven sessions over two years and have next to no dark hairs and no dark bread shadow.  However, the blondies and greylings remain and it may likely require electrolysis for girls like you and I to eliminate shaving.  And then the truth is, we know cisgender women who need to shave too.  We are mammals; it comes with the territory and the cost to appear and feel right by some beauty standards;D

  Be aware that while it can kill permanently and make things look good for a while, it also has a habit of putting hair growth into a sort of extended hibernation instead.  This means the hairs can actually come out of their dormant state like a year or two later and really surprise you.  I've had laser all over my body.  That plus hormones dramatically reduced the hair in colour, thickness and density.  Now after more than a year since the last treatment I'm seeing a minor resurgence that there doesn't seem to be any other explanation for (my blood is being tested every three months).  This has included my facial hair unfortunately.

  The laser treatment I had on my face was at a far-stronger setting than most of the other clients could handle and my skin and hair colours were deemed to be optimal.  Maybe I'm just really unlucky, but for me laser clearly has not been a complete, effective or permanent solution.  The only way you're going to know how you fare is by waiting a long time.

Quote from: tesseract49 on June 19, 2015, 11:59:01 PM
Hi everyone . I am a transwoman and I have currently had 5 sessions of Laser hair removal. The thing that seems strange though is that I still have most of my facial hair. I would say that only about a quarter at the most has been removed, if that. Why is it taking so long> I have heard that people normally need between 8 - 10 sessions. How is it that my face is still covered in hair, even after 5 sessions? It hurts when they do it, but very few hairs actually fall out. xxx

It depends on the type of laser used and the color of hair being zapped and your skintone. You look very fair, like me. I had dark hair, and my laser-lady used either an Alexandrite or ruby laser on me...I can't recall which. It took two sessions--full sessions where they do the whole facial area. Then I came back for maybe 1 touchup a few months after....no hair again, ever...ever.

To contrast, I had Silk-whatever...the one that can be used on all skin-tones...I had that done on my pits, legs and arms...5 sessions in and nothing changed...not one single hair less than when I started, and by then I'd spent well over $1,500. Total waste of money.

If you have time and the money, the Tria laser is good for use on the body at home. I did my pits and entire vag area over the course of maybe 3 sessions. I no longer have any pit hair, and maybe one or two vag hairs I have to zap. I used it on my legs and it was tedious and boring and took over a year(I wasn't consistent), but it did kill of the majority of hair. I only shave my legs every few weeks, and alot of that is the zapped hairs falling out. Again though, Tria works best on dark hair/fair skin. I highly recommend it for small areas....but god bless you if you have the patience to do your entire legs--it's crazy slow!! But actually well worth it

I think it depends on a lot of factors, including the skill of the person using the machine. If they're not used to male strength beard hair they may have it set too low. I think some oeople do very well with laser - my hair was too light so I had to go with electro instead. Despite the pain, time and money involved it's proving to be permanent.

Laser is designated as "hair reduction" technology. For some people, it does remove hair. For others, it doesn't. And there are a lot of variables in there. The biggest ones, as others have mentioned, are having optimum skin and hair tones (light skin, dark hair), but there are other factors as well.

Additionally, while certain blood tests used by endocrinologists may indicate you have "low testosterone" there can still be enough free testosterone floating around to drive formation of DHT, Dihydrotestosterone, which is a testosterone derivative that causes male pattern baldness and also drives the formation and growth of facial and body hair.

As Ms. Grace notes, the only FDA certified method of "hair removal" is electro. But it takes longer, and is more painful.

Honestly, were I in your situation, I'd continue monitoring progress, but if I began to see very little change after the 8th or 9th session, I'd just stop and switch to electrology. It sounds like yours is having an impact so maybe all you really need is to be patient.

Quote from: Mariah2014 on June 20, 2015, 08:42:17 AM
Different follicles are in their growth cycle at different times. Secondly some can be next to others and be dormant because another follicle was receiving the blood flow. So it can sometimes take a good 12 sessions to remove. Hugs
Mariah

Totes this!!
Also, it depends on the laser type. As I said, I've tried several lasers for face and body. The ruby/Alexandrite/whateve worked best on my face because it has a small spot size and they can change the fluence--I think that's what it's called--based on how dense the hair is, how deep the root, etc. Sometimes a lower fluence zaps better than a higher because of rebound energy being reflected off your skin--or something to that effect. Anyways a good laser operator will know how to handle it and can work amazing results on you! Don't be upset by seeing hairs either because even though they're dead, zapped and gone to hair-heaven, the little bits under the skin need time to work out. It can take what seems to be forever on the face...but they do come out. You can tell they're dead because you can just wipe them off or pull them off with your fingers--no need for tweezing once they're dead