This question comes up quite a lot in clinic. It’s an understandable question. Patients want to know the hows and the whys. The answer is ‘It Depends’, followed by a fairly long discussion on what it depends on. We thought it would be a good idea to explain it here for anyone needing a deeper explanation.
Hair In The Beginning
To answer the question properly we need to go back, right back to where we were evolving into humans and before. Hair back then was an important survival factor. It plays a part in thermoregulation, skin protection, and camouflage, and, in early times, gave babies something to hold on to whilst their parents swung from the trees. Hair also had communicative and sexual attraction functions. One of the clever things about hair is that each individual hair is in its own cycle (see below). Without this system, you would have a period of having no hair at all and, during this time, lose the benefits it gave.
The individual hair’s cycle
- Anagen Phase: Active growth period of hair
- Catagen Phase: Transitional phase where growth stops
- Telogen Phase: Resting phase before hair sheds
- Exogen Phase: The shedding phase
The Anagen Phase
Laser hair removal
The Numbers
To understand further, we need to look at the numbers. You will have noticed that laser hair removal clinics offer courses of six, eight or more sessions. To understand why, a calculation has to be performed. Let’s take one study to use as an example, referenced here. Thigh hair in women (bearing in mind there are differences between individuals, sexes and bodily areas) was in the anagen phase roughly 25% of the time. So, on day one, say you target a certain area of your body that has 100 hairs. You can expect to remove 25 hairs. In the next session, you are targeting 75 hairs and can expect to remove around 19. Extrapolate this out to 6 sessions, and you can expect to have removed approximately 82% of hairs. After eight sessions, 90%.
Laser Session Spacing
We can expect to increase the above percentages with some clever spacing of your appointments. We know that laser hair removal is most effective during the anagen phase when the hair is actively growing and connected to the dermal papilla, providing a direct pathway for the laser to target and destroy the hair follicle. Therefore, scheduling sessions too close together may miss hairs that were not in the anagen phase during the previous session but will enter it later. Spacing sessions optimally allow for catching more hairs as they enter the anagen phase, thereby increasing the overall efficacy of the treatment.
The Answer
So the definitive answer is six sessions, maybe a little more, for an 80-90% reduction, depending on your own hair’s characteristics. The example above gives approximate numbers for female thigh hair (men’s hair faired a little better in the study) but sheds light on why six sessions are needed, in general, to get substantial results. Individual patients will have varied results. Another factor is that hair is said to be in the anagen stage less if a patient is stressed. This is hard to quantify, but to be on the safe side, try to be a little more relaxed in the run-up to your removal session. It just might make our efforts more fruitful!
Hopefully we answered your question! If you have further questions about our hair removal services, please feel free to drop us a message or just take the plunge and take advantage of our discounted course session prices now that you are well-armed with the above knowledge!
