At Mountain Radiance we are greatly amused by the claims of “painless” laser hair removal by some of our competitors – even some of the national chains.
As the Medical Director of Mountain Radiance, I reviewed equipment for over a year before deciding which was the BEST laser for our medical spa – a combination of the most efficient and the least painful.
During this year long process I attended meetings and product demonstrations. I personally had my back “lasered” by several platforms (different “brands” of lasers that use completely different technologies). My back is roughly the same surface area as full legs and it was very important to me that I experience this process so I would understand it better.
I would refer you to our article about “How it works” so you can review the efficacy of this process and what you have to do to understand whether this is a technology for you, also what you must do to prepare (avoid sun exposure in the area to be treated!).
So, I had my entire back “lasered” with three different brands of lasers which use different wavelengths of laser light and different cooling / pain controlling technologies.
The first system I tried was the Candela systems of “GentleLase” and “GentleYAG”. My impression is that the manufacturer (Candela) it *stating* that these lasers are gentle but in actually, to me and my experience, they are not. The GentleLase system does not touch the skin with the laser head, it uses a stretch and spray system of coolant that cools the skin at the time the laser fires. Not only did I personally find this system painful, when we demonstrated it to our office staff they all found it painful and unpleasant, we had several people who had crescent moon shaped burns on the skin! These were like sunburn and did go away, but still!
Incredibly (to me) is the fact that some of the hair removal spas out there are actually advertising this system as “painless”. Complicating their sales approach is that they only sell “packages” so you have to commit to buying an expensive package and then you find out that it’s painful.
The other system we tried was Sciton (pronounced “Sigh – ton”). I found this to be painful as well, and during useage over several months we found that for our clients it was not as effective as we would have wanted.
The LightSheer uses a liquid cooled synthetic sapphire tip which truly is nearly painless in some areas and under some circumstances. There are more “tender” locations where there may be some brief discomfort – like the snap of a rubber band – but as a rule I found it to be much, much more comfortable than the two other major brands that I had tried.
When you are choosing a laser hair removal service, consider the highly effective and much more comfortable LightSheer, such as we have at Mountain Radiance.
