Give Your Skin the Gift of Laser Hair Removal

We all know that most presents we receive for Christmas or Hanukah are, uh, less than exactly what we wanted. It’s the thought that counts, right? Remember to keep telling that to yourself when you open Aunt Edna’s gift during your family get-together.

You can always give yourself something. It could even be a gift that keeps on giving for years and years.

Laser hair removal at Elite Plastic Surgery. Now that’s something any woman, and quite a few men, would like to see under the tree. Winter in Grand Rapids is a great time to start getting rid of those unwanted hairs, as it will take a few sessions to achieve the degree of permanent hair reduction you seek.

Costly and a pain

Getting rid of our unwanted hair using the usual means — shaving, plucking, waxing, or applying harsh depilatory creams — is so tedious and so continual. You get rid of the hair only to see it start coming back up two or three weeks later.

Plus, it’s expensive. Estimates for a woman’s lifetime of shaving add up to over $10,000 in blades, shave creams, and after-shave balms. Whoa.

Lasers are better

When you think of it that way, removing hair permanently with laser energy is not only more convenient, but it’s cheaper in the long run. At Elite we use broadband laser (BBL) light for our laser hair removal.

We direct our BBL laser light onto the area with the unwanted hair. The energy delivered in the short pulses is absorbed by the melanin in the hair shafts. It instantly converts to heat energy and that heat travels down the shaft into the hair follicle where it is anchored. The heat damages or destroys the follicle, preventing it from growing hair moving forward. The procedure isn’t painful, most people equate the laser pulses to feeling as if a person lightly snapped a rubber band on their skin, but we apply a topical numbing cream prior to treatment anyway to keep our patients comfortable.

Why does it take more than one treatment?

All of the hair on your body at any moment is growing at different stages of the growth cycle. There are four stages and the best time to hit the hair is when it is in the anagen, or growing, phase. But some hairs will be in the transition and resting phases, and they don’t respond to laser energy in those phases because the hair is already being shed by the body so the shafts are not actively anchored in the hair follicle. Some of your unwanted hair will be in the growth phase, but others won’t be, so another session will need to be done to catch more and more unwanted hair in the growth phase.

Why not give yourself the gift of hair free underarms, legs, sideburns, or wherever you have hair you’re not overly fond of. Call us at Elite Plastic Surgery, (616) 459-1907 to schedule a consultation for laser hair removal.

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