You may have heard of IPL hair removal and wondered what it is as it often often talked of alongside laser hair removal as a permanent method of hair reduction.
IPL stands for Intense Pulsed Light and is actually one of the most common forms of “laser hair removal” used though it doesn’t actually use lasers in the strictest sense of the word!
The difference is that lasers (or Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation) produce a precise high energy beam of light in a single wavelength while Intense Pulsed Light systems use hundreds of different wavelengths of light. The bursts of light in IPL are filtered so that the flashes can be targeted at the hair in as precise a way as lasers would be.
In fact there are very few differences in the effect of laser and IPL hair removal treatment. Both work in the same way. The high energy light (whether from a laser or IPL hair removal machine) is designed to burn the hair and damage the follicle while leaving the skin relatively unscathed. The hair follicle is affected by the light energy heating up the cells at the base of the hair and damaging them causing them (hopefully) to be unable to produce further hair growth.
IPL Hair removal on legs and feet
The benefits of IPL hair removal over lasers are that it treats a much larger area of skin per light pulse than laser hair treatment. It is therefore extremely popular with patients and clinics alike as it is both faster and cheaper without appearing to have any reduction in effectiveness. However the costs of laser hair removal you see quoted are generally those for the IPL form so this reduction has already been taken into account.
Another benefit of IPL over laser treatment is that there is less risk of damage to skin. That’s because the light is sent out in 4 or 5 pulses. The skin heats up less rapidly with each pulse than the darker hair and follicle and cools down faster between pulses resulting in damage to the hair follicle but not to the surrounding skin. Skin is generally treated with a cooling gel to reduce any burning sensation too.
While it will always be easier to treat patients with fair skin and dark hair (where the difference in hair and skin color is greatest) some IPL machines have been designed to deal with different skin colors these days.
The problem with treating other shades of hair is that it is the melanin in dark hair which absorbs the heat from the IPL machine. If you have blond or gray hair it has very little melanin to absorb the heat energy and so it does not get destroyed.
If you have dark, olive or tanned skin then the skin will also absorb some of the heat energy and may get damaged. This has been tackled by controlling the light in different ways for different skin types. Your treatment will probably take longer than someone who has fair skin and dark hair but it is now possible. Make sure you discuss these details during the initial consultation to ensure that the treatment and machine being proposed for IPL hair removal treatment are matched to your specific requirements.
Unfortunately just as with laser hair removal treatment IPL only damages follicles that are in their growth phase. This means that each Intense Pulsed Light treatment will only be effective on about 60% of the hair follicles that are actively growing at that time. (This percentage varies a little across different parts of the body). You have to rely on further IPL hair removal treatments to tackle the remaining hair. This means that everyone needs a course of at least 3 treatments and possibly 6 to 8 for best results.
