How IPL works and what the benefits are.

Progressive treatment IPL offers full body hair removal, but you can also use IPL to target separate areas, such as your arms, legs, or bikini area, depending your individual needs. When using IPL, you’ll hold a flashgun device that delivers a spectrum of light to the skin. These rays of light target melanin, which helps it reach the hair root and disable key areas within the follicle.

Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) methods:

Works by:

Focusing a narrow beam of concentrated light on to small sections of skin. The light is absorbed by pigment in the hair follicle underneath the skin surface, thus heating the hair follicle and disabling hair growth depending on growth cycle (anagen only). The paler your skin and the darker your hair, the better the treatment will work.

Best for:

Bikini, underarm, upper lip

Advantages:

Much faster and less painful than it used to be, because larger sections of skin can now be treated in one go. In many cases, hair is discouraged from ever growing back, or if it does, the hair tends to be very fine and thin.

Disadvantages:

Requires shaving of the skin before each treatment. Results are not permanent. So you need multiple treatments that can get very expensive. You also have to be careful about going in the sun for up to six weeks either side of your treatment as the changes to pigment in your skin can increase the risk of sunburn. Hormonal changes like pregnancy or the menopause can also cause hair to start growing back again.

Beauty rating:

Great for areas that cause you real distress, like the upper lip, but quite extreme as an ordinary hair removal option.

Dermatologist’s note:

“The laser works by ‘homing in’ on the pigment in the hairs – so the closer your hair colour to your skin colour, the higher the risk of burning and potential scarring. The ideal combination is therefore dark hair on pale skin. If you have dark skin, you should give careful thought before embarking on this technique.”

Some main benefits of using IPL , compared to other hair removal methods:

1. You can do IPL hair removal in your own home, by gently shining flashes of light around your desired body areas after shaving.

2. IPL notably slows down the natural shedding and regrowth of hair, so it becomes thinner and less noticeable over time.

3. Waxing or epilating usually comes with the stipulation of not shaving for a few weeks leading up to the treatment, which can result in prickly body hair during that transitional period – not ideal if you had plans to show off your new swimsuit at the beach! You won’t have to stress about this issue with IPL, as you’re actually advised to shave before the treatment. Shaving before your IPL hair removal treatment assists the light beam in focusing on the hair root.

4. When using IPL, you’ll need to shave less and less as your treatments go on. As the hair follicles will be empty, you’ll notice fewer ingrown hairs and less stubble ‘shadow’.

5. IPL treatment helps to smooth out the texture of your skin, whereas waxing or threading can cause inflammation

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