How Laser Hair Removal Works
For men, perhaps it’s annoying to shave in the morning and have a shadow eight hours later. For women, think of the amount of times it takes to shave your legs, stomach, bikini line, and armpits—just to go out in a swim suit for an hour. Dealing with unwanted hair can be both time-consuming and costly. Luckily, however, laser hair removal therapy now makes it easy to eliminate your unwanted hair.
The Biology of Hair
Hair is actually made up of two parts: the colored part that you see and the invisible root of it buried within your skin. It is the part in your skin, the follicle, that is important in laser hair removal. The follicle is like a sock that holds the important stuff for your hair, including the blood vessels that nourish the living part of the strand.
The visible part of your hair is actually dead. It is made up of three layers of a protein called keratin. Surprisingly, keratin is also the protein that composes your nails, as well as hooves, horns, and teeth in other animals. The color of hair comes from the pigment distributed throughout the middle layer of keratin in the hair shaft.
Hair Follicles and Lasers
Because shaving, depilatories, and waxing only really affects the dead part of the hair, it is only a temporary way to address unwanted body hair. However, laser treatments are unique in that they actually stop the problem at its source—the follicle. Lasers used in hair removal are precisely calibrated so that they penetrate and harm the hair follicles and not the skin itself.
If a specialized laser is flashed onto your follicles, it can damage them so that they can no longer produce hair. Because this must happen during the growth phase, you usually have to go in for multiple treatments until all follicles for the unwanted hair growth have been injured.
Contact Us
If you suffer from unwanted hair growth, it can damage your self-confidence, as well as sap your preparation time. For more information on getting rid of this hair with the help of lasers, contact talented Austin cosmetic surgeon Dr. Apostolakis today at 512-329-8989.