Apollonia Poliseno
ENG1000C
Prof. Marsh
Due March 27, 2007
LASER HAIR REMOVAL
Are you tired of shaving, waxing or tweezing? Do you find yourself upset because you have a ton of hair and you just want to get rid of it? Laser hair removal, the new and improved technology to removing your un-wanted hair. According to the New York Daily News, on November 12, 2006, “Laser hair removal is the newest trend of the century”. Many people are curious and want to do it.
Many of us look in the mirror and do not want the un-wanted hair on our body, face, back, legs, toes, underarms, you name it! Many people are tired of waxing and then the hairs grow back in two weeks. Others are tired of shaving because the hair comes back with in two days, and tweezing…how far can you go with that?
Laser hair removal technology can solve all of these problems. What actually is Laser hair removal? I for one have done this experiment on my under-arms, and I have lasered many patients because I am a medical assistant and I work for a dermatologist in Douglaston New York.
When you make an appointment for a consult, the person doing the laser will tell you everything you need to know about laser hair removal. The laser is connected to a three foot long wire, which is hooked up to a computer. The head of the laser is about one inch long and one inch wide (square shaped).
When you are put in the laser room, your eyes are completely covered with very dark goggles. You will not be able to see what is going on during the procedure. The person(s) that are doing the laser wear strong sunglasses to protect their eyes from the laser.
Once the goggles are on, an ultra sound gel is put onto the area being lasered. This gel is very cold and helps the laser move smoothly. Once you are set the laser is put on and the procedure begins.
A bunch of consent forms most be signed before the procedure. The reason for one consent form is because there are possible side effects that have to be clarified. Other consent forms protect the person(s) who is doing the procedure.
The laser starts off on a certain level. The level is set according to your skin color, hair color, eye color, and depending on how bad you burn in the sun. After every treatment the level rises to get a better response.
The laser works best on whiter skin and darker hairs. The laser can sense the difference between the dark hairs and the light skin. When a dark person with dark hairs or pale skin with blonde hairs does the treatment, the laser is set at the lowest and slowest level because it has to be extra careful on sensing the difference between the hairs and the skin.
The feeling of the laser is more so of a tiny pinch. It feels like a rubber band snapping at every single hair. You can definitely feel the laser shooting out the hairs one by one. You can even smell a burning smell, which is a smell of the molecule burning.
It is not painful, it is tolerable. The treatment takes anywhere between five minutes to an hour, depending on the area being treated. For instance, if the upper lip is being treated it takes about five minutes. If the underarms are being treated it takes fifteen minutes, if the chest is being treated it takes about a half hour.
It takes about five to seven treatments for the hairs to completely go away. Every session, forty percent of the hairs are completely gone. If you do the math it takes anywhere from five to seven sessions. According to Dr.Osman, she said “it depends how much hair a person has, tells us how many sessions we need to do.”
Many people that are considering laser hair removal ask, “How much is this going to cost me?” Of course since computers and knowledge is involved, it sounds extremely expensive to have laser hair removal. Depending on the amount of hair taken off, adds up the price. For instance Dr.Osman charges two hundred dollars for the upper lip, per session. Remember it takes about five to seven sessions. It is worth is if the average female spends about ten dollars a week to wax their upper lip.
There are not that many disadvantages because this technology is brand new, and has only been out for about ten years. Dr. Blanco said, “Even if there are disadvantages, science is so far advanced that we can fix the difficulty.” Scientist predicts that this can be completely permanent jugging by their studies. Remember, this is an experiment.
Laser hair removal has many advantages. It is definitely worth the money, worth the patience and worth the results. All the patients I have done laser hair removal on are all pleased with their results. The thought of never having to shave, tweeze, or wax ever again is the best thing to hear before going to the beach, or doing any kind of activity that shows skin.
1 comment:
Apollonia,
The report addresses what might seem a "mundane" topic, but I think there are A LOT of opportunities with a topic like this to do interesting research beyond simply the process of having this procedure done. Why do people choose to do it? What's wrong with hair (for women, for men)? Why the social pressure to "remove" it in the first place? How much does this industry make off people's desires to be "hairless"? Why is some hair acceptable (on the head) and other hair not? Why is baldness ridiculed (on TV they talk about it like it's a disease) when it functions like a kind of "natural hair removal"?! Research is about considering and investigating questions like this.
Also, the paragraph colors are nice but also quite distracting. I don't know if it's the best strategy for this kind of writing. Remember, the first priority is to make it easy to read and to draw your reader to the *content* of your writing, not the surface.
This week I'll distribute a Comments sheet in class. You'll benefit from studying all my comments, but in particular please pay attention to Comments # 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 11.
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