OK. Just got my upper body laser beamed today and I feel like I can offer some general tips to help any dolls out there endure this torturous process. I've been doing it since january this year and have gotten pretty good at it methinks.
I'm deliberately leaving out the general advice the clinic tells you because you NEED to do those in order to make this expensive treatment successful(don't put any products on your skin, come preshaved, avoid sun exposure, etc).
1. Take painkillers beforehand, at least an hour before ideally. I take 1200mg of ibuprofen before I go. Seems like a lot I know, but the general dose is around 800mg(4 200mg pills) so it's only slightly increased really. You can take other pain meds if those work better, what's important is you take something to help dampen the pain during treatment.
2. Shave the night before, instead of right before your appointment. This will give your skin a break between abuses, reducing the overall skin irritation!
3. Fully cover yourself with loose clothing to wear to your appointment, even in the summer! You don't want to expose your recently lasered skin to the sun even a little bit! Like today I wore some white wideleg pants and a thin, long sleeve white shirt, it really helps and is better than sunscreen imho(of course you can and should wear sunscreen on areas you can't cover)
4. Take full advantage of any aloe vera the clinic provides, ask the tech if she can put some on hard to reach areas. Slather that shit on generously, especially on your face if they treated that area. Today I left Milan with a thick gooey layer of aloe vera on my face, looking like Neo just waking up from the matrix.
5. Don't force yourself to do it all at once(that's what I did the first time and it was hell). You can do upper body one day and then come back for lower body later in the week/month, you can do just your face and then work in other body sections later, the staff will work with you! The vast majority of people who work in these clinics also get laser hair removal, they know how painful it is and will understand wanting to break up the treatments into manageable portions.
6. and finally, this isn't really a tip, it's more of a harsh truth. The laser clinic staff will tell you that each subsequent treatment will be easier than the last, but that is a bit of a lie. It's true that treatments will get easier, but there's a catch: it's going to get more painful before it get's less painful.
Laser hair removal treatments are subject to diminishing returns, meaning the laser power needs to be cranked up each time to continue seeing significant hair growth reduction. Now, everyone is different, and everyone's skin/hair is different. And! The hair on different parts of your body is different! So one area might be increasingly painful as the laser power increases, while a different area does feel less painful after one or two treatments. My face has been more painful each time, while my chest/stomach area has been easier to tolerate each time. It depends on your skin tone, hair color, hair fineness/coarseness, and skin type. The nurse running the laser should be knowledgeable about all this stuff, and I am always asking mine questions about how it all works(it's so totally fascinating to me for obv reasons).
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