Hair Growth Cycle

To understand why laser or IPL hair removal units such as the Rio x60, Silk’n or Tria take a series of treatments to permanently remove unwanted hair you need to have an understanding of the hair growth cycle.  The hair growth cycle affects us all differently.

Each hair follicle is an anatomical structure that pushes out hair from the hair shaft.  Hair is made up from a collection of proteins called keratins.  All human hair grows in a cycle.  This cycle consists of three phases.

These three hair growth phases are Anagen, Catagen and Telogen, or what I like to call the growers, the latent ones and the resting (hibernating) ones.  We all loose about 50 to 100 Telogen (resting) hairs a day through showering or combing our hair.  Although hair loss from the legs or bikini area is less noticeable it still follows the same cycle as the hair that grows on our heads.

The amount of hair growth can change at different times of our lives.  Some people will have a greater percentage of Telogen hairs (resting hairs) or will have a greater number of Anagen hairs (growers) at certain parts of their life; for example during adolescence or when going through the menopause.

Many things can cause temporary or permanent hair loss such as alopecia, medication, radiation, chemotherapy, and exposure to chemicals, hormonal and nutritional factors, thyroid disease, generalised or local skin disease and stress.

There are also many things that can cause excessive hair growth.  The term for excessive hair growth is hirsutism for males and Hypertrichosis for females.  A future article will cover what causes excessive hair growth.

For laser hair removal units including IPL units to work effectively at permanently removing unwanted hair the hair follicle needs to be in the growing phase, i.e the Anagen stage.  This is why all home laser hair removal units recommend that you shave 24 hours prior to treatment to ensure that the maximum number of hairs are in the growing phase.

The wide range of home laser hair removal units including IPL units can be purchased from our main website, www.so-smooth.co.uk.