olivetalks

To complement the test on whether the “Rio Salon Laser Scanning Hair Remover” (now that’s a long name, if you ask me) works or not, I have decided to run a parallel study on a second test-area. In the main study I am “attacking” two 8 x 8 cm² areas. You can see the full details in the initial two posts: day 1 and day 2. The second test areas are going to be my armpits.

Before, though, a clarification regarding the main test areas. Yesterday I got an email from a friend who after looking at the images in day 2 said:

It’s kind of weird you have square areas of hair. To me this would make me think that you are not from planet Earth.

In case there are more people out there who thought the same, no, the areas are not strictly square-shaped. But the laser aperture does have the shape of a rectangle, so it was easier to define the area with the same shape. The real areas are indeed approximately 64 cm² but, obviously, bikini areas are not exactly squared. There, you made me admit the actual location of the first test areas… (I’m blushing here…)

Anyway, as I was saying, I am going to run two parallel studies, so every week there will be an update on the topic.

1. Test area 1 (yes, the bikini area), was two 8 x 8 cm² areas, with about 2 hairs per square centimeter.
2. Test area 2 (the armpits) is about (wait, let me grab a ruler) 2 x 10 cm² each area. Less skin to cover, but hairier: about 4 hairs per square centimeter.

I shaved my armpits 3 days ago (with Veet cream if you want to know, not those dreadful B’kini razors things I used the first day) and the hairs today were 2 – 3 millimeters long as desired. Although the skin of the armpits is whiter than the skin in my legs, I decided to stick to Power Level 3, for my armpits are a bit sensitive (I cannot use any alcohol-free deodorants, for example… Yes the opposite to what you’d expect, the more for “special skins” or “sensitive skins” the deodorant is, the worse in my case). On day 2, I estimated that you need to place the laser 3 times in 1 squared centimeter, to cover the whole squared centimeter. That means in my case 3 times in 20 cm², 60 times! on each armpit! 30 seconds per laser application gives half an hour per armpit… So to do one armpit, I should spend half an hour with my arm up and slowly cover the area with the laser wand placing it 60 times. Hmmmm….

So, I did it. Kind of. My arms seem to get tired quite quickly (I never thought the Rio Laser Hair Remover would help exercise my arms… interesting, they should add it to their list of advantages). I managed to cover each area in 8 minutes. Aha. Well, the way I figure it is

1. there are the hairless patches I was mentioning on day 2. So I can actually skip some tiny areas.
2. if this machine does work as they claim, next time I will have less hairs and any hairs I missed today due to my impatience, will be more visible then and I’ll be able to attack them directly.

The slight burning smell was there, and so was the “pin prick”, but a lot less noticeable than in the bikini area. Not sure why… Oh, as the armpits are not very smooth (when you raise your arms, the bones stick out a bit) the metal pins of the wand lose contact with the skin a lot easier. When these pins lose contact, the laser stops as it says in the instructions. Cool thing I learnt, though: when you reestablish the contact, the laser continues counting from where it stopped. It does not start again the 30 seconds. Therefore there is no problem of over-treating an area.

Two things to finish off. One is, I’m going to try to talk to a couple of people I know that have had laser hair treatments done by professionals, to compare prices, results and overall impressions of the whole process. I’ll let you know what I find out. The second thing is that my intention with this posts is to share my experiences with the Rio Laser machine to help out other people decide whether it’s worth the money or not. It seems that the posts, though, are also being enjoyed as a source of amusement, at least by some students at the University of Edinburgh. To them, and specially the friend of my sister’s who pointed it out, thanks for your visits and may the laughter be contagious

PS. ZoltarStark’s 3 hairs: one on the left arm is still growing as usual (from 2 to 9 mm long in one week); the second one on the left arm seems to have stopped growing, it has been half a millimeter long since last week (hooray?); the one hair on the left arm… I still can’t find it… (double-hooray?).

---

<< previous entry -“Rio Laser Hair Remover” does it work? – continue reading >>

---

Subscribe to the Rio Laser Hair Remover log-blog to follow LadyRostand’s experiences with the machine.
Otherwise, subscribe to the whole olivetalks, so you won’t miss out on any new stories!