The boxing match

Ladies and gentlemen! cried the presenter from the middle of the ring. Welcome to the fight of the decade! The one you have all (hairy people) been waiting for!

On the right corner… shouted the presenter while a bright light shone on the right arm, I mean, corner …coming all the way from the right forearm, in an otherwise hairless and white skin area, The Blacky Hair!!!!

yaaay! screamed the audience. Hold on to your roots! Hold on to your roots! chanted the crowd, while The Blacky Hair stood proudly, with its 1 cm length and obvious strength, extremely conspicuous among the otherwise thin, weak and scarce hairs in the creamy coloured forearm.

The Blacky Hair, our champion from the last few years will be facing a new challenger tonight! He will be fighting the machine that has been threatening the survival of many other non-sleeping hairs… Ladies and gentlemen!!!! this morning… I bring you… all the way from Rio, showing up now on the left corner of the ring… The Laser Hair Remover!!!

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!! went the excited crowd.

And among the cheering and deafening sounds coming from the audience, The Blacky Hair looked and growled at The Laser Hair Remover, which was noticing the pressure to perform well (aware of its doubtful track so far against other nasty hairs) but nevertheless still feeling confident in its resistance, if not speed, and suddenly it was heard Let the fight begin!

Ting! Round 1, the bell announced…

The Laser Hair Remover after a sneaky scissory move that reduced The Blacky Hair to a 5th of its height, jumped over it and pinned it down for 30 seconds straight! The Blacky Hair, though, having heard about its opponent’s moves, successfully managed to avoid he blunt of the attack and just receive a sided Laser “heat”. The Laser Hair Remover knowing that a second attack in the same area to try to improve its aim would be considered a foul move, backed off, hoping that the first punch will prove to have been enough to burn its opponent to its roots…

Round 2 coming soon…

PS. After this 1st round, The Laser Remover went to practice a bit more, attacking “old acquaintances” in the Bikini Line, practicing its aim and working on improving its success rate.

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Just a few minutes before sitting down to write the post on today’s experience with the Rio Machine, I talked briefly with my mother via msn. I have copied and pasted here the part regarding Rio because it pretty much summarized my feelings at the moment. I have kept the conversation in Spanish which is how it took place, and I have translated freely into English underneath.

(22:07:27) mother: ya vi que estan muy interesado con tu depilacion

I saw they are very interested in your depilation

(22:07:32) LadyRostand: a que si????

Aren’t they???

(22:07:47) mother: si, asi que ponle mas enfasis positivo

Yes, so write with a more positive attitude

(22:07:51) LadyRostand: pero no voy a mentir!

But I am not going to lie!

(22:07:57) LadyRostand: el problema es que yo que me he aburrido ya…

The problem is I am already bored (of the whole process)

(22:08:28) mother: ya, pero yo estoy segura de que funciona, el problema eres tu que quieres resultados inmediatos

I know, buy I am sure it works, the problem is you, because you want immediate results

Constancy is not one my strengths, true, specially if there are no obvious advantages to it. When I bought the Rio Laser machine, I wanted to be able to stop having to shave (duh, you may think). And preferably within a couple of sessions. True as well. Sure, I read that it requires patience and multiple sessions… but as always, I thought: sure! no problem! But after a couple of weeks it’s like, ok, I’m bored, and the hairs continue to grow unperturbed by my attacks… With today’s session, I have lasered my bikini line 9 times in almost 5 months. So, about twice per month. The results? The demise of some isolated hairs.

So, yes, my mother is right: I want results fast and without too much effort from my part. And yes, if it weren’t for you: The Aymster, Anna, Monique, Sebastian… I would have stopped using the Rio Laser months ago already. So thank you! When the results take time, it is always so much easier to do anything if there are people encouraging you…

So, with summer a month away, it is time to do some emergency planning from the experience gained. The Rio Laser Hair Remover Machine is NOT going to make me bikini-line hairless by the 1st of July. Specially if I keep finding it more and more difficult to get myself to use the machine because of it’s tediousness. Ok. But, what it CAN do, is remove those hairs that appear near the bikini line, by themselves and, of course, because they are extra black, they tend to stay perpendicular to the leg and have the ability to make themselves extra conspicuous. Now, I have seen it work against isolated hairs. I can perfectly point half a dozen places in my body where there was a hair that would every second week appear and say “hi there, I am back” (with a nasty tiny grin, I must add) and now are hairless (HA! I could have shouted to those now gone hairs, but didn’t for fear of sounding too crazy).

So we have a plan for the bikini like, ladies and gentlemen. I will still have to shave most of the bikini-line this summer, but oh, those nasty isolated hairs (like the sneaky single black one that appears under my bellybutton) are going down!

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As I mentioned on armpits day 4, this bikini session number 8 already was going to have a very special guest. ZoltarStark agreed to be in charge of lasering my bikini line! The aim of the experiment was to 1. try out the idea of whether it is easier/less boring if someone else does it for you. 2. have another person’s opinion on the machine besides mine in olivetalks (as the readers who got the machine are so entertained with it, they have not come back to share their stories )

A few days before the session, in preparation to Saturday’s test, I shaved with cream the bikini area. Now, you might have read in previous entries that I had decided to trim the hairs in the bikini line one by one with scissors and not shave like I do with my armpits, to avoid the after shaving bumps/irritation on the skin. Unfortunately, I forgot the rationale behind my plan, and to make it easier for ZoltarStark to laser the area, i did shave… and regreted it 24 hours later when the bumps appeared. Fortunately, by Saturday they had subdued quite a bit and we could proceed with the test.

So I taught him how to turn on the Rio machine, the code, how to place the wand, how to press the botton while lasering, how the blinking sound and light stop after the 30 seconds in Power Level III are over, and how to raise the wand and proceed to the next 5 mm of skin. And how do I aim? he asked… with difficulty, I answered. So, I laid back on our huge and amazing sofa, relaxed and settled to enjoy the show. 5 minutes. After 5 minutes the speech on how it was a waste of time and hairs are there for a reason and are a natural thing and we should not be wasting time shaving/lasering began. He decided against going after the hairs I pointed out and just do slowly but steadyly piece by piece (like Katie Malua’s song) the whole area. Ignoring if he could see hairs or not. As part of the excercise, I decided to shut up and let him do After a few more minutes we concluded that if you can get someone else to do it for you (husband/boyfriend/girlfriend…) they will rather hand you the money to go to a professional salon 10 times than spend another minute with the slow death machine. Think about it, you could get 10 sessions in a beauty salon for the price of one Rio machine: you get the machine, get the person that loves you but agrees you’d maybe be better without those hairs on your legs, or arms, or whereever, and chances are, after 5 minutes, they will either give you the money for the salon or admit they actually like you “just like you are”, à la Bridget Jones, with hairs and all.

Regardless of whether the person doing it gets tired or not, I have to say it was really cool having someone else do the lasering and hold the wand. While ZoltarStark patiently “wanded” around (new word? ) I was able to write notes for this post.

After an hour on my left leg, ZoltarStark, with a stiff neck and a bored and dreading face exclaimed “and that was only one leg (bikini-line side)!?” And with a Scroogian voice he added “Ridiculous procedure, I don’t even see any difference“. Yup, I mentioned that in one of my first posts on the Rio Laser Hair Remover machine. “LadyRostand… can we take a short break?” sure honey… “LadyRostand… how about just doing the left leg? That way we can compare both sides in a week’s time to see if there are any differences…” Sure honey

So, in reality, this is day 8 for the left side of my bikini line, but the right side’s last session was on day 7. And now it’s been almost a week. Do I see any differences between both sides? Let me check…. hard to say… how annoying…

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On armpits-day 3, I wondered if I would notice a decrease in hairs by the next session, as I hadn’t noticed anything so far. Today I have to say, I do have the impression there is a decrease in the density of hairs. It’s not plainly obvious, but less hairs seem to have grown since last time I shaved. I guess I will be able to say if it’s really true, or I’m just wishfully imagining, by next session. Fingers crossed…

Today it took three hours…

Left arm up, half the armpit done, left hand falls asleep, right arm up, half the armpit done, right hand falls asleep, phone rings, chat with sister for half an hour, left arm up again, remaining half of the armpit done, uy, starving, cook and eat lunch, right arm up again, remaining half of the armpit done. Phew… if it weren’t for Xoro and Friends chapters, I wouldn’t last half the time doing it. Ok, and knowing that you (yes, you, reader) are interested in the results, helps too.

I have two months to my self-imposed deadline (30th of June) when I’ll have to stop using the laser Rio machine until I come back from sunbathing (as I do not want to get any spots in the lasered areas as they say it might happen if they are exposed to the Sun during the month after a laser session). I do not see myself not having to shave at all this summer, but at least there will be less hair to shave AND those stray isolated hairs that appear in the oddest places and I have targeted won’t be there. Small victory against the hairs, but a victory nevertheless. And as Connie said, maybe not this year, nor the next, but oh, all the hairs are going eventually down! Ok, not the ones on my head, eyebrows and eyelashes. I am fond of those. Oh and I don’t mind the ones on my arms either…

Last thing of the day: I am always looking for new stories to share with you to complement each entry of the Rio Laser Hair Remover. I doubt you would like a dozen posts with only “armpits done, initial number of hairs: 120, result after a week: 110″. So, if you have any questions or suggestions of what would you like to know about the process, or you’d like to share your stories, do let me know. You can always leave a note with a random nickname, so you shouldn’t be shy, nobody is going to know who you are. But for next session (bikini area day 8 already!) I have an interesting experiment lined up. I think it’s going to be fun. Sneak preview? ZoltarStark is going to be involved…

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So, my impressions on the “Instructions DVD” that comes in the box: hopefully the money Rio saved in the editing and design of the DVD was used to ensure the machine works… I mean, the DVD works and is quite informative, but:

• the lighting is terrible (no, the woman does not appear under unflattering lights, it’s just that the whole image is so white: white walls, white chair, white woman, white machine… that the menu is very hard to see),
• the sound is not perfect (at the beginning of each chapter you can notice a second has been cut off from the beginning of the sentence. It’s quite funny actually, specially in the Spanish version where the woman goes “tamiento en modo simple” instead of “tratamiento…“. Hey, the machine, thanks to the DVD, did manage to entertain me a moment at least, after all!),
• after playing it all, the DVD stops, instead of going back to the main menu. So? why would I want to watch it all over again? The DVD is 11 minutes long, and a bikini line session lasts at least an hour…

As I was saying, it is actually easier to follow the idea behind the machine with the DVD than from reading the booklet. If you do buy the Rio machine, I do recommend you have a look at the video first of all. It comes in 6 languages: English, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish and it shows you how to turn it on, the options and gives you a hint on how to use it. I say a hint, because when they explain the Single Hair mode, they do not tell you how to aim correctly. As I have mentioned in previous entries of Rio Laser Hair Remover, does it work?, if I find it difficult to aim with the Scan mode, I would never make it with the Laser in single hair mode. I was hoping the DVD would explain how to do it.

The DVD does mention that you can use the machine again on the same area, after 24 hours, but it also says that for the hairs to disappear you need 6 sessions over a period of 6 months. My impression is that while in a professional place it would take 6 sessions of say one hour, spread over 6 months, with the Rio Scan Laser machine it will take not only twice the number of sessions in the same 6 months but also more than double the time per session.

So one looks at the machine and goes, why? oh why am I wasting my time with the machine when in a professional place it would be quicker? And the answer comes from the pocket: ‘cos we don’t have the money my dear. Yes, my pocket calls me “my dear”. But does this thing work?? And if you remain very very silent, among the mean laughter of the 90 hairs that continue to grab themselves to their roots with all their might, you will hear the silence of those 10 hairs that you know were there and have not appeared in weeks now.

Shhh… die you little buggers…

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I have not noticed any hair reduction in my armpits yet. Hopefully I’ll start seeing it by the next session which I have planned in 3 weeks time.

Extra-info of the day, regarding “Laser Hair Removal Treatments” versus “Intense Pulsed Light Hair Removal Treatments“: According to a provider of Laser/IPL machines I talked to during my trip, both methods take the same amount of time, cost about the same and their results are comparable. They are both photoepilation treatments in which light (heat) is applied to the root of the hair to destroy it and therefore prevent hair regrowth. The difference seems to be on the number of wavelengths used. While the Laser uses one, the IPL machines use a broader band of wavelengths. The possibility of using different wavelengths means they can choose more appropriate wavelengths depending on type of hair, skin color, etc.

The same way shampoos don’t have the same effects on everybody’s hair (Pantene anti-dandruff shampoo actually increases my dandruff!), it sounds reasonable that there should be differences in the Laser / IPL specifications as well for each person/hair type. Funny though that the guy said they were both as efficient as the differences between the methods should make IPL better…

More next week. Bye bye!

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• bikini-line 6th day, and it’s been over 3 weeks since last treatment
• armpits 3rd day, and it’s been over 5 weeks since last treatment

During my trip I confirmed, as I was saying in my last post, that even in salons you must go 5 or 6 times before the hair starts to disappear AND you must leave over a month between sessions, so I am still not discouraged with the results of my experiment. The hairs are there but I do know of a couple of them that have not grown back. Patience, they say…

Today I should do both my bikini-line and my armpits, but as we have already seen, it takes about an hour to do each part (more, if you have more patience). As I do not have two hours today to spend on the hairs, I am going to do the following: today I will trim and attack all the hairs I see in my bikini-line and shave with cream my armpits. I will then publish this post. In a couple of days, with the armpits’ crops ~ 2 mm long, I will laser the armpits and publish the new post. How’s that?

I’ve been meaning to write a disclaimer for a while now, for it is important that you trust my opinion. I have seen many entries in forums and blogs where they discuss a product and you can easily see that their opinions are biased because, basically, they are getting paid to promote the product. So here goes my disclaimer:

Disclaimer: I do not work for or receive any payments from the Rio company for these posts. I might receive some money if you buy the Rio Machine using the Amazon or Google links, but

1. I would also get money if you bought the Philips DVD player I strongly object to in my Price does not equal quality… post or the funny looking “Briquette Maker for Recycling Newspaper and Junk Mail eko-mania” thingy (why would you buy that??) that just appeared for a sec as the Amazon “related” (seriously?) to olivetalks’ contents ad.
   
2. If my conclusion is at the end, that the Rio Laser machine does not work, I will say it. Even if it means nobody buys it and I have to admit I wasted money and let’s face, by now, even more time.

There, disclaimer written. Now to today’s impressions.

It took me an hour to slowly trim with scissors plus laser every hair in my bikini-line. I could have spent a second hour but my neck was starting to complain from looking down… I increased the power level to 4 because… well, because I’m getting impatient. The first 5 sessions in the bikini area were quite close together so from one week to the next I could easily trim the stubborn hairs and laser them. Today, it felt like I was starting all over again, because they were all long and… “everywhere”. Everywhere between quotes because, as I have mentioned in other posts, I have not tagged all the hairs and I don’t really know if these are the original hairs or the original ones “died” and these are the famous dormant hairs starting to appear. Hopefully the latter is true.

Today’s afterthought: when you decide to laser your hairs, you get hooked. I mean the process is boring but when you see a black hair you laser it, right? Once you are not paying attention to that one, you notice the two nearby hairs that are not as black as the first one (that’s why they weren’t the ones that caught your attention to begin with). So you laser those two. And that’s when you see the 5 hairs around the initial five which are even a lighter “shade of black”… and so on. I have to stop myself from expanding the target area and stay focus on the hairs of the bikini line which belong to my experiment area number 1. In this sense, the Rio Laser Machine is worth it. You can do as many areas as you want, for the same price. I wonder if I keep this going and the Rio machine works, if I’ll end up like the tiny birds at the end of Pixar’s “for the Birds“… now that’s an image!

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But I could not let two weeks pass without some kind of update. As far as my target areas go (armpits and bikini line) I am still not able to see any general decrease of hair density, but the few hairs I targeted by themselves do seem to be gone. I am not discouraged yet.

To complete my opinion on the Rio machine I purchased, I have visited a couple of beauty parlors this week to compare prices. Feigning ignorance, I asked about their laser treatments and sessions, prices,…

First discovery was that both places I went to did not carry out “Laser Hair Removal Treatments” but “Intense Pulsed Light Hair Removal Treatments”. I have done an initial search in Google and have found that in general… there is a lot of confusion about the differences between both methods of hair removal. I will try to learn more about Laser versus IPL (also known as Photoepilation, it seems). So far though, from what they said about IPL treatments, it sounds exactly the same: one must leave 4 or 5 weeks between sessions, you must make sure the treated areas are out of the sun, some dark spots might appear, you must treat each area at least 5 times, and the prices… are astronomical. As my friends were saying: around 60 EUR per session for the armpits, 60 EUR per session for the bikini line, about 25 EUR for the upper lip (fancy way of calling women’s mustachio area… )…

Today I’m keeping it short. Bye bye!

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Both the instructions and any pages about hair growth in the Internet, talk about hair being in one of three stages:

Anagen or active phase (when it’s growing), Catagen or degradation phase (when it’s just there) and Telogen or resting phase (when the hairs fall out)… And hairs can only be treated effectively with the laser, when they are in the growth phase.

Ok, so whatever I do, I will only affect the ones growing. Gotcha.

In a single treatment not all the hair follicles in the active phase will be destroyed. Some may be miniaturized into light fine hairs and others enter prolonged dormancy. Armpits have a density of 65 hairs per square cm of which 28% are in resting phase (which lasts 3 months) and 69% are in the active growth phase.

I’ve been saying that I have 4 hairs per cm² in my armpits. From 4 to 65 there are lots of hairs! I wonder what am I missing… besides 61 hairs… Never mind. So they say there are 65 hairs in a cm². Of those 65, 45 will be growing (blue bars) and 18 resting (red bars). We’ll ignore the 2 degrading ones. The black horizontal line represents the skin.

So then I go and laser the cm². Remember the laser’s dimensions? If not, see the images of day 2. So I will have to pass the laser almost 3 times to cover the whole cm² (the red rectangle in the following image represents the laser…)

And they say that not all of them will be “killed”. Some will evade us, others ignore us…

And some of those resting ones will appear in a few weeks:

So you might notice an improvement (or slight deforestation) from the first image to the fourth, but overall the process is going to be slow. And because the hairs don’t just fall off, you cannot really know in hairy areas how many hairs did you get each time, at least not until some time has passed.

At the same time, if you actually see the hairs growing, surely they are in their growing phase?

So my conclusions are:

• in areas with high density of hairs (like armpits), I am going to try to be patient and just laser them every 3 or 4 weeks. This way, in theory, the hairs there will be those I have to target. And I will scan the area in a patient and orderly manner: ie zap, move, zap, move…
• in areas like the bikini line, where you actually see the independent hairs, I will target each hair directly (one by one if I have to, but using the scan mode) once per week if the bast* sorry, the darlings, have decided to continue growing.

60 minutes later…

I wish I were rich and didn’t have to do it myself because it can become tedious… So today I lasered the bikini-line for the 5th time. I cannot say if the reason I have less hair in the area is because I’ve killed them already or just a result of me trimming them every week and therefore more often than ever before.

More information next week. Bye bye!

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In our private interview I ended up with:

So, after 4 months (that’s 180 EUR times 4, ouch!), are the hairs still growing? just some? did they fall out?….

And, after sighing, he answered:

Let’s see LadyRostand, the idea is that the hairs continue to grow, but like 30% of them fall off. With each session, 30% of the hairs you have fall (but they do not disappear completely, some of them regenerate). I didn’t see any hairs fall, but there were some hairs that if you touched them, they’d fall on your hand. Once you start with the treatment, you must never pluck them again, because that does not help. The hairs do come back, but in less quantity. What happens is you see less hairs in general. They are thinner, more delicate, they take longer to appear. I don’t know, you do notice it. It’s weird. But, as I said, it’s a long process!

So if my friend with four visits to a professional salon (spread over 4 months) thinks that the improvement is a general decrease in hairs, but not a complete localized “boldness”, it’s normal that I do not see great achievements yet. Encouraging

I had a discussion with ZoltarStark on how does the Rio laser hair remover really work and it took us a while to finally understand it. I am going to draw some pictures for next week to try to clarify it in simpler terms in olivetalks, in case more people find the explanations in the booklet and Internet as confusing as we did.

My intention with these posts was to help out other people decide if it was worth their money (and time) to buy the machine and any questions on it will be answered most readily. It seems most of you that reach these pages (hello, you googler) are too shy to ask directly, though . So, in the following weeks, I will be answering the questions olivetalks readers have, according to our Google Wordpress Stats, regarding this machine.

Finally, today’s impressions: 40 minutes on each side. My patience is definitely improving. I slowly but surely found each hair, trimmed it with scissors, and zapped it with the laser in Scan mode at power level 3. After the hour and twenty minutes of labour, quite a few smoky hair-tips and a distinct burning smell in the room. Bad thing of the day: twice I had to stop the scanning because the “pin prick” was more like a full blown ouch feeling. Maybe I got a nerve or more sensitive areas? Good thing of the day: two hairs I definitely knew the location of, have not grown back since I zapped them (one a month ago, the other one last week).

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In the professional salon I went to, the price per session for half a back was 180 EUR and it took around 20 minutes.

I paid around 350 EUR for the Rio Salon Laser Hair Remover. That means it cost me the same as two sessions of laser treatment on an area as big as half a back. I am treating far smaller areas. If you have read my previous posts, you will know my test areas are two 8 x 8 cm² areas (the bikini line) and two armpits 2 x 10 cm² each. Adding them up… about 13 x 13 cm² of skin. It’s easier to visualize if you grab a ruler. I’ve just phoned my friend to see how big his back is to compare and he said that although the area is a lot bigger, what they actually consider when deciding how much to charge you is the density of hair. He reckons for 180 EUR per session he had done less than the amount of hair an average male has in one of his armpits… now there’s an image. So… I think the bikini line plus the armpits surely are equivalent to this friend’s half a back, as far as amount of hair is concerned… Therefore, assuming both methods work (which is still to be seen), doing it at home is a lot cheaper. For the same amount of money you can have two sessions done either at a salon or at home. Any additional sessions at home will therefore be money saved. That’s definitely a plus.

Another friend had her upper lip done. She says it cost her about 25 EUR per session, and they told her she needed about 6 or 7. That’s about half the price of the Rio Salon machine. So if all you ever want to done is your upper lip, then it would be cheaper to go to a salon. Furthermore, I can see how it would be difficult to do the hairs close to the nose by oneself, as the wand of the Rio hair remover would bump against the nose… I’m not going to try. If anybody out there has tried it, I would really appreciate it if you could drop us a note.

So, today is my second laser treatment day for armpits. Shaved, check. Hairs 2-3 millimeter long, check. Rio Scan Laser Hair Remover connected, in Scan mode and at Power Level 3, check. Ok, here we go then…

45 minutes later…

I was a lot more thorough this time. I think I am getting better at covering all the hairs. You just need loads of patience and… to rest your arms in the middle. Ouch, they are a bit sore from holding them against a mirror so I could see where to aim better.

So now I’ve done the bikini line three times and the armpits twice, I’m already saving money! But I do think I am spending twice the time it would take in a salon As always, time versus money. More in two weeks, with the bikini line day 4. Thanks for passing by!

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Update on how it seems to be going:

• in the bikini line (which I shaved with cream a couple of days ago in preparation for the 3rd laser treatment) I cannot say I see a reduction of hair in general. BUT it could be because I did not memorize the exact locations of where I had hair at the beginning. I have noticed though, that two isolated hairs I treated have stopped growing. I see their tips, exactly like they were 3 weeks ago. Interesting… I’ll zap them today as well
• in the armpits I do think there has been a reduction of the amount of hair. As it is a smaller area with a higher density of hair, I guess it’s easier to see. I’ll have to confirm it next week when I treat my armpits again and the following days.

As I mentioned in “Rio Laser Hair Remover” does it work? armpits area (day 1), I think it’s interesting to compare the home treatment with laser treatments carried out by professionals. I have asked a friend who had his back done a year ago for his opinion. I’m going to share his comments, plus compare them with my experience so far with the home treatment.

[…] at the salon, they first make you lie down. I know a friend who had her upper lip done and she had to lie down too. Then they start by shaving you with some kind of blade and they leave the hair very very trimmed. Then they apply a cream on the area to be treated which is extremely cold.

I should find out what is that cream for…

It doesn’t hurt at all. You do notice a je ne sais quoi… kind of what you mention in your posts, that “pin prick”. Like a tiny electro-shock. Like when you touch a car or someone and sparks come out, but without it being painful. It does hurt a bit more when they treat nearer to the neck, but I don’t know if it’s real pain or just a weird feeling from hearing “zap” besides your ear. You get goose-bumps there…

I agree! the “pin prick” does feel like tiny electro shocks! I guess it makes sense. You have two metallic pins on your skin and if one stops making contact, it stops the laser. So you have to be conducting some electricity between the pins for the machine to know the wand is correctly placed.

Each session is around 20 minutes, half an hour tops. After the fourth session, I started noticing the decrease in hair. But if you stop the treatments, the hair comes back. At the salon they told me I had to go 6 times minimum, 8 or 10 to have good results (depending on the type of hair), in a row. Without stopping. The sessions had to be between 3 weeks and a month apart. After this initial 6 to 10 monthly sessions, they said you can go down to once every 4 months or even once a year. And finally, all the hair will disappear.

At home it definitely takes longer per session, probably due to the size of the laser aperture and maybe the strength of the laser.

I will get back to my friend for more information, like prices and general thoughts, and let you know next week.

Session 3 done:

Today I’ve spent 40 minutes zapping away hairs in the bikini line. Quite boring if it weren’t for the Friends chapters I was semi-watching at the same time. I find it generally easier to treat hairs that I didn’t shave: I trim them with scissors just a second before targeting them and then I know exactly where to aim. It’s a slower process, but at least you don’t feel you are pointing a laser to hairless areas unnecessarily.

Two after-thoughts today: 1st. going to a professional place would definitely have the advantage of not having to fight with your legs and your backbone to reach more difficult areas. At home, maybe if two people were to use the machine, you could take turns zapping each other… This is starting to sound like Star Wars… 2nd. maybe I should go to a professional salon to have the bikini line done once to compare first-hand. I’ll think about this.

More next week (armpits day 2!)

PS. ZoltarStark’s three hairs are unable for comments at the moment. Pity. I’ll try to get an interview with them for next week.

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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?).

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Before attacking the designated areas I did some calculations to see how long should it take me to scan. Let me go over a few of the numbers with you, so you can compare better with your own particular case.

As I said on day 1, I am initially targeting only two areas of 8 x 8 cm² and the Rio Laser Hair Remover (the one they say is for 20 hairs) has a laser scanning area of 7mm x 5mm. To better see what these numbers mean, look at the next image:

There I have represented one of the areas I am treating with the centimeters nicely marked. The smaller red rectangle is the laser. Now grab a ruler and check how much area in your leg does that cover… To scan in an orderly way, for if you jump from here to there like I did the first day after a couple of minutes you can’t remember what have you done already, the laser must be moved slowly, doing one tiny rectangle at a time, like I show in this next image:

So if we calculate how many times do we have to place the laser in the area to cover it fully:

that is, 16 times down and a bit over 11 times across: over 176 times! Ok, now what does this mean? As I mentioned on the first day, I am using power level number 3. According to the instructions, each scan takes from 10 seconds up to 50 seconds between levels 1 and 5, so each scan at power level 3 is going to take 30 seconds. 176 times 30 seconds are 88 minutes. An hour and a half for each area! And I spent 15 minutes in total on day 1… I definitely needed a 2nd more-correct session. From what I’ve told you, you can estimate how long would it take you to do your legs, or whatever area you’d like the hairs to disappear from.

One more thing, in the previous images it looks quite straight-forward to scan consecutive centimeter squares. In reality, the top of the wand where the laser is, is quite wide and when placing it on your skin all you see is something like what I show in the following image:

The gray ellipse is the top of the wand. You have to tilt the wand when placing it on your skin to try to see if you are placing the rectangle where it should be. Doable but not so easy.

Impressions of day 2:

• The good news: it does not take as long as estimated for you can skip the hairless patches, if there are any…
• Quite a few hairs smelt of burnt this time. In fact, after removing the wand, you could see their tips burnt. I wonder if it was because this time I did have them all around 2 - 3 mm long.
• The “pin prick” was still noticeable.

So, I’m going to let these two areas rest for a month now. But here is the plan, for I am as impatient to see results as you are:

1. I will post again on these two areas in two weeks’ time (say the 8th of February) letting you know if I see any results.
2. Meanwhile I am going to start targeting a second area with slightly different conditions, to make this study of whether the Rio Laser Hair Remover works or not, more complete. Next week I will prep the area on Monday and I will be ready to tell you all about it by Wednesday30th/Thursday31st.

I suggest you subscribe to this post so you will not miss the next issue of “Rio Laser Hair Remover, does it work?”. Or bookmark http://olivetalks.com! Oh, and if you have any questions regarding the tests, do drop me a note!

PS. No, I’m not forgetting to mention the 3-hair test I am doing on ZoltarStark. The two hairs on the left arm were there and were zapped again using power level 5. According to ZoltarStark, no pain, no burning smell, nothing. The one hair on the left arm… we could not find it. Now I don’t know if it’s a result of the laser treatment or not, but the truth is, it was not there. I’ll check again in two weeks’ time.

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So, shall we start with day 1?

Things you might need to know, to be able to see if my results could apply to you:

1. According to the skin types and recommendations of the machine, I would say I am… between two skin types. It says:
   • Type III: Fair to light olive: burns mildly, tans slowly
   • Type IV: Olive to brown: rarely burns, tans with ease

   hmmm… now Type III, says maximum power level 5, while Type IV says up to power level 3. Just to start on the safe side, I will use Power Level 3 today.

2. I am going to start with two areas of about 8×8 cm².
3. Amount of hair… about 2 hairs per square centimeter, which might not sound like much, but man they’re black! (ok, a bit embarrassed here, so I reeeeeally hope someone finds this log-blog useful!).
4. The hairs will have to be trimmed to 2-3 mm as the instructions say, before I can start.

And I think that’s it at the moment! I’m going to publish this blog and will add my first impressions after the session.

First impressions:

I have just finished the first session. I have lasted around 15 minutes. As I said, I have used Power Level 3. Note for people who don’t read the instructions fully before using a new “toy” (like me): there is a code to be entered in the machine before it will work, and it’s not in the quick instructions page, but the “Information Guide”. First impressions then:

• I shaved quickly before using the laser machine with one of those B’kini razors which I don’t think was such a good idea. Basically either the hairs remaining were too short or too long. So next time I will shave with one of those creams 3 or 4 days before the day I intend to use the laser machine again, so by “day 2″ of this log-blog, I will have 3 mm-long hairs.
• I found it hard to know were had I been already. Next time, I will try to be less all over the place and follow a regular pattern. I mean, the actual laser area is 7 mm x 5 mm… now that’s small, and it’s in the middle of a larger plastic handle which does not allow to aim that well. As I said, though, it would help to follow a more regular pattern than what I did: now here, now there, now…
• Although at some point it did smell a bit of burnt skin, I did not have any burning sensation. I did notice, though, the “pin prick”, almost every time. Just startled me a bit, but not really painful.

Overall, not difficult to use, but unsure if I used it correctly, due to it’s small laser area. I think I will try again next week, depending on if I see any skin redness or not (none so far). I might even increase the test area! See you next week!

PS. ZoltarStark was kind enough to offer 3 hairs (yes, THREE) to complement this log-blog’s study of the effectiveness of the Rio Laser Machine. As he is a lot whiter than me, we used Power Level 5. After trimming the hairs to 2mm in length, I applied the Laser in Scanning Mode to the areas (2 hairs on the left arm, 1 on the right arm). Notes on the small-scale test:

• ZoltarStark did not feel the “pin prick”.
• With the Laser in Scan Mode, I once aimed completely at the wrong place. No way I would be able to use the Laser in Single-hair mode. I wonder if the DVD that comes with the box explains how can you aim exactly where you want to.

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