Laser Hair Removal Over Skin With Freckles

In the laser hair removal ads, the models are young and firm with a beautiful skin, but many of the customers which will use home laser systems, have freckles on the skin or other pigmentation like age spots, moles or skin tags. In this short review you can learn on the different aspects of using laser hair removal over freckles.

Freckles usually show over the nose and cheeks, they appear resulting to family DNA and due to the exposure to the sun. Fair skin people tend to have more freckles than dark tone skin people, red heads have more freckles than others. The freckles themselves are not dangerous, but people with freckles need to be more careful at the sun, and protect themself when sun tanning to avoid skin cancer risks.

Freckles are small melanin pigmentation spots, which develop usually on the face and on the shoulders. They are appearing over the face or shoulders because these areas have been exposed to the sun UV rays, even decades ago.

Laser Hair Removal Treatment Over Freckled Skin

Laser hair removal is accomplished by turning light into heat. The heat is created when the light energy is absorbed by the hair (dark matter) and turns into heat. The best candidate for home laser hair removal treatments, are people with pale skin and dark hair combination. The contrast is important to assist the laser reach the hair and not get absorbed by the surrounding skin.

When the skin is dark, which means rich in melanin, light energy can cause heat at the skin tissue, and cause redness, swelling and even burns. For this reason it is not allowed to do laser hair removal over moles, or do laser treatment over tattoos. In these cases the treatment can end up in great pain and severe skin burns.

Removing Hair Over Freckles

Freckles have a wide range of skin pigmentation colors, they can be red, yellowish, or be in the spectrum of the brown colors too. Some freckles are tiny flat, tanned marks (just larger than tip of a pencil) and others are wider round spots as large as the tip of the finger.

Here are a few guidelines to follow, you can alway request some deeper insight from the laser system manufacturer or even better from the dermatologist doctor connected to a hair clinic who can review your freckles and decide which laser hair removal would be best for you.

Freckles Color Tone – If the freckles pigment tone is dark brown (no’ 5 or 6 in the Fitzpatrick scale), than these spots should not be treated with hair removal laser. Some at-home laser systems have FDA approval, which means they have skin tone sensors to prevent doing laser treatment over dark skin. These sensors might miss the freckles while the freckles will not miss the laser.

Freckles Density – There is a different between a freckle here and there and a skin covered with so many freckles that the overall skin tone is actually darker than the ‘skin’ color.

Freckles Size – While you may be able to remove hair with laser over tiny freckles spots, doing direct beam of laser on a large spot may be unsafe. The concentrated melanin may absorb more energy than the hair, and cause the skin tissue to heat instead.

IPL Hair Removal Over Freckles

IPL hair removal treatments, are just like lasers, the same technology and physic rules apply to this hair removal method. The main difference between laser and IPL, is that the IPL light covers larger skin surface and does not pinpoints a tiny spot. This can be a disadvantage, for people with spots they wish to bypass.

The advantage of IPL, is that the light energy is usually softer than the laser, so when it comes to the brown freckles, hair growing from them might be treated.

Conclusion

If the hair removal system is safe for darker skin types like the advanced Me my Elos Hair Removal System, then hair removal can be done over freckled skin as long as they are not very dark (close to black) spots. Have someone look at your skin before you do a laser hair removal over freckles session.

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