Serenity Pro for Painless Laser Hair Removal
Why is Laser Hair Removal sometimes painful?
Hair removal lasers emit light that is absorbed by dark pigments in your skin tissues. The hair pigment (melanin) absorbs the laser energy and thermally damages the hair follicle, rendering it incapable of growing hair. Melanin is also responsible for our skin color so darker skin absorbs more laser energy. Blood has other dark pigments that absorb laser energy. The laser energy absorbed by your tissues is released as heat, which can briefly stimulate nearby pain sensors and produce a rubber-band-snap sensation. If you have darker skin or the area being treated has a lot of small blood vessels, the pain can be greater because more of the laser energy is absorbed by your tissues and released as heat. Laser systems use a brief spray of very cold gas, chilled tips, or cooling gels to eliminate the heat but these cannot prevent that brief pain stimulation. Until now, the only way to reduce the pain was to apply topical anesthetics and decrease the power settings on the laser. Lower power does produce less pain but is also less effective at clearing the unwanted hair follicles.
How does the Serenity Pro reduce the pain?
The Serenity Pro is an attachment to the laser handpiece that relies on Pneumatic Skin Flattening Technology (PSF) to reduce the pain. PSF works by creating a vacuum through a chamber that pushes blood away from the treatment site and blocks pain signals to the brain. This blockage (also known as the Gate Theory) occurs because pain signals and sensory signals (like touch and pressure) share the same spinal nerve pathways to the brain. When a sensory signal arrives at the spinal nerve pathway first, pain signals are blocked until the sensory signal ends (see the illustration below). Most of us discover as children that pressing or tapping the skin around a cut or burn reduces the pain for just a moment. PSF takes this to a higher level by producing a constant pressure sensation for the skin around the laser pulse.
PSF also uses the pressure of suction to push the blood out of the skin being treated. If you press your finger into your skin, it pushes the blood away and your skin appears much lighter in color. When you release the pressure, you can watch the darker color flow back into the skin. With less blood in the path of the laser pulse, your skin absorbs less energy while the hair follicle actually absorbs more. This produces a treatment that is more comfortable and more effective.
How effective is the Serenity Pro?
During extensive testing, pain was reduced up to 80%. Redness and swelling was also drastically lowered. Clients may still experience some pain but at a much lower level. PSF cannot be used on small areas (e.g., upper lip, ear lobes, etc) or skin areas that cannot be made relatively flat (bridge of nose, fingers, etc) but has shown tremendous results for the most common laser hair removal areas (underarms, legs, arms, face, chest, bikini, buttocks, etc).
Click more information to navigate to the Candela website where you can view a video of the Serenity Pro in operation and find clinical results (when finished, use your Back button to return to this page).
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