The technology inside an IPL uses light, which targets the melanin inside the root of your hair follicles. From there, the hair itself acts like a conductor for the light. Take a look at the illustration below:
As you can see, the life cycle of your individual hair follicles is split into 3 different phases: Anagen, Catagen, and Telogen.
Anagen is the active growth phase, during which IPL is the most effective. Now, without diving too much into logistics, this is exactly the reason why IPL is likely to take some time. It will vary from person to person, based on so many factors (as everyone’s hair grows at different speeds and rates). But mostly, it depends on which stages the majority of your hair is at currently. At any given moment, around 90% of your hair is in its active growth stage. This means the Anagen stage.
Your hair will then fall out as it regenerates itself. This refers to the Catagen and Telogen stages. The old hair follicle will detach itself from its blood supply, until it sheds, weakens, and falls out. So yes, some of the hair attached to your head and body are not actually actively growing but instead holding on to your scalp, where they’ll eventually fall out. This is all a very normal and natural process.
Now, as aforementioned, IPL is most effective during the Anagen phase. Why? Because your hair is exactly like a conductor, like metal is to electricity. As you can see, when IPL targets a hair that is in its Catagen or Telogen stage, it is not directly targeting the root as there is no physical connection to it – yet. This is why you need to wait for your hair to reach different phases of growth before you start to see fully permanent hair removal results, while actively using IPL in between.
IPL is more effective than waxing, shaving, and epilating all together because it’s faster, easier, and it doesn’t hurt. But scientifically speaking, it’s the best method of permanent hair removal out there. Once the light has targeted the root of your hair follicles enough times, it will eventually kill them, thus completely eradicating them and stopping re-growth on a permanent basis (as it will never be able to grow back). Shaving and waxing only scratches the surface, as you can see in the illustration above.
