clipped from inyourface.freedomblogging.com

People with darker skin remain a challenge for experts in laser hair removal, even though the technology is the third most popular cosmetic procedure in the United States, behind Botox and dermal filler injections.

The difficulty facing darker-skinned patients and their doctors isn’t a question of prejudice but of physics.

It’s much trickier to destroy a dark hair that’s growing in dark skin — because both absorb the destructive laser energy, both can be damaged in a laser treatment.

“There is no good solution for thin or light hair on dark-skinned patients,” dermatologist Dr. Christine C. Dierickx (left), director of the Skin and Laser Clinic in Boom, Belgium, told a recent cosmetic-medicine conference at Harvard Medical School.

Dark pigment absorbs laser energy, which heats up and destroys the pigmented tissue, whether it’s a hair or surrounding skin.