(BETHANY SUBA/ The Daily Campus)
Sarah Aboukhair, a sophomore at SMU, has been getting laser hair removal treatments for over three years, but her first experience with the procedure did not go the way she had expected.
Aboukhair said that the first time she had laser hair removal the technician didn’t know which level to set the laser on or how much pressure to use.
The technician ended up changing part of the pigmentation of Aboukahair’s skin.
This past September, a law was passed to regulate laser hair removal in Texas.
The law requires that laser technicians receive 40 hours of classroom education from a state-approved facility and perform 100 supervised procedures before becoming a laser hair removal technician.
The National Laser Institute is the world’s largest cosmetic laser training facility and is located in Dallas and Scottsdale, Ariz.
The National Laser Institute is a medical spa as well as a medical aesthetics training school.
Louis Silberman, the president of the National Laser Institute says that the regulation has not affected business at the Texas facility, but it has given customers more trust in the laser hair removal process.
“What [the regulation] means for the consumers in Texas and Arizona is that they are safer,” Silberman said.
Aboukhair says she is happy with the new regulation because of her past experience.
Some other problems that could affect the skin by misuse of a laser are burning and blistering.
“In the wrong hands, untrained hands, those would be inverse outcomes,” Sandra Nash, the spa manager at the National Laser Institute in Dallas, said.
Nash teaches students at the National Laser Institute in Dallas and believes that her facility has the most experienced and well-trained staff in the country because of the training that each technician must go through.
Nash teaches a two-week program where her students spend 40 hours in the classroom learning laser safety and laser physics, they listen to guest speakers and representatives from laser manufacturers, and take a three hour marketing class from Silberman to learn how to find the job they want.
Then the students spend the remaining six days acquiring their 100 hours of hands on practice on customers who volunteer to model for the technicians in training.
Because the National Laser Institute is both a spa and a school, it receives all of its equipment for free.
This allows the National Laser Institute to decrease its prices on all of its services immensely.
Nash says that for private clients, services are anywhere from 50 to 75 percent lower than at any other spa; and for people who volunteer to be models for the students, prices can be another 50 percent off.
“Our slogan is luxury med spa treatments without the luxury prices,” Silberman said.
Aboukhair says she would suggest laser hair removal to anyone who is tired of constantly shaving.
“I don’t have to worry about going from putting on pants to oh, I want to change into shorts, because my hair just doesn’t grow back,” Aboukhair said.
