Essay Part III - Your Mass-Marketed Laser Device for Hair Loss isn’t/won’t be Strong Enough!

I'm not gonna lie... calculating exact laser dosages is HARD! I understand how the world is so rife for deception here by these mass-marketing companies. Even after you've calculated them, it's still really only a "ballpark figure". However, we know one thing with dead-ass certainty... you are NOT going to get the proper amount of energy with a standard laser brush or a 21 diode laser helmet to make much of a difference -if any. And I'm going to tell you why.

[I'm keeping this section short because there is information on other pages that will help you calculate what power you are getting based on the time you use it, as well as typical power that has all of this information. Also, I intend to one day do a "power calculations spreadsheet" at some point to you can plug in your own numbers and see for yourself. So this is only a summary...]

Plain and simple, guys and girls... Using a standard laser device will give you only a fraction of the power that scientists have PROVEN the average human needs for biostimulation! That amount varies slightly from study to study, but the average is somewhere around 3-6 joules of energy on each square centimeter of scalp that you want to treat. Occasionally you'll see that 2 joules is fine, occasionally you'll see that 4-6 is optimum, but you get the point.

...And laser therapy has been shown to be VERY dose dependent! This means that 6-7 joules is going to be more effective than 3 or 4. Also, you need AT LEAST 2 or 3 to kick off the proper biostimulation to reap the benefits of LLLT.

Anything more than about 7 joules and the benefits start becoming a little less. The tissue has a "saturation point" of the maximum amount of stimulation that it can take before it just "shuts down". At about the 10-12 joules range is when this "shut-down" point occurs, and anything beyond will make the whole session pointless and negate any results. Don't worry though... it still won't cause harm, it will only wipe away any positive benefit that would occur.

Well, the benchmark has unfortunately been set in the market by an inferior, overpriced device. Yes, the standard laser comb/brushes only give you anywhere from about 1/20th to 1/10th of the power you need! I've seen calculations that you need to use a HairMax for 400 minutes to get the proper dosage!!! ...And the average dose a user would get from a normal, average usage period is about 1/2 a joule.

Do you remember what we said a few paragraphs earlier... laser therapy is dose dependent and you need at least 2 or 3 joules for biostimulation? Couple that with the fact that a standard laser brush gives at maximum -using it for a long time- about 0.5 joules! POINT... FIVE... MAXIMUM. I can't make this any more simple to follow! If I did, it would probably be insulting to you! lol...

This is simple math... a standard laser brush doesn't give enough power to help most people. And the result of this?? People spend hours a week using a product (that manufacturers KNOW won't give you the proper power) and they end up wasting their time and getting soured to the whole idea of lasers.

Thank goodness times are a little different now... it used to be that when I made a post about my high-powered laser helmet, someone would inevitably chime in and say "I tried a laser comb for X amount of years for Y minutes every other night, and it didn't do SHIT." Well, I'm sure by now that you can already see that this statement has NOTHING TO DO with my laser helmet! It's apples to oranges.

I'll make an equivalent example: The average car takes a 12.6 volt battery to start the engine. Well, what if you had a car battery that only had 1.26 volts? What would happen if you tried to start the car? In some cars, you might get a turn-over or two and the dashboard lights may come on, but it's not going to start, is it!

Now... due to the misinformation out there about laser therapy, try to imagine how silly this next part is: Because your 1.26 volt battery wouldn't start your car, you therefore think that CARS CAN'T BE STARTED BY BATTERIES AT ALL, and you are absolutely pissed about the whole car/battery connection! Throw that in with the fact that in this fanciful example, the 1.26 volt battery costs an equivalent of two weeks salary, and you are FREAKING LIVID!

Sounds silly, and that would never happen! ...But it does happen with laser therapy for hair loss, and that's very unfortunate.

What's next? Based on all of my research on laser therapy, I've come up with Three Cardinal Rules of LLLT for Hair Loss...