My girlfriend recently found a product that claims to reduce hair on the body called Intense Pulsed Light. From what I understand it uses light converted to heat to kill some of the hair roots and reduce overall hair around that area of the body.
Question, can my flashlights do the same thing? It’ll save her having to buy the actual device for 200 bucks 
Sounds like a powerful camera flash to me 
That Philips IPL is 475€ (~US$650) in local shops 
flashlight won’t work ofcourse, otherwise we would all be bald 
Definitely won't work. A good friend of mine had to have IPL treatment on body hair that was interfering with a surgical scar (think the WORST kind of ingrown hair you can imagine). From his description it's very painful as they are literally zapping the hair follicle. It's not normal light, but a specific wavelength that's very concentrated. Basically put, they're lasers and certainly not something you can do yourself.
My wife bought a “FLASH” style hair removal machine. The instructions are all in japanese so I can’t tell you the specifics.
I have tried it on my face. YES MY FACE (you perverts). It is a strange sensation. You know when you stand next to an open fire for too long and it starts to burn? Well, it’s just like that only it happens in an instant (flash). Very much like a camera flash only with more intensity.
No flashlight I have ever used even comes close.
So now that you are addicted to flashing instead of flashlights. Do you feel your morals have changed for the better?
- Joe
Did it work!?
Just buy a laser
Yeh, I’m a flasher that keeps his clothes on. So my morals are still good
The missus has been to an IPL shop and says the home flash machine is less painful (I don’t think it’s painful but I guess it depends on how sensitive your skin is). Proper IPL needs to be repeated a good handful of times to completely remove the hair. In light of that I would think the home flash could take twice as much at a guess???
I have only used it on my face twice. I think it is recommended to wait a week or two between treatments so it is a rather drawn out process. I’m not expecting to go completely shiny (Schumacher style) but I am hoping for it to be easier to shave.
Its not that simple, from what I have read some time ago, the light source have to be a very specific one(in a specific wavelength and at a specific intensity for a specific amount of time). finding which wavelength is more suitable is not that easy, but often you have to chose one which its energy is better absorbed by black hair and in contrast reflected as much as possible by white skin. in other words the perfect situation for the light to work is a dark hair in a very white skin. this because energy of the beam have to go all in the hair and rise its temperature till it kill the bulb, and meanwhile it skip the skin making no degenerative effect on it. as far as I know black hair in dark skin is difficult to work well and also light hair or red is difficult to work for the reason i meant above. but I am not that much updated on this subject so progress on this tech maybe have made it possible to work on all types of hair and skin combinations.
back to the question, “IPL hair removal using flashlight?” i think its very hard to achieve that in the border of impossible !
^ I had to read that twice to understand it but yes, I agree.
Ah I see. So bottom line, light needs to be specific wavelength. So flashlights won’t work.
I wonder whether this sort of thing increases risk of skin cancer.
Anyway I got my question answered.
Thanks everyone for your input.
Lol, well if we had that type of hair killing flashlights then Sirus9’s post comes to mind along with many new one blind eyed BLF members onboard. Of course society would be dealing with newly blinded muggers, raccoons or whatnot? I got an old Sunpack potato masher flash that can almost do this at full power;)
There’s a rumor going ’round that white light contains more than one wavelength. I wouldn’t believe it, though
I still think it’s a fancy xenon flash. Maybe has dichroic filter for filtering out the more prominant wavelengths that may not benefit the intended purpose, i.e. irradiating the hair only. I would think longer visible wavelengths like reds might be better for this purpose, since it may not be absorbed by the blood in your skin as easily.
There’s videos on the intarwebs of camera flashes burning newspaper black in stock form, no modifications. If there is that much energy to start with, there might be enough energy at the desired wavelengths to do whatever it does to hair to make it go away.
You used your first comment on a flashlight forum to tell us that?
Lasers and privates are 2 things I’d prefer not to mix……that said can’t do any more damage than a shaver (less said about that the better :confounded: )
He’s gone, pity
You have conserved his remains in your quote 
Just watch “The Andromeda Strain”.
Get one of those fencing helmets, set yourself in a room with assloads of photoflashes, and zzzzap!, all hair, all gone! 
You’ll have to shower afterwards to get all the ash off you, but hey.