Women with PCOS have elevated androgens — hormones like testosterone — circulating at higher than normal levels. This is what drives hirsutism: the male-pattern hair growth on the face, jaw, chin, chest, and stomach that affects an estimated 70% of women with PCOS.
Here is what makes this fundamentally different from ordinary unwanted hair:
Your body is producing this hair because of a hormone signal. Every time you remove the hair — with a razor, with wax, with a laser — that signal is still running at full strength. The follicle receives the same instruction it received before you removed the hair. It grows it back. Every time.
This is why laser so often disappoints women with PCOS. Laser works by targeting pigment in the hair follicle with heat energy. It can damage the follicle — but only if the follicle isn't receiving an ongoing hormonal signal telling it to keep producing hair. When androgens are still elevated, as they are in PCOS, the follicle regenerates. The hair comes back.
It is not that the laser failed. It is that the laser was solving the wrong problem.