What Makes a Tattoo Permanent?
The beauty of what makes a tattoo is also one of its greatest mysteries to some – it’s ability to last a lifetime. By getting a tattoo you can have an image imprinted on your body permanently, which is why so many people take the time to choose their designs carefully. But what is it that gives a tattoo it’s sticking power exactly? What makes a tattoo permanent, and what does that permanency mean for someone who might want to get their design removed?
The Tattooing Process
Before we go further, let’s talk about what actually happens when you get a tattoo. The short version is that a tattoo artist uses an electronic needle to inject ink into someone’s skin. In a little more detail, this machine allows the artist to move the needle in and out of a person’s skin between 50 and 3,000 times per minute depending on the type of machinery used. This allows the design to be imprinted faster and with less prolonged pain, letting the insoluble ink solution to be deposited beneath the surface layers of your skin to a layer called the dermis so it won’t wear away.
What Makes It Stick?
If you’ve ever seen someone with an older tattoo you know that though the design is still very much visible, the edges wear away with time. It gets faded and a little more difficult to see, causing just one of the reasons people often choose to have them removed. While your body can’t fully get rid of the ink that’s been injected, it puts forth a token effort – hence the fading with time. The process of getting a tattoo involves having your skin damaged, and so your body sends white blood cells to try and absorb this foreign intrusion into your blood stream. What makes a tattoo permanent is the size of the particles rather than the particles themselves. The pigment injected into the dermis is actually too large to be fully consumed by the body’s white blood cells, so they end up sitting there forever. Your body never gives up on trying to get rid of them, hence the gradual degrading of your tattoo quality over time as those white blood cells continue to put up a fight, but it’s a fight the body is destined to lose.
Tattoo Removal Options
As long as we’ve had tattooing technology we’ve had an interest in getting those tattoos removed. We aren’t the first generation to get ink on our skin that we regret a few years later, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are a lot of options out there when it comes to removing this supposedly permanent life choice from our bodies.
There are a few cream removals out there that are designed to allow you to remove tattoos from the comfort of your own home. Brands like TatBGone and Tattoo-OFF have been tested by the Tattoo Removal Institute and have shown success when it comes to allowing the ink to slowly fade away. It takes several applications, however, and with the large number of brands of creams on the market you need to be careful about which ones you pick up.
Laser tattoo removal is far more popular and allows you to remove your tattoo in a few quick sessions. How many it takes depends on the size and colors in your tattoo of course, but it’s a much more reliable method than applying topical creams. The lasers target the ink in your dermis with pulses of highly concentrated light that break the ink pigments up into smaller pieces. Not only does this make eliminating those small pieces easier, it lets your body’s white blood cells work in tandem with your treatment. As the laser removes pieces your white blood cells can swoop in and consume these smaller particles as they are no longer too large to be disposed of in your blood stream.
What Should You Choose?
If your permanent tattoo is fading, your best options are always going to be either a cover up or laser removal. Occasionally touching up your tattoo is possible, but in some cases the design has bled out into your skin so far that simply drawing around it again is no longer an option. This is especially true of tattoos that are detail oriented or have small, cursive style text. In cases where you don’t want your tattoo removed entirely, consider working with an artist to develop a cover-up idea. Pick up a few design ideas that you’d rather have done over your current ink and keep in mind the size and color of both. If your original tattoo was large, the new one you pick out will need to be larger. If it was all in black ink your artist won’t be able to tattoo yellow over it; it’ll need to be black as well. Your artist can then work with you when it comes to arranging the design so it covers up your old piece.
If you just want the tattoo gone, laser tattoo removal is the surest way to eliminate the design completely. It’ll take more than one treatment and the treatments must be spaced out over a period of time to allow your skin to heal, so it could take a while to get the piece removed in its entirety. But we’ve seen enough scientific examples to all but eliminate the chances of scarring, making this the best path for both the patient and determined.
Getting a tattoo may seem like a decision you’re stuck with forever, but increasing strides in technology mean you have more options than ever before when it comes to removing your old, faded, or simply misguided design choice. Tattoos can be permanent if you like, but you can also get rid of them by way of laser treatments provided by an experienced professional.
Do you have any more questions about the tattooing process or how a tattoo becomes permanent? Ask us below!
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San Diego, CA 92111
1601 Pacific Coast Highway, Suite 145
Hermosa Beach, CA 90254