Why is tattoos bad for you

If your tattoo isn't what you expected and you're interested in tattoo removal, ask your dermatologist about laser surgery or other options for tattoo removal. Mayo Clinic does not endorse companies or products. Advertising revenue supports our not-for-profit mission. Any use of this site constitutes your agreement to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy linked below.

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By Mayo Clinic Staff. Open pop-up dialog box Granuloma Close. Granuloma A granuloma is a small area of inflammation caused by tissue injury or the body's intolerance of a foreign substance. Show references Goldsmith LA, et al. Body art. In: Fitzpatrick's Dermatology in General Medicine. And in them, getting inked body art may confer health benefits.

The inking process may actually turn on the immune system, helping to keep such individuals healthy. Lynn is an anthropologist, someone who studies the social habits of people. Still, getting a tattoo is stressful, he notes. And it can be dangerous: People can get infections from unclean equipment. They can suffer allergic reactions. And in cultures that use traditional tools to create large tattoos, the pain and stress has occasionally even led to death.

People living in areas where infectious disease is a big threat are most likely to have ritual tattooing, Lynn notes. To find out whether tattoos really do signal good health, he and his team looked at stress and immune responses in people who got tattoos. The researchers recruited 29 people who were planning to get a tattoo.

Before the inking started, each person put a swab under his or her tongue for up to two minutes. The saliva-soaked swab then went into a collection tube. It would be analyzed later.

Each person repeated that saliva collection after getting the tattoo. The body makes more of it when someone becomes stressed. No surprise: Everyone had an increase in cortisol after a tattoo. Getting this body art is, after all, stressful. The researchers also looked for levels of an immune protein called IgA. IgA is an important defender against germs, Lynn notes, such as the virus that causes the common cold.

Its job is to glom onto germs and other materials the body wants to get rid of. When people are stressed, cortisol lowers their immunity, Lynn explains. He suspected the stress of getting a tattoo might show up in IgA levels. This was especially true in people who were getting their first tattoo. People who already had tattoos experienced less of a drop in their IgA levels. Levels of the protein also returned to normal faster. Those with many tattoos showed the smallest change.

In these people, IgA dips only slightly during the process of tattooing. That means their bodies can start to heal more quickly, he explains. In other words, Lynn explains, a tattoo gets the immune system ready to face other challenges. Does that priming carry over to other areas of health — such as helping people fight infections?

The stress response is very general, he notes. Some heavily tattooed people claim to be resistant to colds and to heal quickly from minor injuries. Such reports are anecdotal , or individual stories not yet shown to be typical or reliable.

But such claims have prompted Lynn to start a new scientific study. It will seek to check out whether such benefits extend beyond the tattoo shop. It used to be that people who got tattoos had them for life.

Removing them was possible but required painful methods, such as rubbing off the outer layers of skin with salt or a wire brush. Now, dermatologists have turned to lasers for tattoo removal. The process actually has become common in the past 30 years. To remove tattoos, doctors direct very short bursts of laser energy at an inked image.

Each burst lasts only a nanosecond one billionth of a second. Such short bursts of light are much higher in energy than a laser that beams its light continuously.

A tattoo rash can appear at any time, not just after getting new ink. Between deciding where you want it, finding your artist, and practicing good aftercare, a lot goes into getting a tattoo.

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Can Tattoos Cause Cancer? Do tattoos cause or increase the risk of cancer? Are there other health risks associated with tattoos? Read this next. How to Identify and Treat a Tattoo Allergy. Medically reviewed by Deborah Weatherspoon, Ph. Will Ink Kill You? Medically reviewed by Vincent J.