All About The Risky Ink: Will Tattoos Lead To Body's Overheating

Get To Know All About Tattooing

Coming at a price for your health is using your body as a canvas for tattoos. 

Causing the body to overheat, new research suggests that all that ink impedes natural sweating. 

It was found in a study that those tattooed skin on arms comes with reduced sweat rates, and thus the potential heat loss capacity during the whole-body heating that was compared to adjacent skin without tattoos. 

The finding is potentially alarming as one dermatologist unconnected to the study said: 

Having important ramifications when patients have fever or illness or are overheated and may have problems with thermoregulation is any tattoo-linked decline in sweating according to Dr. Michele Green, who is a dermatologist at the Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. On this important observation, she believes that more studies need to be done. 

Led by Scott Davis of Southern Methodist University in Dallas was the new research. Sweating is the body’s natural response to regulating body temperature as he and his colleagues explained. Impairing this response and boosting the odds of overheating is damage to sweat glands within the skin. 

Pointing to a reduced sweat gland function is prior research that found that tattooed skin has a higher concentration of sodium in sweat. The injury that can result in sweat glans damage, Davis’ group calculated that the process of tattooing requires up to 3,000 skin punctures per minute. 

What Did The Researchers Find? 

Now we find that the researchers who assess the sweating rates in the upper and lower arms of 10 people with tattoos when compared at least 5.6 square centimetres of tattooed skin with adjacent non-tattooed skin, in their study.  

As here come the volunteers especially wearing a suit that circulated hot water upwards of 120 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes or more to promote whole-body sweating. 

Suggesting that nerve signals to sweat glands do function normally in tattooed skin, tattooed and non-tattooed areas of skin began to sweat at about the same time in response to heat. 

The researchers however found that tattooed areas still produced less sweat. According to the study published recently in the Journal of Applied Physiology in fact suggests that sweat glands were damaged during tattooing. 

Decreased sweating in tattooed skin could impact heat dissipation, especially when tattooing covers a higher percentage of body surface area, while small tattoos aren’t likely to interfere with overall body temperature regulation as Davis and his colleagues explained in a journal news release. 

Finally, they were concluding that thereafter tattooing will hamper those sweat gland function as it could be considered as a potential long-term complication or side effect of his cosmetic procedure. 

Dermatologist Greene for her part said that there is a possible decline in body cooling as it comes not only as damaging health effects of tattoos.

As the immune system reacts to a tattoo, body ink can also raise a person’s odds for skin infections and granulomas that are rash-like lesions that can form. 

Tattoo Aftercare: What To Know

Transmitting infections like Hepatitis C are dirty tattoo needles as most people know.

Leading to severe consequences for one man who died from a tattoo infection after he went swimming in the Gulf of Mexico, it is less well known that the wound itself can get infected. 

While infections of new tattoos are not a common occurrence, they are not rare according to Nicholas Hendren, MD, the lead author of the study. 

It was found that 3.2% of people who received tattoos reported at least one infected tattoo in one recent study. 

The Texas man’s case was definitely on the extreme side as Hendren says. Among other more common bacteria, he says people are more likely to contract MRSA, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. 

You wouldn’t want to go swimming in a pond after getting stitches as Hendren tells his patients that getting a tattoo is similar to getting stitches. Avoid excessive scrubbing until the tattoo has healed and he tells people to avoid swimming in lakes, rivers, and ponds, saltwater, and pools. 

When the scab falls, Hendren says a tattoo is healed. Like Doris Day, MD, a New York City dermatologist says, most tattoos take on average about one to several weeks before healing. 

Regulating tattoo parlors are state and local health departments. Finding that only seven states specifically required the public health department to approve instructions for tattoo aftercare, was a study of tattoo regulations in 2015. It was observed that seven states have no licensing at all and the rest comes with varying requirements. Up to the tattoo artist, most leave aftercare instructions. 

Saying it helps reduce the chances of liver infection, Hendren recommends using a licensed tattoo parlour to get a tattoo. Here the most common come to be Hepatitis B along with other infections like hepatitis C and HIV. 

The Conclusion 

While you are waiting for a tattoo to heal, Day says that aftercare is important. 

As Day says, wash with soap and water. During the day apply a topical ointment and non-stick bandage and at night leave it uncovered.

Allowing the area to breathe, remove plastic wrap when you get home.

Allowing bacteria to grow, the plastic wrap keeps in heat and moisture. 

If you see any of the following signs, both doctors recommend getting medical help immediately: 

A red linear band or streak developing and extending from the area, for tattoos that are on your arms and legs.

Five to seven days later, worsening pain around the tattoo

Coming from the area is discharge

As a sign of infection comes high fever.