How Do Tattoos Stay in Our Skin?
We all thought we knew how our fresh beautiful new ink stayed under our skin but new information has been found by a team of scientists in France that better explains how your ink stays for life. The way our tattoos longevity was scientifically explained before this new information was that the ink being injected into your inner layer of skin, the dermis, made your immune system kick into action. This kick begins with the white blood cells called macrophages essentially “eating” the dye particles like it would any other foreign particles. These ink “swallowing” macrophages use to be the reasoning for the longevity of our tattoos, however, according to the new study done by researchers in France this isn't how it works at all! By experimenting with tattooed mice they found that the ink swallowing macrophages don't live forever and when the researchers killed macrophages that held ink with toxic injections the tattoos still stayed in place. If the macrophages were the reason for your tattoo holding its place and vibrancy then killing them off would either change the tattoo or cause it to fall out completely. Instead your tattoo is actually held in place through a system in your skin tissue. Once the ink holding macrophages died they released their ink loads which were then picked up by other immune cells in that area of tissue. This capture and release type system can occur without any portion of the tattoo vanishing and is sort of like a relay race in your skin to hold your tattoo in place!
Image taken as a still shot from Tattooing Close Up in Slow Motion by Smarter Every Day on Youtube
Here are some links if you’d like to read more!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/if-the-cells-of-our-skin/
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/why-do-tattoos-last-forever-n854256