How Can You Remove Tattoos Without Surgery?

You might have heard that laser tattoo removal is a great way to remove unwanted tattoos. But using lasers to eliminate tattoos seems like something out of sci-fi movies. Does laser tattoo removal work? Is it an effective method? Here are some facts about laser tattoo removal:

Does Laser Tattoo Removal Work?

The first question all of us wish to know about the potential use of lasers to eradicate undesired tattoos is if the treatment works. In short, laser tattoo removal is the most effective and safest method for removing ink available today. Because it only utilizes lasers, it’s a very non-invasive way to remove your unwanted tattoo ink and doesn’t affect the surrounding skin.

How Do Lasers Get Rid of a Tattoo?

To know precisely how lasers are used to remove those embarrassing tattoos from your past, we first have to take a minute to discuss what a tattoo is and how it leaves a permanent imprint on our skin.

Archaeological evidence proves that tattooing’s been a part of human cultures back thousands of ages ago. While the procedures might have shifted to make use of high-tech electronic tools, the nature of tattooing has stayed the same: utilizing some needle or other means to mark pigmentation permanently into our skin.

More Like a Fountain Pen Than a Syringe

While numerous individuals imagine a modern tattoo artist utilizing a syringe and needle to implant tattoo pigmentation in our skin, in reality, a tattoo needle’s more like a fountain pen. The tattoo artist dips the tattoo needle’s tip into the ink, which then hangs from the tip as the needle is utilized to penetrate the skin’s dermis and epidermis layers. A physical process called capillary action then puts the ink into your dermis, meaning your skin absorbs the ink.

Interestingly, the ink is then permanently put in place by your body’s immune response. White blood cells, which defend the body from the needle’s puncture, keep the ink in place. Recently, research has shown that tattoos don’t only stimulate the white blood cell response same time as the initial tattooing. In reality, your body’s immune response is continuous, with new immune cells frequently appearing to defend the body but serving to keep the pigmentation in place.

Lasers Break Up the Pigmentation

So how do lasers remove undesired tattoos? First, the process uses a specially-designed laser that marks the ink but doesn’t affect the skin. The laser permeates the skin as it travels over the tattoo, locating and shattering the pigment. The laser has no impact on the nearby skin at all.

On the other hand, the laser is capable of breaking up the pigmentation into particles tiny enough for our system to passively flush it out via the lymphatic system. In some aspects, the lymphatic system may be thought of as the body’s draining system since it aids in the removal of toxins and other hazardous substances. Using laser technology to erase undesired tattoos activates the body’s natural systems for eliminating foreign materials, allowing the old ink to be removed.

Effective and Safe

Laser tattoo removal uses our natural mechanisms to assist in erasing the ink and revitalizes the process with a highly focused beam of light that doesn’t impact the nearby skin. The tattoo will dissolve when the body flushes the ink particles away that were broken up via the laser.

One explanation why laser tattoo removal is the safest procedure is that it uses just a focused light beam that significantly impacts the ink molecules implanted in the skin while having no impact on our skin itself. When compared to other alternative tattoo removal treatments, this makes it a comparatively benign therapy.

While light is absorbed by ink- therefore energy–at the laser’s wavelength, shattering ink material into tiny bits, skin doesn’t, leaving it fully untouched even as the tattoo’s erased, with the leftovers naturally carried away by the body’s natural systems.

The efficacy of utilizing a laser to erase a tattoo will rely on individual conditions, just like any other cosmetic therapy. However, tattoos of all sizes and pigmentations could be erased with a laser with the right treatment plan.