Understanding Why Your Skin Rejects Tattoo Ink

If you have recently noticed ink coming off of your tattooed skin, you need to know that you body is rejecting the same. Though it is completely normal, yet you need to some details about the same. Find out more information here.

Tattoos are lovely but they can be risky at times!

No, this isn’t meant to keep you away from this form of body modification. But the fact is yes, it can be little risky. Do you know in a survey conducted for 300 New Yorkers it was found that 10.3% of the participants experienced an adverse reaction after getting a tattoo? Moreover, around 4.3% had to deal with acute reactions and 6 % suffered from a chronic reaction.

So there have been many cases of allergic reactions, most of them occur just after getting a tattoo. But what more surprising is that even years after people suffer from one or the other form of allergy. For instance, a man in England dealt with the reaction 20 years after he got his tattoo.

“The 54-year-old man had recently completed chemotherapy for the blood cancer lymphoma, and had just undergone a bone-marrow transplant using his own cells. Six days later, when his immune system was still suppressed because of the procedure, he developed a fever.

Looking for the cause of the fever, doctors found newly formed skin lesions on the red-ink parts of his old tattoo, resembling the allergic reaction that some people experience when they get a new tattoo

                                                                                     ~ Source: Livescience.com

So can skin reject tattoo ink?

Before you get the answer to this question, you need to understand a little about your body’s anatomy. A human body can rejects things by creating an allergic reaction to any foreign substance which it founds to be harmful. Yes, even if the substance is not harmful, it might cause rejection or allergy.

Thus, in the case when skin rejects tattoo ink, it is due to the fact that your body treats it as a foreign and harmful product. If you are facing off with an itchy skin or red rash in the tattooed area, then probably you are suspected to an allergic reaction. Your skin can react after a tattoo by breaking out in raised bumps, granulomas, itchy skin area, or formation of keloids.

Although it is very rare that tattoo ink causes allergy, but it can hit anyone and any time. Even years after you get a tattoo, there can be chances of your body rejecting ink. The worst thing is that sometimes medications might not work for it and you have to get the tattoo removed.

How to know whether your body has started rejecting ink or not?

As stated reactions are not very common, it can be difficult to recognize in the initial stage. However, when this occurs, it starts in a fact manner. But there are still few ways through which one can recognize the onset of an allergy to ink.

One way to know about ink rejections is the occurrence of itchy red rashes near the tattooed area. The other way to distinguish is the presence of those raised bumps, granulomas or keloids. For most of them you must visit your dermatologist to earliest. As far as itching is concerned, you can use a topical anesthetic solution for it. Try Numb Skin cream, which works wonderfully on your skin to make every process painless.

It comes with 5% lidocaine which is a numbing agent.  When you apply it to your skin, it blocks the pain signals at the nerve endings. Hence, you will not feel any itching sensation for some time. But this never means you can skip off your appointment to the doctor!