Tattoo Removal Has Beef with Smoking

Tattoo Removal Has a Beef with Smoking

Smoking poses a lot of problems for people who want things out of life besides another puff. As we know, smoking causes cancer, heart disease, yellow teeth, permanent odor in fabrics of clothes, cars, and homes, and many other things; however, did you know that smoking affects your skin as well? Well, it does. Your skin becomes looser because the ingredients in the cigarettes decreases blood flow to connective tissues in the skin. It has also been discovered that the ingredients in cigarettes also make the skin more vulnerable to UV light.

Why does this matter for laser tattoo removal ? Well, because of quite a few reasons.

1.Smokers often have less effective results from laser tattoo removal. This is because the skin is not as healthy and so the skin does not respond to the laser as well as healthy skin. See, when the laser penetrates the skin and hits the dermis layer (the layer beneath the top layer, or epidermis), it breaks up the pigment in the ink and then the skin removes the dead ink and moves it to the bloodstream where it is disposed of. If the skin has been harmed by tobacco, then it takes a lot longer for the skin to remove the ink from the dermis layer of skin, if it does at all; sometimes the affected skin is only capable of removing part of the broken up ink. 2.Smoking ages the skin and this poses a problem for laser tattoo removal because older skin does not behave well with the procedure. Older skin is not as adaptive or receptive to change and so it does not want to move the ink from the dermis layer of skin to the bloodstream and so the tattoo tends to take a lot longer for removal.

If you decide to get a tattoo and especially tattoo removal, consider cutting out the cigarettes or at least be aware of their impact on the skin and how that will in exchange impact the tattoo or tattoo removal process. This article is not meant to try and get the world to stop smoking but rather let people know additional impacts of smoking on their bodies and in regards to something not many people realize. Do your research, my friends!