When we do a tattoo, what happens is that one or more needles deposit the ink inside our skin thanks to the use of a special machine. But why does the ink stay still inside the skin? It’s thanks to ours immune systemspecifically thank you macrophages, that is, cells that try to eliminate foreign bodies when they enter our skin. The macrophages, unable to dispose of the ink, settle in our skin. Let’s see in this article the science of tattooing.
How to get a tattoo
To make tattoos, a special tool, called machine. There are wireless ones, i.e. with battery, which therefore do not need a power supply and are called pens precisely because of their shape. This is a type of machine that is widely used today due to its convenience, but there are different types and the basic concept is the same: at the end of the machine there are one or more needleswhich are moved in a single direction – we could say vertical – thanks to a rotary motor or an electromagnetic coil. There are also those who tattoo only with a hand needle, it is the so-called handpoked.
To perform a tattoo, the needle comes dipped in ink so that it adheres to its surface, and once soaked you start tattooing. As? By repeatedly piercing the skin, that is, making small bitesthat is, wounds in which the needle will deposit the ink which is on its surface, and then comes out.
When using the machine, the stings they go from 50 to 3000 in one minuteand vary depending on the desired effect, the number of needles, or their shape. The needles have different shapes: depending on how thin or chubby you want a tattoo, they can be more or less wide and have a more or less deep tip.
Also because: how deep do you have to go under the skin?
At what depth should you tattoo
The needle must not enter neither too little, nor too thoroughly. If it enters too little, that is, if it stops at the superficial layer of the skin, theepidermisthe tattoo goes away after a while, fuck own. This is because the epidermis is the layer that protects our body and for this reason the surface cells of the epidermis are dead cells and are continuously renewed. Consider that we lose around 30-40 thousand per hour, that means 1.5 g per day, a kilo and a half of skin lost per year.
If the ink remains only in the epidermis it will go away together with the dead cells. The epidermis is not the same thick throughout the body, ranging from 0.1 mm around the eyes to 1/5 mm on the soles of the feet. So depending on the tattooed area you have to go more or less deep to go beyond the epidermis. It is for this reason that tattoos on the palms go away: because the epidermis is very thick.
If you go too deep, however, you reach the deepest layer of the skin, thehypodermisand the tattoo does not remain defined, but some come out lateral blurs. It is the so-called blowout and it is due to the fact that the hypodermis is a fatty tissue that does not retain ink well.
There right depth in which tattooing is the middle one, the dermis. It also has a thickness that varies depending on the area: it is thinner in the eyelids and reaches 3/4 mm in the palms.
And why is it the perfect area to have well done tattoos?
What happens inside the skin
When the needle deposits ink into the dermisThe immune system it is activated because it recognizes the presence of a foreign body and wants to protect us. Special cells, called macrophages, which literally “eat”, that is, they incorporate external agents to eliminate them.
However, the ink is inorganic and once incorporated, the macrophages are unable to dispose of it. Or rather, they can’t dispose of it all, because they don’t recognize it and don’t know how to eliminate it. So the only way they can protect us is to keep it there, that is the macrophages settle with the ink inside because they can’t fight it.
And since cells die sooner or later, this process goes on “indefinitely”. Every time a macrophage dies, it releases the ink it has inside and another macrophage comes along to eat it.
