In society, tattoos can either be looked down upon or seen as an amazing piece of art and an enhancement to someone’s appearance. Yet, what if it could be seen as a benefit to a person’s health? There is evidence that having multiple tattoos can help improve someone’s immune system. How?

To start, one needs to understand the stress your body goes under when getting tattooed. You are penetrating your skin, and this is considered a form of trauma. The body’s Sympathetic Nervous System releases adrenaline. Endorphins are also released during a tattooing session. The chemical reactions one’s body goes through while getting a tattoo is very similar to natural high one gets from exercise. The traumatized area will react in kind by being swollen, and very tender.

A few days after, a tattoo can scab over, start peeling, and or itch. This is a sign one’s immune system is working as it should. If all goes well, how does this affect the immune system positively?

It affects the body positively by acting like a sort of “stressor” vaccine. In a test, 29 volunteers were recruited. 9 had never gotten a tattoo before. These 29 people gave saliva samples before and after being tattooed to look at levels of Cortisol and immunoglobulin A.

The 9 people who were getting tattooed for the first time, their immunoglobulin A levels dropped significantly compared to the 20 people who already had tattoos. Immunoglobulin A is vital to first line of defense in our immune systems. So when these 20 already tattooed volunteers got new tattoos, evidence suggests their bodies were more habituated to the stress due to less fluctuation in immunoglobulin A levels. It is kind of like going to a gym repeatedly, every time you go you get stronger as an end result. Every time you go to get a tattoo, your immune system gets a bit stronger as an end result.

It is also been discussed by one author of the paper “Tattooing to “Toughen up”: Tattoo experience and secretory immunoglobulin A” had a small sample of volunteers, but yet also may have another idea it can have evidence for. It has evidence that healthy people with healthy immune systems may be more likely to get multiple tattoos.

Healthy people may be more likely to get multiple tattoos because their immune systems are well functioning and so their quick healing process and a positive response can cause people to want to go get more. While people who don’t have a healthy immune system and don’t have a positive response are not likely to come back to get another tattoo as well.

So this is not a completed study. It is only a hypothesis that is still being tested.