It is every tattoo aficionado’s nightmare. That first ever, poorly designed and executed, tattoo can become an embarrassment once the glory of new and expertly done tats adorn your body – or what happens when Billy Joe is out and Brad is in? Well, you have your tat painfully lasered off and because that does not completely remove the old tat, you have a new tattoo made over it. That’s if your name is Angelina Jolie, of course.
I’ve been thinking about this after all the horror stories I have heard of abrasive and invasive methods used to remove old and unwanted tattoos. While, it is possible to work a new tat over an old one and thus efface its message, this is not always a perfect match and if that is not possible then it leaves you with the choice of skin peeling or laser work, neither of which particularly appeals. The tattoo doesn’t always come away completely, which is a problem also and therefore calls for the new tattoo as a solution. Not quite the way I want to be designing my body art.
Now however, there is a new tat saviour in the works. It is a method called Tattoo Erase and there are clinics popping up all over the place offering this new and innovative method of tattoo removal. This unique method from Germany apparently uses a natural substance injected into the tattoo which causes the inks to eject from the body over a number of sessions until the tat has disappeared completely. I haven’t managed to find out what the substance is but it promises that skin damage is minimal and I presume it is non-toxic. It appears that the tattoo inks hide from your immune system by lurking just under the skin surface. What this new method of tattoo removal does is call the ink’s bluff by merging with it and calling the immune system to come deal with it. By allowing your body to recognise the foreign material, your body is given the opportunity to expel the tat pigments and return your skin to its original state.
Obviously this is not instantaneous nor it is cheap as it can take several sessions to completely fade a tattoo and the treatment is pay per session. The treatments also need to be well spaced out, perhaps 8 weeks between sessions. But as therapists promise that the tattoo will be erased over a number of sessions and that the treatment is only as painful as having the tattoo done in the first place, both costs (time and money) seem well worth the trouble and definitely worth looking into a little more!.