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0:08One in four people with a tattoo
regret it, 25 million people in the US.
0:14Getting ink carved into your body permanently has
0:17exploded in popularity in the last few
decades, especially among Millennials.
0:22Often their tattoos were about a current cultural
thing, a moment in their life, following a trend,
0:27expressing individuality or about feeling
like being part of something greater.
0:32This is all fine and good but
as people age they often stop
0:35identifying with what their younger
versions wanted on their skin forever.
0:39Or sometimes their tattoos simply
just look ugly or have aged badly.
0:44And so today laser tattoo removal is booming,
being as normalized as dentist appointments.
0:50Which is wild since lasering a tattoo away is one
of the most metal things you can do to your body.
0:57A high tech procedure that is extremely painful
and makes your skin explode from the inside.
1:12We explained what a tattoo is in
detail before, but in a nutshell:
1:16From the perspective of your cells
your tattoo is a mountain range of
1:20colourful boulders, from small to building-sized.
1:24Injected deep into your dermis by violently
ripping huge wounds with gigantic needles.
1:29Your body is trying hard to destroy
the tattoo, but the ink particles are
1:34way too large to be transported away
and your immune cells can’t eat them.
1:38So they do the next best thing:
1:40Keeping the ink trapped in a prison of flesh.
1:44This is why tattoos remain forever,
millions of your cells give their
1:48lives to keep the ink in place – when
they die new ones take their place.
1:52In principle removing a tattoo is very easy:
1:56Just destroy the ink particles.
1:58The hard part is to do that
without destroying you.
2:02Amazingly the best way is still
to blast you with a deadly laser.
2:09Lasers, UV light, wifi or
x-rays are all the same thing:
2:14Electromagnetic radiation,
2:16photons that travel through space at the
speed of light in the form of a wave.
2:20The more energetic they are, the higher their
frequency and the more punch they carry.
2:26Imagine your skin as jelly and
your tattoo as crumbs of toast.
2:31If you shine a flashlight against
it, most light passes right through
2:34the jelly – but the darker toast crumbs
absorb more light and are clearly visible.
2:39Likewise, certain laser frequencies mostly
pass through your skin without doing damage,
2:44while dark ink particles soak them up.
2:47Depending on the colour of your
tattoo, we need different lasers.
2:51Red ink reflects red light but absorbs
green light – so you need a green laser.
2:55Black ink easily absorbs all types of
light and is the easiest to remove.
3:00But even with the right colour, tattoo removal
lasers are still pretty powerful and can still
3:06leave horrible injuries, scars, or
change your skin colour permanently.
3:10So instead of shooting your skin
with a continuous ray of death,
3:14modern tattoo removal lasers shoot
an extremely brief pulse – a packet
3:19of electromagnetic energy that lasts
about a few trillionoth of a second.
3:24So short that the beam ends before
the first photon even hits the skin!
3:31Let’s laser your mistake away and experience
the fun of tattoo removal together!
3:38But laser removal is expensive, so let’s
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4:34Let’s Laser A Mistake Away
4:36Take a deep breath, this is going to hurt.
4:40Let us slow down time…
4:45The pulse of high energy photons hits
your arm nearly at the speed of light,
4:49shooting through the dead layers of
the skin, passing into the dermis.
4:52Most cells are like jelly to the
laser and don’t absorb much energy,
4:57escaping its deadly power unharmed.
4:59The flood of photons moves
on and reaches the mountain
5:02range of ink embedded deep in the
prison of your flesh and cells.
5:07Only a nanosecond, a billionth of a second,
has passed but now things escalate rapidly.
5:13As the photons hit the black ink on
a molecular level, they smash into
5:16electrons and are absorbed and annihilated –
transferring all of their energy into them.
5:22This sudden influx of energy
almost instantly turns into
5:25a massive amount of heat that has nowhere to go.
5:28The ink particles burn up to a seething hot 600
degrees, hot enough to make iron glow red hot.
5:35Overwhelmed by the sudden heat the
ink particles expand rapidly and are
5:40mechanically stressed to the max, violently
ripping and fracturing, almost exploding.
5:45The mountain range cracks into millions of
seething hot pieces and a bit of hot ink dust.
5:51Which would not be that bad if this
was not going on inside your skin.
5:55Water in your tissue and inside your cells
instantly vaporizes and expands quickly.
6:01Ripping cells apart and growing into gigantic
caves of hot steam bubbles inside your skin.
6:07This sudden expansion creates a
shockwave that hits tissue nearby,
6:11causing more mayhem and damage.
6:14Your cells that were keeping the tattoo in
place a moment ago are having a really bad time.
6:19If they had kept tattoo particles safely stowed
inside of them they are cooked or ripped apart.
6:25The cells that surrounded the ink mountains are
6:28gravely wounded or burned alive
by the sudden heat or steam.
6:31A few tiny blood vessels in the
area are ripped apart violently.
6:36Thousands of your cells are dead or hurt.
6:39And then the next laser pulse hits again,
6:42and again, moving over the tattoo
like an orbital bombardment.
6:46From your perspective all of this is happening
so fast that you only notice one thing:
6:51A sharp pain like being electrocuted, a smell like
burnt hair and most disturbingly, a loud crack.
7:00Where the laser hits your tattoo
instantly turns white – which is
7:04called frosting and is the bubbles
of hot gas expanding under your skin.
7:09To ease the pain the area is often cooled
with a stream of cold air for a moment,
7:13before the laser moves on again.
7:16Inside your skin the tattoo is now a
crushed mountain range of carnage and death.
7:21The cooked and ripped remains of cells float
7:24in a mix of hot ink and water
vapor that are cooling down.
7:28Many more cells are injured and
are chemically screaming for help.
7:32It's like an internal burn wound.
7:37Hundreds of thousands of
immune cells like Macrophages,
7:40stream into the wound to clean up the mess.
7:43They order inflammation so your blood
vessels open up and water rushes in.
7:47Your wounded skin starts to swell up and turn red.
7:51As your cells begin cleaning up
casualties and helping with wound
7:54healing they also meet loads of hot ink particles.
7:58It‘s now that your tattoo is
actually being removed – the
8:02same immune system that kept it in
place is now helping to clean it up.
8:06Many of the smallest particles are
simply rinsed away by the flood,
8:09while Macrophages devour some of them
and transport them to your lymph nodes.
8:14If possible they will be broken down
further and ejected from your body via your
8:18urine – if not then they will just collect
inside your lymph nodes and stay there,
8:23probably for the rest of your life.
8:25So hopefully you got the tattoo
from a pro and the ink is not toxic.
8:30But the majority of ink particles are either still
too large or there are just too many of them.
8:35So your immune and skin cells
– in a brave effort to protect
8:39you – once again swallow and bind them in place.
8:42This is why a laser tattoo removal usually
takes between 5 and 12 sessions – each time
8:47a part of the tattoo is transported away and
an even larger one is cemented in place again.
8:53You get to enjoy watching this
process happening in real time.
8:57Within the first few hours the frosting under your
8:59skin fades and the skin around the
tattoo feels like a bad sunburn.
9:04Red, swollen and stingy.
9:06Often it rises with fluid filled burn
blisters that you should leave alone.
9:11As the pain calms down it is replaced by soreness.
9:15Over the next few days the wound will remain red,
9:18swollen and tender and begin to itch –
the itching is a direct consequence of
9:23your immune cells actively healing you,
so maybe that gives you some comfort.
9:28After about a week the wound may crust over as
new healthy and pink skin replaces injured skin.
9:34Things slowly get back to normal.
9:37Your tattoo will usually be noticeably lighter,
9:40although not that much if
this was your first session.
9:42Over the next few weeks it will
get a bit lighter still as your
9:45immune system keeps transporting parts of it away.
9:49Modern laser tattoo removal has gotten very good,
9:52so if you chose an experienced professional
you should be completely healed after two
9:56months – but if you did not or if you
had the procedure done with older tech,
10:01sometimes there might be a slight scar or the
colour of your skin may change slightly in places.
10:06Although this is pretty rare nowadays,
10:08please do your research when deciding who
you’re going to allow to shoot lasers at you.
10:13In the best case, after a number of sessions,
10:15your tattoo is no longer visible,
or only very, very faintly.
10:20Whetherit will disappear completely
depends on the size of your tattoo,
10:24the colours that were used, how
deep the ink was injected and to
10:28a degree – how good of a job your
body does cleaning up the mess.
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11:22See where it takes you.
