Tattoos and medicine- two worlds that rarely collide, and when they do it’s rarely good. It’s common for doctors to be against tattooing, and this means that there is very little research on the impacts tattoos can have past causing cancer or illness.

CNN reporter Christopher D. Lynn went to Samoa to find answers about what impact tattoos have in the long run when it comes to immunity. Samoans, as many people are aware, are known across the world for their tattoo traditions and styles. Lynn decided that Samao would be the best place to conduct his research due to this vast and historic knowledge of both modern and traditional tattooing techniques.


What Lynn reports in his article is that getting multiple tattoos over one’s lifetime seems to be beneficial to the immune system, primarily due to the release of immune defender immunoglobulin A. Lynn found that those who were older with more tattoos had even higher higher levels of immunoglobulin A, and that tattoos seem to prep our immune system for infections due to the short term “stress” they put on our body.

Though these studies aren’t consclusive yet, Lynn reports that it seems that the small and minute trauma given to the body through tattooing can actually be helpful in building up your immunity. Even if it doesn’t, you still look like a badass.