Note: This article comes to us from Bicycling.com. To read it at their site go to: http://www.bicycling.com/training/health-injuries/tattoos-may-mess-with-your-sweat-rate.Sure, that elaborate sleeve of tribal symbols, chain rings, and flames may look fierce when you’re head down and guns blazing toward a sprint finish. But researchers are now questioning if tattoo ink may also interfere with your skin’s natural cooling mechanism—namely sweat.Here’s why they’re taking a closer look: Tattoo needles work by permanently depositing ink into the dermis layer of the skin, which is composed of collagen fibers, nerves, blood vessels and glands that include your eccrine sweat glands. These glands are what your body uses to produce sweat that springs out of your pores to deposit on your skin, where it will be evaporated to cool you down. Recently, researchers at Alma College in Michigan found that all that needling and the inflammation it causes seems to leave behind lasting damage along with a permanent piece of artwork.
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In the study, the scientists tested 10 volunteers who had tattoos on one side of their body, but not the other. They then applied special sweat collection discs, which stimulate, collect and analyze the composition of the sweat over the tattooed skin and the non-tattooed skin on the same place on the opposite side of the body. The results were pretty dramatic.
On average, the sweat rate from the tattooed skin was about half of the sweat rate from the non-inked skin. The tattooed skin was also “saltier” because the damaged sweat glands were less effective at reabsorbing sodium from the perspiration before it hit the skin’s surface. On average, the sodium concentration from the tattooed skin was 1.73 times higher than it was from the non-tattooed skin.
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