When we get a tattoo, we tend to take special care so that it does not leave a scab, is not dehydrated and stays perfect during the healing time. The truth is that the fashion of tattooing for art is something very recent. Until a few years ago, tattoos were frowned upon, they were done with unreliable inks and with an awful thickness. We are the first generation to accept a tattooed body , so only time will tell us what ink means to the skin.
This also happens with technology, our grandparents did not sleep with a smartphone next to the bed, so in a few years we will know the full negative effects.
But what we were going to, can tattoos affect sports performance?
It is very normal to see professional athletes with a tattooed body, especially footballers. That is why we ask ourselves whether tattoos can affect us or not when doing sports . The same were raised in the Physiology department of Alma College (Michigan, USA), since they carried out a thorough study. They wanted to know how it influenced athletes and the military. And what did they find? Well, the ink under the skin alters the body's natural cooling system and makes you sweat less. In turn, we will be losing more sodium , something very important for cell exchanges.
They concluded that the ink coincides with the depth of the eccrine sweat glands (3-5 mm), and influences the ability to sweat . To arrive at this result, they compared volunteers with bodies with a tattooed part (for example, an arm) and others without tattoos.
They introduced sweat through iontophoresis (they apply a low-intensity electric current in a specific area to introduce active substances into the dermis). In the areas where there was a tattoo, only 0.18 milligrams of sweat / centimeter ² were produced and per minute, whereas in the non-tattooed areas, almost double (0.35 milligrams) was recorded.
Tattooed skin generates less sweat
Although we do not notice it, it is true that an un tattooed body sweats more than a tattooed one. Is this a problem to avoid tattooing? There is still no study that certifies it one hundred percent, but it is true that the cooling capacity is less in tattooed people. You already know that sweat is the method of self-regulation of temperature that our body has.
It is not a problem as such to affect your sports performance, in fact we know tattooed professional athletes.
