Laser tattoo removal on myself: my personal experiment

Back in 2017, I had the idea to clearly show everyone that tattoos can be removed by laser safely and without any consequences for the skin. But there was a problem. I didn’t have any tattoos. What was the solution? Very simple. I had to get tattoos. So I took that step. I invited a good local tattoo artist to my clinic and asked him to give me two tattoos. Why two? Because I’m a scientist and I was interested in doing a split test. I asked the tattoo artist to make my tattoos as similar as possible in size and saturation, with the same ink, with the same needles and machine on two parts of my body. I got tattoos on the deltoids of my upper arm.

The tattoos had no aesthetic value whatsoever. I did not do them for beauty, so they were just squares, something resembling the Windows logo. The square consisted of four parts with different degrees of saturation, from the palest, with the smallest amount of pigment, to the most saturated. I streamed it live, and somewhere I even have a video of me getting tattooed, so that there would be proof that the tattoos were real. Next, I waited about nine months or so before getting them removed.

First tattoo removal session

At the first tattoo removal session, my goal was to simulate a complication. I took this step deliberately and asked my doctor at my clinic to perform the procedure as aggressively as possible, with separate flashes, to provoke a complication and see how it would play out. So, we raised the energy density of the laser very high and did separate flashes on different squares. But, most interestingly, we did not get a complication.

But we did get a fascinating and paradoxical artefact. Literally a few hours later, I saw that at the sites of the separate flashes the pigment (it was carbon black, ordinary black tattoo pigment) had simply disappeared. That is, I saw clear skin with no trace of pigment at the individual flash sites. This was shocking to me because I couldn’t explain it. Before that, articles and scientific publications everywhere described how pigment is eliminated long after laser treatment with the help of immune system cells. This process is long and takes a very long time. And here we saw something incredible: the pigment had SIMPLY VANISHED. This kept me awake for days, and we decided to try to repeat the experiment. And yes, we were able to repeat the same effect on other tattoos. The primary condition was that the tattoos had to be quite old and not super saturated with pigment. We saw this repeatedly, and it was astonishing.

Paradoxical discovery and patent

I couldn’t find an explanation for this fact, where the pigment went. However, after searching and digging in the literature, scientific articles, and studies, I found an explanation for this phenomenon. It explained precisely the behaviour of carbon black pigment; it did not work with other pigments, but with carbon black it did. It’s called the vapour-carbon reaction. It was described about 15 years ago in experiments, but here we observed it with our own eyes, and it was very surprising.

Therefore, based on the results of this initial experiment, my doctor and I took out a patent, where we described the methodology of how to remove pigment in one session. The patent can be found at this link.

However, the further removal was less rosy than the first one. The pigment particles that surrounded the areas that were cleaned changed their structure, and it was more challenging to remove them further. We could not get the same effect on the adjacent areas that were not treated in the first session. We were disappointed, but the very fact that it is possible to achieve complete clearing of the skin with individual flashes is very inspiring.

Conclusion and insights from the experiment

Moreover, another interesting fact came to light. Partial treatment, when we treat 50% or 30% of the tattoo in one session rather than the whole area at once, increases safety. That is, in this mode you can work at much higher energy densities, achieve almost clear skin in the treated areas and at the same time greatly reduce the risk of complications, because foci of inflammation in the skin will be separated from each other by areas of skin without inflammation. And the tattoo area as a whole will withstand a greater load of laser energy. At the same time, the probability of getting a complication will be much lower. That is why we have fixed these two facts, these two phenomena, in the form of a formal patent for the method of tattoo removal.

It is a pity that it was not possible to remove the entire tattoo with this method completely, but you can still achieve a wow effect for clients when you do a test flash and, literally the next day, the person sees clear skin in that spot. It is essential to tell the truth: with the whole tattoo, such a trick will not work. But it is also a tool to work with saturated tattoos, with large areas of tattoos, when the treatment of the entire area of the tattoo is hazardous in terms of complications. And you can divide the treatment into 2 or 3 stages to reduce the risk of complications. It really is much safer.

P.S.

By the way, I did have my tattoos removed. Of course, I am not a very disciplined laser removal client: I treated them with different lasers, both nanosecond and picosecond, whenever the opportunity arose, and I did not keep to the intervals, but nevertheless, within 3–4 years I had no tattoos left on my shoulders, and I even forgot where they had been. So, the experiment from this point of view was also successful.