The following is an excerpt from the Glow Journal podcast. To listen to the full interview, subscribe now on iTunes or Spotify
In this instalment of our Ask An Expert series with our friends at Candela Medical, we’re taking YOUR questions to dermal therapist Ginny Bucchi. Ginny specialises in skin rejuvenation and tattoo removal, and has performed over 2500 PicoWay treatments, on all skin types, since 2017, so I took the opportunity to ask her YOUR questions on cosmetic tattooing and tattoo removal.
Away from our regular brand founder conversations, I am frequently asked so many highly specific questions about the skin. Given that I am an educated consumer and by no means an expert, it would be extremely unethical for me to even attempt to address your skin concerns- which is why I have long insisted on taking those questions to a medical doctor. That’s why I sincerely love producing this Ask An Expert series with Candela. Although the series itself is sponsored, doctors legally and ethically have to remain completely objective in interviews like this. For this reason, this series is the single most authentic way for me to integrate branded content into the podcast because it’s giving you, the listeners, completely unbiased expert answers to your most specific skin questions.
GLOW JOURNAL: We had a lot of people submitting the same few questions, which is great because this gives us a really nice opportunity to answer them in quite a bit of detail- but, to start, what actually is tattoo removal? What does that process look like in terms of removing, say, a typical tattoo on the body?
DERMAL THERAPIST GINNY BUCCHI: So I’ll just take a step back and say that when you get a cosmetic tattoo or regular tattoo done, you’re having ink particles deposited underneath the surface of the skin. And those are too large for your body to eliminate on their own, although they do try- but that’s what leads to a tattoo being permanent or semi-permanent.
When we use a picosecond laser, like a PicoWay, we’re shattering the ink into teeny tiny particles that are small enough for the body’s lymphatic system to clear away. So that’s kind of the mechanism of tattoo removal as far as what to expect when you’re having a treatment done. You’ll see some immediate frosting of the tattoo, or it’s a grey or white color that happens to the ink that disappears within a few minutes of the treatment time. And then maybe a ring of pink around the treated area, a little bit of swelling, potentially a little bit of crusting, and that subsides within a few days.
Does the, the quality or the ingredients in the tattoo ink make a difference to the removal process and those treatments? Is this something that people should be looking at before they go into getting a cosmetic or even a standard?
Yes, you’d definitely want to look for a reputable business. There’s potentially cheaper inks that are coming in from overseas that don’t meet Australian standards and those can pose some health risks. They aren’t necessarily safe or approved for skin contact. There are some documented cases of reactions and side effects. It’s rare, but inks that maybe were intended originally for industrial grade uses like printers o car paints that in higher levels under the skin can cause some real problems. So it’s worth inquiring with your tattoo artist as to what type of ink they use and make sure that they are comfortable and confident in what they’re using.
While we’re on ink, are there any colours that are easier, or on the other side of that coin, more difficult to treat?
Definitely. Blacks are quite easy to treat and do fade well, as long as they weren’t mixed with white ink. White ink often contains titanium dioxide, which goes dark when it’s hit with the laser, and then that can become a bit resistant to treatment moving forward. In general, cosmetic inks are also quite unpredictable. They tend to be mixed with a variety of colours and different colours have different metal components in them that can change in unexpected ways when they’re hit with the laser. We’re looking at colours like pinks and oranges and the flesh tones that can be used for covering up mistakes. Those have all been documented to turn teal and green and blue, and then become irreversible. So especially when we’re talking about tattoos that are done on the face, we want to be really cautious and quite conservative when treating those to make sure that are going to get the outcome that they’re expecting.
When I posted this topic on Instagram, I had a lot of people writing in asking “Cosmetic tattoo removal? I thought you just had to wait for cosmetic tattoos to fade?!” So how does the cosmetic tattoo process differ from traditional tattoo removal?
The standard ink that’s used in your routine tattoo doesn’t tend to have as much mixing of pigments with the cosmetic tattoos. We’re looking for results that look natural for our skin tone and hair colour, and that’s where that customisation comes into play and the opportunity for those inks to turn strange colours, whether it’s that they just naturally fade into an unnatural shade, or when they’re treated with laser they go into an unnatural range of colours.
We don’t need to be quite as conservative when we’re treating tattoos that aren’t on the face or can be well concealed between treatments. If a tattoo on somebody’s back changes colour, that’s less of a concern. Want to err on the side of caution when we’re treating a tattoo on the face, like the brows. We would always start with a patch test there and do the treatment on another day to make sure that we are going to get results that are going to make everybody happy. The skin on the face does heal at a more rapid rate than other parts of the body. So that’s the good news. When we’re looking at treating brow tattoos, there’s better blood supply skin- cells turnover at a faster rate.
The lymphatic system is working at a better rate. We also use skincare ingredients that help with exfoliation and, cleansing leads to more skin regeneration as well. So, overall, you’re going to get much better healing, much quicker healing when you’re treating a tattoo on the face. But there’s also some other things that you need to keep in mind if you’re going ahead with cosmetic tattoo removal.
When we talk about cosmetic tattoos, we tend to think of brow tattoo as the obvious one, lip liner, even the areola on people who have had breast surgery. Do each of these different areas require different tattoo removal methods, or is the process fairly uniform?
The process will be fairly uniform for all cosmetic tattoos. It’s just a matter of vetting that tattoo and making sure that it’s suitable for treatment. The best way for us to do that is to start with a patch test and then do the treatment on a separate day. If the client is able to be in touch with their tattoo artists and they can find out what inks were used, and that can give us a good idea of what results they can expect before we’ve even fired that first test pulse as well. If somebody is coming in to have just your standard tattoo treated, they often can go ahead with treatment on the day.
Does freckle removal fall under this umbrella as well? I think a lot of people got excited talking about facial tattoo removal, as I had a lot of people writing in asking if freckle removal is even possible.
Yeah, it definitely is. There’s sort of two ways you can look at it. If they’re talking about just the standard genetic freckles that you’ve had since childhood or accumulated in the sun, we treat those all the time with the PicoWay. Tattooed freckles as well can be treated- again, we’re looking at patch testing with the tattooed freckles. Either one is going to have a really nice result, good fading from about the four week mark. With the genetic freckles, probably about three treatments is going to make them difficult to see, and when it’s a tattooed freckle it depends on the type of ink that was used and the depth that it’s sitting in the skin and ultimately what the client’s goal is. If they just want to fade the freckle enough to make it look a little bit more natural, then they might be happy with a treatment or two to get that.
To listen to the full interview, and the rest of our Ask An Expert series with Candela Medical, subscribe to the Glow Journal podcast now on iTunes or Spotify
