In an era where scientists and doctors are working to find ways to use tattooing to alert us to medical conditions, alert us to changes in our blood sugar or even to let us know when our phone is ringing, it turns out that our tattoos may have been trying to tell us something all along. Have you ever noticed that when you eat certain foods that your tattoos start to become itchy or even raise up slightly? If so, what you are seeing is the result of a low-level food allergy or sensitivity.

This is something I've noticed for many years myself but only recently got some further knowledge that let me put all the pieces together. I've known for close to twenty years that eating some sorts of foods would cause the tattooing on the outside of my upper arms or just over the crest of my shoulders on my back to become slightly raised up. I never gave this much thought as it wasn't particularly uncomfortable and would always go away after a short time. Being able to occasionally show off a bas relief tattoo to a friend was something that we would laugh over.

Just by observing, I was able to determine that this most often happened when I ate something containing peppers. I'm not particularly fond of peppers, eating them was rather rare and my skin reaction was something that I just got used to over time. But then in early 2012 I took a class on food and what I learned made me look at what was happening quite differently.

The class on food and eating that I took was all about inflammation and how to reduce it. As I moved into my middle years, my knees and ankles started to bother me more, being crackly and sometimes paining me and I have been looking into how I can change my lifestyle to help them rather than just going to a doctor and demanding some sort of medication. Losing some weight and exercising more helped and when this food class was recommended to me, it seemed like something really worthwhile to add to my program.

Through an elimination diet, foods were identified which triggered inflammatory responses in the body. This can be joint pain, symptoms like allergies, fatigue, headaches, all sorts of things. Filling out a questionnaire I mentioned that when I ate peppers, my tattoos would raise up. It turns out this is an inflammatory response and while it didn't bother my arms or shoulders much, internally that chemical reaction in my body really does add to the discomfort I get in my knees and ankles. The trigger for my tattoos becoming puffy turns out to be nightshades: potatoes, eggplant, tomatoes and peppers. I have a sensitivity to those foods. Simply by not eating them, not only do my tattoos not have that strange reaction anymore but my lower leg joints are more flexible and pain-free. And to think my tattoos spent almost twenty years sending me this signal and I only now learned to receive the message. Better late than never!

So, do you have some sort of reaction from eating foods that cause changes in your tattoos, especially things that seem to inflame them and cause them to puff up? Investigating just what foods those are can not only ease what's happening to your ink but is most likely can bring relief to a variety of other bodily ailments and symptoms.