Tattoos and chronic pain

 This is a research paper that I recently wrote, so it is full of references to other articles and such. If that is too dry for ya, you are forgiven if you move on to a fashion post, or http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/, or whatever suits yer fancy after a long day.Consider coming back after Allie massages your brain with her incredible wit.

“Focus on the pain rather than on other things. Take it in, let it overwhelm me. Sink deep, keep my mind trained on the feeling of the needles...as they trace a line in blood and ink. I am the canvas; Ray is the channel for the Divine. Take another deep breath, sink to a lower level, and allow the sensation to envelop me, to swallow me up. ...Controlling pain, channeling pain, requires that you do not deny the ache, but experience it without holding onto it. Women in labor do much better if they do not fight the pain, but breathe their way through it and let go when it passes. When we are in pain, we tend to hold our breath and to breathe in shallow pants rather than in full, deep breaths. This tenses our bodies and makes it more difficult to let go. We trap it in our bodies with our tension. By learning to relax your body and breathe rhythmically with the ebb and flow of the pain, you can learn to release it. The ache becomes bearable, your body doesn't undergo as much stress, and your blood pressure will remain better. ”  (Yasmine Galenorn)

The use of tattoos for therapeutic practices is not a new one. A 5,300 year old mummy known as Oetzi the Iceman has tattooed dots and small crosses along areas of his body that were found to correspond with areas of arthritic degeneration, and, according to Frank Bahr of the German Academy of Acupuncture, to acupuncture points used to treat the diseases that Oetzi suffered from. Mr. Bahr told Discovery News that “Even today I would treat a patient with about 90 percent of the same points as on the iceman, if this patient were to have the same diseases.” 

   The therapeutic use of tattoos is something I discovered a few years after being diagnosed with fibromyalgia.  My tattoo artist is a woman who I have been friends with since before she started tattooing me. If she or I am having a bad day, we will reschedule. It is very important that we both go into the session relaxed and not tense, because the transfer of ink to skin is cathartic and personal for both of us. The designs and placement of my tattoos and the size of the needles are carefully considered, as in the stippling done by a fine needle in the moons design on my right shoulder. The stippling design is very similar to Oetzi's tattooed dots, and the finer needle gauge is more similar to the needles used by acupuncturists.  When I am tattooed, I usually feel the pain full-stop for the first ten minutes or so, and then the endorphins kick in, blooming in the back of my ribs and releasing old tensions built up there, courtesy of the fibromyalgia. I am lucky in the sense that my tattoo artist is herself a chronic pain sufferer who tattoos other fibromyalgics and is familiar with the pain ebb and flow. For days after I am tattooed, I feel a sense of release from the tension, I breathe deeper and more evenly, I ride the pain wave more effortlessly. This physiological effect of the tattoo process seems to increase with each tattoo, as if the experience of riding the wave of pain is etched more deeply in my brain with each session. Perhaps the answer lies in neuroplasticity, the “ability of neurons to forge new connections, to blaze new paths through the cortex, even to assume new roles. In shorthand, neuroplasticity means rewiring of the brain.”  Our unconscious actions, like breathing, standing, and walking are all ruled by our neurons, and in a chronic pain patient who experiences pain over and over again the brain is being wired to experience pain. Dante Chialvo, associate professor of physiology at the Feinberg School, Northwestern University says that “This constant firing of neurons in these areas of the brain could cause permanent damage. We know that when neurons fire too much they may change the connections with other neurons or even die because they can't sustain high activity for so long. If you are a chronic pain patient, you have pain 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every minute of your life. That permanent perception of pain in your brain makes these areas in your brain continuously active. This continuous dysfunction in the equilibrium of your brain can change the wiring forever and could hurt the brain.” There is good news, though; Laura S. Stone of the Alan Edwards Center for Research of Pain says that “We know that pain causes brain changes, and now we know that taking pain away reverses those changes.” In a study done by Dr. A. Vania Apkarian from the Feinberg School, acute pain stimuli was found to flip the switch on the part of the brain known as the nucleus accumbens in chronic pain patients, revealing that the acute pain relieved the chronic pain. This is something that tattooed chronic pain patients like myself have been discovering for years; we handle pain much differently than those around us. I handle the pain of being tattooed much better than my big, burly boyfriend; I have the dubious advantage of having my brain re-wired by the chronic pain. At a recent fibromyalgia event hosted by the Tamarack Center (Oregon), I met an herbalist who told me that in the past, healers were often women who experienced chronic pain themselves, and were frequently covered with tattoos. I like that idea; what better way to subvert the pain, than to turn it inside out and use it to heal others.

Citation Page

Galenorn, Yasmine. Crafting the Body Divine;Ritual Movement and Body Art. Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 2001. Print.

Vargas, Jennifer. "Oetzi Iceman's Tattoos came from Fireplace." Discovery News July 17, 2009: n. pag. Web. 23 May 2011.

Lineberry, Cate. "Tattoos; The Ancient and Mysterious History." Smithsonian January 01, 2007: n. pag. Web. 23 May 2011.

"fibromyalgia." Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 23 May. 2011. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fibromyalgia>

Schwartz,MD, Jeffrey, and Sharon Begley. The Mind and the Brain;Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. New York, NY: Regan Books, Harper Collins Publishers, 2002. Print.

Northwestern University. "Chronic Pain Harms The Brain." ScienceDaily, 6 Feb. 2008. Web. 23 May 2011.

Sanders, Laura. "No Pain, Healthier Brain." Science News May 17th 2011: n. pag. Web. 23 May 2011.

Cell Press. "Hurts so good: Chronic pain changes brain response to acute pain." ScienceDaily, 15 Apr. 2010. Web. 23 May 2011