According to researchers from the University of Alabama, getting a bunch of tattoos is a lot like working out. When you first start, your body is weakened by the new stress. At the gym, this means sore muscles. For tattooing, the process often leaves you feeling generally exhausted because your body is wondering why you injected a foreign contaminant deep into your skin. ⁠ ⁠ But after a few days in the gym, your muscles start to strengthen and you no longer feel like death. Noticing how this works for muscles, the team wondered if the same could be said about tattooing. Could getting multiple pieces tattooed act as an immunological exercise routine?⁠ ⁠ As it turns out, yes. The researchers were able to verify this by heading out to a local tattoo shop and recruiting volunteers for a study that examined how many tattoos a person had and how long each tattooing session was. With this data, they then analysed blood samples to gauge the participants' levels of immunoglobulin A, which is an...