Henna Body Art

photo credit: Henna by Heather – Mehndi in Boston / Providence M

Henna tattoos have received a tremendous recognition and appreciation from the masses as they are safer, healthier and temporary in nature in the past few decades.

Likewise, there have been increasing queries about their possible characteristics and application techniques that make them provisional rather than more convenient permanent tattoos which do not require replacements.

Henna paste is applied on the surface of the skin. With every passing day, new skin layers are continuously formed beneath the surface.

These new skin cells are intertwined with each other and thus rise up in file by the push of new cells being formed.

As these cells start to rise, they eventually die and become hard and corneous, thus their name ?corneated skin cells?.

By the time they reach the surface of the skin, they have become very dead and dry and eventually exfoliate with more cells replacing them and exfoliating.

The surface cells have the greatest Henna dye saturation in comparison to the cells beneath and lower in the Stratum Corneum column.

As these surface cells exfoliate, the lesser stained rise to the surface until all the stained cells have exfoliated.

Thus, the Henna designs or tattoos slowly fade and eventually fade way.

As compared to the Henna tattoos, the permanent tattoos are pigmented under the Stratum Corneum layer in to the Basal and Spinous layers.

These two latter layers are living tissues as compared to the Stratum Corneum layer which is dead and dry.

This is the main reason why the permanent tattoos are painful rather than the Henna application which is done on the dead skin layers which will eventually exfoliate.

Since, the tattooed cells are deeper in the layer and do not exfoliate, the mark made is permanent and irremovable.

The Henna stains are not stained in the living tissue?s layer so they are not permanent and solely disappear as the corneated cells exfoliate on the surface of the skin.

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